NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT / SOUTHEAST AND MIDWEST REGIONALS : Arkansas Gets the Right Day to Beat Dayton : Midwest Regional: Razorbacks’ forward runs his own play and follows his own miss as Flyers finally fall, 86-84.

AUSTIN, Tex. — His team tied with underdog Dayton in the NCAA tournament Saturday and in possession of the ball with 27 seconds remaining in the game, Arkansas Coach Nolan Richardson called timeout and issued a simple directive: spread the floor and look for Oliver Miller, the Razorbacks’ 6-foot-9, 270-pound center.

“I thought maybe we’d get it in to Big O,” Richardson said.

But when the Razorbacks took their places on the court, Todd Day, Arkansas’ 6-8 sophomore forward, looked over the Dayton lineup and developed a plan of his own. “I saw four smaller guys on the floor,” he said, “and I figured one would be on me.”

So much for the Big O attack. Matched up against 6-2 Ray Springer, Day used his height advantage to put back his own missed shot with four seconds remaining and give the Razorbacks an 86-84 victory over the Flyers in a Midwest Regional second-round game.

The victory at the University of Texas’ Erwin Center puts Arkansas (28-4) into the Midwest semifinals Thursday in Dallas against North Carolina, which upset Oklahoma, the region’s No. 1 seed, 79-77, in the second round.

The tournament is definitely shaping up well for the Razorbacks, the fourth-seeded team in the Midwest. They are going into a building, Dallas’ Reunion Arena, in which they have won back-to-back Southwest Conference tournament titles and where they should have, as Richardson put it, “10,000 screaming fans behind us.” And, of course, they won’t have to deal with Oklahoma there.

“Yeah, right now we’re sitting in the driver’s seat,” Day said. “We’re going to a place I call home. I know I haven’t lost in Dallas since I’ve been at Arkansas.”

Arkansas will be making its first trip to the regional semifinals under Richardson, who has been at the school five years and taken his team to the NCAAs three times. The Razorbacks were first-round losers to Villanova in 1988, and they lost to Louisville in the second round a year ago after defeating Loyola Marymount in the first.

For Dayton (22-10), Day’s shot ended a run of 11 victories in a row, including an upset of Illinois in the tournament’s first round.

The Flyers, seeded 12th, rallied from a 12-point deficit with 7:24 remaining to pull even with 2:35 left. But they weren’t able to get past the Razorbacks--or, more to the point, Day, who scored the Razorbacks’ final five points.

Day’s line for the game read 25 points and nine rebounds. In the first half, however, he didn’t do much to distinguish himself, piling up nearly as many turnovers (five) as points (seven).

“Todd Day can do one of two things,” Richardson said later. “He can make me crazy, and he can make me the greatest basketball coach alive. He did both today. He made me crazy in the first half, and he made me a great coach in the second.”