When it comes to college basketball towns, few places can beat Dayton.
That was proved again Tuesday night when 8,205 people showed up to watch the University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff top Winthrop, 61-44, in the Opening Round game of the NCAA Tournament.
Last year — thanks in part to the presence of Morehead State, which is just three hours away in Kentucky — a record 11,346 showed up to watch the Eagles top Alabama State.
This tournament opener — maligned by some folks every year who paint it as something akin to the junior varsity warm-up game before the big boys take the floor — is beloved by many here and has been played at UD Arena since it’s inception nine years ago.
UD Arena
“We always draw around 8,000 for this game,” UD ticket manager Gary McCans said matter of factly at halftime Tuesday night.
While there are now rumors that the NCAA may expand the tournament field by three more teams — to 68 — and have four play-in games, one in each region, it’s doubtful any will become an event quite like the one has become here.
Like every play-in game here — including last year’s Eagle-infused count — most of the folks in the crowd are from the Dayton area.
And except for Winthrop’s Reggie King — who’s from Novelty, Ohio way up in Geauga County, past Cleveland — there was no one on either roster Tuesday night from the state.
Folks here just love to watch college basketball.
And the Play-In game offers people who can’t get into UD Arena to see the Flyers — or who are stuck in the 400 Level — a chance to get closer to the action and to be a part of the NCAA Tournament.
And school’s like Arkansas-Pine Bluff — which brought along as good of a pep band as you’ll ever hear and 12 dancing cheerleaders who drew the crowd’s attention — make it all the more fun.
Like many Midwestern industrial cities, we have lost many of our factories, our downtown department stores and a big chunk of our population base, but the turnstiles still spin like mad here when it comes to college hoops.
This season the Dayton Flyers — who play Illinois State in the first round of the NIT Wednesday night at the Arena — set a regular season attendance record, averaging 13,038 fans for its 17 home games.
In the 41 years the Arena has been open, basketball crowds have averaged close to 12,000 fans per game and UD has never been ranked worst than 35th in the nation in attendance. Usually it’s in the Top 25.
What’s even more remarkable is that on a night when UD Arena is jammed to the rafters, Wright State — whose Raiders have now had four straight 20-win seasons — may be playing just across town and drawing another 5,000 to the Nutter Center.
Dayton leads the Atlantic 10 Conference in attendance every year and Wright State is second in the Horizon League to Butler.
Then there are the NCAA Tournament games that UD Arena has hosted in 24 of the 41 years it’s been open. Tuesday night was the 83rd men’s NCAA Tournament game held at UD Arena, tying it with Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City for the most ever hosted by one arena.
In 11 days, UD Arena will host one of the four regionals of NCAA women’s tournament.
“This is just a great atmosphere,” said UAPB athletics director Skip Perkins, whose teams plays at a 4,100- seat facility back home. “People really turn out for basketball here.”
Put another way, when it comes to college basketball towns, few places beat Dayton.
Monday night — as the Dayton Flyers women’s basketball team gathered with some 300 fans, parents, school administrators, cheerleaders and the pep band in The Hangar on campus to await its NCAA Tournament bid — there were three people in the room who already had taken part in the Big Dance.
Jim Jabir
Head coach Jim Jabir took two of his Marquette teams to the NCAA Tournament in the mid-1990s. Assistant coach Kyle Rechlicz played in two tournaments when she was a Wisconsin Badger and assistant Lesley Dickinson played in one when she was at James Madison.
And yet some of the best advice had come from an old football guy.
That would be Mike Kelly, the Hall of Fame Flyers football coach, who is now an Associate Athletics Director at the school. He was at the gathering with several other UD administrators and, as is his style, embraced Jabir warmly, but privately, after everybody else had offered congratulations when the Flyers women made school history.
They got UD’s first-ever bid to the NCAA (Division I) Tournament and as a No. 8 seed will play No. 9 Texas Christian University Saturday at 2:30 p.m. in Knoxville, Tenn. The winner will face the winner of the game between No. 1 seed Tennessee and 16-seed Austin Peay.
As the cheers and confetti mixed with hugs and tears, Jabir recounted a conversation he had had with Kelly a few days ago, one that he then shared with his players in practice:
Mike Kelly
“Coach Kelly had been with us for our WNIT game last year when we lost to Indiana. He was with us at our (Atlantic 10) conference tournament this year. He said both times when we lost he thought we were really, really tight.
“So a couple of days ago, I talked to the kids about it. We talked about enjoying everything — the bus rides, the meetings together, practice, warm-ups. We want to be loose so we can enjoy everything. These will be memories they keep for a long time.”
That said, don’t think the Flyers are just happy to be here,. They’re 24-7, they have a 38 RPI and have quality wins over Georgetown, Temple, Michigan State, St. Bonaventure and Purdue. They also nearly beat last year’s NCAA Tournament runner-up Louisville, played Vermont, also in this year’s Tournament, and took No. 3 seed Xavier into overtime.
Jabir and his staff planned to spend much of Monday night collecting and watching films of TCU and then putting a scouting report together that they would implement at Tuesday morning’s 6 a.m. practice.
The players knew Jabir would have them ready:
Justine Raterman
“Coach Jabir expects a lot out of us,” said Justine Raterman, the sophomore from Versailles who leads the team in scoring with 13 p.p.g. “He brought us all in here with one goal in mind and we never lost sight of it.
“We all came here to be a part of this program. We had other schools we could have gone to that already had established programs, but we wanted to build something.”
Before Jabir came here seven seasons ago, the UD women had one winning season in 10 years. He went 3-25 his first season and had just one winning campaign in his first four.
Since then — with his players, system and culture installed — his teams have won 25, 21 and, this season so far, 24 games. Although UD won the old AIAW Tournament 30 years ago — and played in the NCAA Division II Tournament many years back — Monday night was new territory.
“To know our girls are making history — to have them put their names on something that will forever be in the record books at the University of Dayton — is really special,” said Rechlicz. “Hopefully, this is the start of something greater and it’s a continuous thing. But just to know they are the first is a memory that they will always cherish.”
ATLANTIC CITY — Here’s a video of the sequence of events that led to Rob Lowery’s technical foul with 34 seconds left against Xavier.
Trailing by 2, Dayton lost the ball, Xavier’s Terrell Holloway made the two technical free throws he was awarded and then two more just two seconds later when he was fouled after the Musketeers’ inbounded the ball.
That sealed the game.
Although Lowery did have a momentary mental short-circuit, his “punch” looks more like just a reactionary shove after Holloway swiped at the ball while he was calling time out. If I’m the ref, I don’t know if I make that call. It could have been called on both players or simply been a no-call.
Although its been overshadowed by the technical at the end, the real troubling part of this game is the way UD got conservative and blew a 15-point lead with 10:37 left.
ATLANTIC CITY — In an often-good season that got riddled by disappointment, what happened to the Dayton Flyers Friday night in the Atlantic 10 Tournament quarterfinal game at Boardwalk Hall will be the worst pill of all to swallow.
UD led Xavier most of the game — and by 15 points with 10:37 left — and then self-destructed and lost 78-73. The defeat — their 12th of the season — flattened any hope they had of the NCAA Tournament and now drops then into the NIT, where they likely will vie alongside Cincinnati and maybe Wright State, too.
While Rob Lowery’s meltdown in the final 34 seconds was the most dramatic mistake — with his team down by just two, he had the ball and was trying to call time out when he retaliated to a Terrell Holloway slap at the ball with a punch that drew a technical — the blame should be shared among the Flyers.
They were beaten soundly on the boards. Their three ball-handling guards had 10 turnovers. No one could come up with a big shot down the stretch and no one could stop Holloway (22 points) and Jordan Crawford (20 points) in the final minutes.
Afterward UD star Chris Wright talked about Holloway and Crawford and said big time players make big plays down in crunch time.
UD had no one to do that Friday night.
Xavier has now beaten the Flyers seven of the nine times the two teams have faced in the post-season, including all five times they’ve met in the A-10 Tournament.
Xavier guard Terrell Holloway snubbed Dayton’s London Warren, who came over to shake hands with him during pregame player introductions Friday night in the Atlantic 10 Tournament quarterfinals. Instead the Musketeers sophomore guard took a couple of steps, pounded his own chest and then walked away.
When the game started Holloway promptly missed a three-pointer, picked up two quick fouls and had the ball stolen from him three times, once by Warren, once by Rob Lowery and finally by Chris Wright. who punctuated the theft with a fast break, razzle dazzle dunk.
Meanwhile Marcus Johnson — in a shooting slump all season for UD — has hit his first three shots including a pair of three pointers
With just over four minutes left, Johnson also blocked Holloway on a fast-break lay-up attempt.
At the half, Dayton leads 40-35. Lowery has 12 points. Wright 11 points and three blocked shots. Marcus Johnson has 10 points.
You know how they say some people look like their pets?
How about coaches who look like their mascots?
Former Temple coach John Chaney was a dead ringer for the school’s owl mascot. And Jim Baron looks a little like the Rhode Island Ram.
But for twins separated at birth, how about Saint Louis coach Rick Majerus and the Billikens mascot?
After Rhode Island over-powered Saint Louis, 63-47, Friday afternoon in their Atlantic 10 Tournament quarter-final game, Majerus gave props to the Rams, then talked about his dislike for conference tournaments.
He said it would have been no different had his team won.
He thinks players belong in school at this time: “These tournaments are about making money, but at what cost to the student-athletes?”
Waiting for the to of the Dayton Flyers-Xavier quarter-final, here’s one note:
The Musketeers and Flyers have met eight times in post-season play and Xavier has won six of those games. It beat UD in the NIT at Madison Square Garden in 1958 , once in the MCC Tournament (at UD Arena) and all four times the two schools have met in the A-10
ATLANTIC CITY — I’ve heard several folks from back home express their dislike of having the Atlantic 10 tournament in Atlantic City and especially of playing the games at Boardwalk Hall.
They say it’s dark, cavernous, dingy, ancient.
As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and for me, I like this grand old place.
I love the high ceilings, the stage curtain with that large ship riding across tossing seas, and, of course, having the famed boardwalk and the ocean right outside.
The place opened in 1929 and has been home to everything from the Miss America pageant, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to college football games, the 1964 Democratic National Convention and thousands of other events.
My favorite memories though are of the big-time prizefights I’ve covered here over the years.
This is where I watched Michael Spinks dispatch of Gerry Cooney in five rounds in 1987 and George Foreman do the same in two rounds three years later.
It’s where I saw Evander Holyfield decision Foreman in 12 and where I saw Mike Tyson at his scariest in the ring.
Tyson stops Spinks in 91 seconds
He was still the invincible destroyer when I saw him knock aside Larry Holmes here in 1988. Soon after, I watched him obliterate Michael Spinks here in 91 seconds, then Carl “The Truth” Williams in 93.
More than anything, Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall has always been a good place to watch somebody get punched in the nose.
Now I’m wondering who will end of bloodied here Friday night, Dayton or Xavier?
INDIANAPOLIS — There were just over nine minutes left in the game and Brad Brownell — standing on the Hinkle Fieldhouse sidelines, his arms crossed, his look frozen — seemed like a man who knew he was completely out of tricks.
So often a hoops magician, he knew wouldn’t be pulling a rabbit out of his top hat on this night. That hare had gnawed its way out the bottom of his chapeau long ago, leaving him with nothing to grab.
It was the same feeling when he turned toward his bench.
Butler forward Willie Veasley had just scored a lay-up inside to put Butler up 61-34 in the Horizon League Tournament title game. Exasperated by the easy bucket, Brownell looked for a replacement player, but only saw two injured Raiders in street clothes, three inexperienced freshmen, one star held scoreless all night and another in foul trouble.
He just shrugged and turned back to the game.
Across the way it was just the opposite with No. 12 Butler. The Bulldogs are loaded with talent.
That’s what you noticed most Tuesday night as 28-4 Butler trounced WSU 70-45 and took the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Already under-manned coming into this game, WSU found itself overwhelmed when two of its top players — Todd Brown, who has 1,469 career points and three-point artist Troy Tabler — both were held scoreless.
Only three Raiders made any kind of impact Tuesday night: N’Gai Evans led the team with 13 points and made the All-Tournament team. Vaughn Duggins had nine points and Cory Cooperwood — who always scraps inside even though he is undersized — had nine points and five boards.
Brownell acknowledged the difference between the two teams afterward:
“You’ve got to give them credit. They’re pretty darn good. They have experienced players. and they’re gonna be a tough out (in the NCAA Tournament) for somebody. They play exceptionally sound defense, have a lot of weapons, play the game with poise and the moment just isn’t going to bother them.”
Tuesday night that was not the case for Wright State.
So the big debate coming into Dayton’s A-10- Tournament opener with George Washington is:
Is it wrong for UD Arena fans to boo the Flyers?
I think I’d have to go way back to the Jim O’Brien days — back to when UD won just four games that one season — to remember a crowd as disgusted and vocal as the one at the Arena became Saturday night when the Flyers were upset by Saint Louis, 71-65.
It was UD’s fifth loss in seven games and completely deflated the team’s hopes of getting an at-large bid to NCAA Tournament. Now the Flyers must win the A-10 Tournament.
The warm fuzzies that began Saturday’s Senior Night soon were riddled with some boos when the Flyers went through a 10-minute span in the first half where they did not score. There were a few more boos as the players headed for the dressing room at halftime.
And there were some more vocal raspberries in the second half — as well as some fans openly voicing displeasure with coach Brian Gregory — and after the game those outbursts stirred some pointed debate on internet message boards and talk radio.
Were the boos directed at certain players?
Were they aimed at the coach?
Or, was it just an over-spillage of general frustration and displeasure at the way the team was playing?
One camp says you don’t boo 18 to 22 year olds. They aren’t pros, they don’t get paid and they are trying their best.
Others say just as you put players on a pedestal and cheer them so often during the season, you should — as paying customers with the right of freedom of expression — be able to make it known when you think they or the coach are under-performing.
I can say this, in all the years I’ve covered basketball games at Miami University, Wright State and Central State — at least not at the games I was at — I don’t remember hearing the fans boos their players.
OTTOVILLE — I know I missed one hell of a party last Saturday night.
I still saw the remnants of it Monday afternoon when I drove through Ottoville, my hometown up in Putnam County.
Streamers of toilet paper still hung from the blinking traffic light where US 224 makes a turn into the heart of our small town of some 875 people. Other streamers were still caught on the roof overhang of Twisters ice cream shop a block away.
I’m told, Ronnie Miller, the mayor of the town, was out early Sunday morning taking on a job that rivals snow removal after a mid-winter blizzard. He picked up trash bag after trash bag after trash bag of the celebratory TP. There was so much of it, it had looked like banks of snow in front of the businesses and bars that line the main drag through town.
An even more telling sign of just how “festive” things got could been seen behind the three main saloons in town Monday. The dumpsters that service Wannemacher’s Tavern, Millie’s and the Dew Drop Inn were overflowing with empty Budweiser and Bud Light beer cases.
And in the front window of Midwest Sportswear, they already have a gold t-shirt on display that reads “Sweet Sixteen.”
Our high school girls basketball team — the Ottoville Lady Green — is 22-0, ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press’s final Division IV poll and this Thursday plays Fort Loramie in a Sweet Sixteen match-up at Springfield High School.
Last Thursday night, the Lady Green edged the No. 9 team in the state, Delphos Jefferson, 56-50 in two overtimes. Saturday night they topped No. 4 Kalida by one point to win the district crown.
And that has the town is in a tizzy.
High school basketball is huge here. The Ottoville Big Green — first the boys, now the girls — have been the focal point of this community for more than 80 years.
Six Ottoville teams have gone to state. Two of them were boys’ teams — the 1937 Big Green coached by my granddad L.W. Heckman and the 1978 team. Four girls teams have gone. None have taken the state crown.
Everyone is hoping this may be the year.
I love this time of year. Sure the NCAA Tournament holds everyone spellbound, but nothing tugs at your heart like the high school basketball tournaments. Everybody has a chance, even little towns like mine.
Vic Fishbach, Bill Wannemacher and a lot of other people in Ottoville are flying the school flag from their porches. Big Green banners line the main streets and many of the store fronts bear their own messages:
“We are banking on a victory” is painted across the windows of the Ottoville Bank.
“Nail down a victory” is the window message at the Ottoville Lumber Company.
At the telephone company its: “Ring in a victory.”
There are signs in front of the fire station, the bars and the school.
And then there’s the one in the window of the Ottoville Hardware store:
“If you dream it, you can achieve it….Lady Green basketball.”
They’re dreaming big in Ottoville right now. I’m hoping there are parties again this weekend and again next weekend after the girls state tournament.
So now Wright State is one game away from the NCAA Tournament, while UD is in a free fall toward the NIT.
Early in the season, who would have guessed that?
The Raiders started out 6-4, while UD jumped out of the blocks 12-2.
Now the 20-11 Raiders have a better record than the Flyers and — should they upset Butler in the title game of the Horizon League Tournament Tuesday night at Hinkle Fieldhouse — they’re in the Bracket of 64.
Meanwhile the Flyers, who were the preseason favorites to win the Atlantic 10 this year, have instead tumbled to 8-8 in the league and a No. 7 seed in tyhe A-10 Tournament. They’ll have to run the table — four wins in six days — to get an NCAA bid.
After what happened to them Saturday night that’s pretty unimaginable.
“We’ve got to find a way to pick ourselves up off the mat,” Chris Wright said after UD suffered a stunning 71-66 loss to Saint Louis at UD Arena. And it’s a game where the final score is deceiving.
The Billikens — who came into this game as 12 point underdogs, who dress eight freshman and four sophomores and don’t have a senior — controlled this one most of the way, leading by as a many as 17 in the first half and still by 10 with just 14 seconds left.
So what has happened?
How could a team with so much promise — a team that went to the second round of the NCAA Tournament last year and had everybody back but one player, Charles Little — fall through a trap door at the end of their regular season?
I’ll tell you one thing, I have to go way back to the Jim O’Brien days - back when UD won just four games that season — to remember a crowd as disgusted as this one became Saturday night.
Here it was Senior Night — a big lovefest on the court before the game — and by halftime some folks were booing the team.
Things got a little better in the second half, but Saint Louis pretty much had an answer for everything the Flyers did. Midway through the second half there were some irritated folks behind the south basket who were yelling their criticisms of coach Brian Gregory, who worked the team’s sidelines some 40 feet away.
I’m not sure what’s happened:
Senior Marcus Johnson’s season got derailed early and now Chris Johnson — who for a long stretch was the best player on the team — is in a swoon. And Luke Fabrizius is now hobbled with a bum back and become a non factor. And as the season has gone on, several of the other players have had their flaws exposed.
What makes it so hard to swallow though is that this team looked like world beaters several times this season — beating Georgia Tech in Puerto Rico, running Xavier and Charlotte out of the gym in back to back games in early February and then running roughshod over UMass just a week ago.
“I know we’re not going to quit,” said Wright, “but you have to have faith. Work without faith is dead.”
And right now, this team that once had a Top 25 ranking and visions of building on last season’s NCAA Tournament breakthrough, is in dire need of some of those heart paddles with the juice turned up full bore.
1 — With the regular season ending Saturday night against Saint Louis at UD Arena , which of the seven seniors — Marcus Johnson, Kurt Huelsman, London Warren, Rob Lowery, Mickey Perry, Dan Fox or Luke Hendrick — will you miss most?
2 — Would it be a smart move — basketball-wise, financially — for junior Chris Wright to jump to the NBA?
3 — With eight freshmen and four sophomores, Saint Louis may have the youngest team in Division I basketball. In the preseason, the Billikens were picked to finish 12th of 14 teams in the league by the A-10 media. They currently are 19-10 and 10-5 in the conference and already have beaten the Flyers once.
So is Rick Majerus — who has a career coaching record of 475-186 with Marquette, Ball State, Utah and now Saint Louis — the best coach in the A-10?
It’s one of the best debates to hit college basketball in a long, long time:
Who’s the best player in the country this season — Ohio State’s Evan Turner or Kentucky’s John Wall?
Evan Turner
Early in the season, I gave the edge to Wall, but now I think it’s Turner. The way he’s returned from broken bones in his back, put his Buckeye team on his shoulders and lifted it to the Big Ten regular season crown and the No. 6 ranking in the country is amazing.
Not that Wall has swooned. With Wednesday night’s victory over Georgia — in which he led the way with 24 points — the Cats are assured of at least a share of the SEC title. And they have both a better record (28-2) and ranking (No. 3) than the Bucks.
But Wall has a far better supporting cast around him.
When the 6-foot-7, 210-pound Turner missed six games with his back injury, the Bucks went 3-3 and lost their first two Big Ten games. Since he’s back, they’re 14-3.
John Wall
Of course, if not for Wall, Kentucky may well have lost to Charlie Coles’ Miami RedHawks, Stanford, UConn and Vanderbilt — all games where the 6-foot-4 guard made dynamic plays in the final minutes.
Wednesday Mike Rothstein of AnnArbor.com released the last of his four straw polls of several sportswriters around the country — all of whom cover college basketball — and Turner was the overwhelming choice for Player of the Year honors.
Of the 49 writers polled — each picking their top three players in the game this season — 41 gave their first place vote to Turner,. The other eight gave them to Wall.
By the way, rounding out the top five were Syracuse’s Wesley Johnson (3rd), Scottie Reynolds of Villanova (4th) and Duke guard Jon Scheyer (5th).
Interestingly in the first of the bi-weekly polls — released Jan. 20 — Wall has the overwhelming lead, taking 32 of 45 first place votes. Turner finished third in that poll and had just three first place votes.
As a junior, Turner has two years and a little maturity on the dynamic Kentucky freshman, whose only slight flaw is his 4.07 turnovers-per-game average this season.
Both players have impressive stats.
Turner is averaging 19.5 p.p.g., 9.4 rebounds and 5.8 assists. He’s shooting 53.8 percent from the floor
Wall is averaging 16.8 p.p.g., 4.2 rebounds and 6.2 assists. He’s shooting 45 percent from the floor.
Indiana State’s Larry Bird and Michigan State’s Magic Johnson
Since the Naismith Award — given to college basketball’s best player — was first handed out in 1969, no player from Ohio State or Kentucky has won it.
That streak is about to end.
What I really hope for is that Ohio State and Kentucky end up meeting in the NCAA Tournament. Wall versus Turner would be a match-up for the ages. Something stirring reminders of Bird versus Magic.
If nothing else it would field the growing debate into overdrive.
And if you are a college hoops fan, you’ve got to love that kind of buzz.
Around here, the most unique name in college basketball belongs to Sinclair’s British Alexander, the 6-foot-6 forward from Trotwood Madison High and the subject of my column in Wednesday’s newspaper.
His mom, Cookie Grigsby, said one of her nephews came up with the name. British said he thinks the inspiration was a shoe:
“British Knights were an urban shoe that was real popular when I was born.”
“When I was younger I didn’t like the name ‘cause it was so different. But my teachers always told me it was a nice name and as I’ve gotten older I appreciate it more. I feel comfortable with it now.”
Just-in’love Smith
He should. After all, when it comes to college basketball, there are always some great names that are quite different.
Here are some of my favorite names from the past few seasons.
Hands down, the best this year is Just-in’love Smith, a senior guard for Sienna.
That’s right up there with Baskerville Holmes, who played for Memphis State in the 1980s, God Shammgod who played for Providence in the 1990s, Oral Robert’s Beloved Rogers, Maryland’s Exree Hipp and the Mapp brothers — Scientific Mapp played for Florida A&M, and Majestic played for Virginia.
The Chief dunks on Auburn
And, of course, last season 7-foot-2 Chief Kickingstallionsims and his Alabama State team played in the NCAA Tournament’s Opening Round game at UD Arena.
Some other special names:
Special Jennings — Xavier’s women’s team…By the way, she has two sisters, Treasure and Wonderful.
The image I’ll remember most from Saturday night at UD Arena was not one of Chris Wright’s monster dunks or even the final scoreboard —UD 96, UMass 68 — it was all those former Flyers who walked out from the tunnel to the middle of the court for what would end up a standing ovation by the sell-out crowd
The players were saluted for their contributions in building the legacy of UD basketball and especially at UD Arena, a home court that is a nightmare for visiting teams.
These current Flyers have won 34 of their last 35 home games and yet their accomplishments take a back seat to some of the Flyers who were honored.
Roosevelt Chapman: 2,233 career points at UD
Donnie May — who didn’t play at UD Arena — was brought onto the court first. Then came the guys who built their reputations in this building, beginning with the Flyers all-time career scorer Roosevelt Chapman, as well as several other 1,000-point career scorers like Mike Kanieski, Mark Ashman, Kenny May, Damon Goodwin and Ed Young. In all 29 former players trekked out onto the floor.
The current players passed them in the tunnel at halftime and gave many of them high fives and fist bumps.
Chris Wright knew many of the players — one was his uncle J. D. Grigsby — and he knew their contributions: “I feel a big connection to them. They’re the people who laid the foundation for all the rest of us to wear a jersey that says FLYERS on it. They built the program we’re enjoying now.”
On the other hand, guard Rob Lowery, the senior transfer, admitted none of the names rang a bell: “Nope, none of them…Sorry….But I know you still gotta show ‘em love because they laid the foundation for us and a lot of them have been where we want to go.”
He was talking about the NCAA Tournament,.
And that poses some questions.
What do the 19-9 Flyers need to do to make the NCAA Tournament field? Beat Richmond Thursday night? Win the A-10 Tournament?
My guess is at least play Richmond tough down there, thump Saint Louis in the regular season finale at home and make the A-10 Tournament final.
Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.
2010 Miami baseball opener
St. Patty's Day celebrations
Ball to benefit humane center
Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.
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So why isn’t Dayton a part of this big extravaganza?