In the midst of its toughest and most important stretch of games this season, the Massachusetts men’s basketball team will travel west this weekend for a tough road game against Dayton on Saturday night.

Each remaining game carries high stakes for UMass (19-8, 8-5 Atlantic 10) as it battles to lock up a first-round pass in the conference tournament in Atlantic City, N.J.

With three games to go in the regular season, the Minutemen enter Saturday’s matchup with a share of third place in the standings with Xavier and St. Bonaventure, both of which they claim the tiebreaker over with wins over each team.

UMass rebounded well from its first home loss with a convincing victory over the Musketeers on Tuesday night, but still has plenty of work left to do if it dreams of reaching the NCAA tournament for the first time in 14 years.

That begins with Saturday’s matchup against the Flyers, the first of back-to-back difficult road tests that includes a date with conference-leading No. 22 Temple in Philadelphia next Wednesday.

“I think each game is important to really continue to build our confidence, to play well and to continue to compete,” said Kellogg.

Chaz Williams was the catalyst in the Minutemen’s bounce back to victory on Tuesday night. He scored a career-high 29 points and added nine assists in a game in which he was clearly the better guard between himself and Xavier stars Tu Holloway and Mark Lyons.

The 5-foot-9 point guard has averaged 17.2 points and 6.8 assists per game in conference play, and has seemed to step up whenever his team has needed him.

Now more than ever, it seems, Williams will need to continue to deliver during this crucial road trip that can significantly bolster UMass’ NCAA tournament resume, and lead a backcourt that showed how dangerous it can be against the Musketeers – both on offense and defense.

While Williams was hot on Tuesday night, his backcourt partner was conversely cold. Jesse Morgan has scored just four points in each of his last two games on a combined 3-for-15 shooting, including missing on all seven of his looks from downtown. But as much as he’s struggling offensively, Kellogg has been happy to see him step up in another aspect of his game.

“I think Jesse is really concentrating defensively, which we’ve asked him to do. I thought he did a great job with Freddie [Riley] on Holloway and Lyons [on Tuesday],” said Kellogg. “And it’s nice when you get some scoring from Chaz, especially when those guys haven’t been shooting the ball as well as they have.”

The Flyers (17-10, 7-6 A-10) enter Saturday’s contest with plenty to play for as well.

They currently sit in a tie for seventh place with the Explorers in the conference standings and are just one game behind the Minutemen.

Dayton appeared to be a strong contender for a regular-season title after a hot start to conference play in which it beat Saint Louis, the Owls and Xavier on its way to a 4-1 conference record.

The Flyers came back down to Earth, however, losing their next four games, but have since rebounded nicely as they enter Saturday as winners of three of their last four, including a road win at Duquesne on Wednesday night.

Dayton boasts a very balanced offense in which six players average at least 8.5 points per game, but is led by Kevin Dillard. After sitting out last season due to transfer regulations after his move from Southern Illinois, the junior point guard is averaging 12.9 points and dishing out 5.7 assists per game this season.

“They bring an interesting matchup, because they shoot a lot of 3s,” said Kellogg. “You just can’t turn the ball over and give them easy things in transition. So, we have to be well-balanced on both ends of the floor and make the game hard on them.”

In the last meeting between the two schools, the Flyers handed UMass an embarrassing 78-50 loss in the first round of the A-10 tournament at the Mullins Center that ended the Minutemen’s 2010-2011 season.

In the matchup’s history, the squads have split their 18 meetings, with UMass winning five out of the last seven.

Tip-off is scheduled to take place at 6 p.m. from the UD Arena in Dayton, Ohio.

Stephen Hewitt can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @MDC_Hewitt.