Fairborn commencement
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Division I regional track finals
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.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2010 > February
February 2010
A Night to Remember at UD Arena
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.
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.
TweetTip of the cap to Dick Kortokrax, my old coach
Here’s a tip of the cap to my old high school basketball coach — Dick Kortokrax — who won his 800th prep game over the weekend when his Kalida Wildcats came from 13 down late in the third quarter to beat Van Buren High, 48-47, and up their record to 16-2 this season.
The 76-year-old Kortokrax is the winningest basketball coach in Ohio high school history.
All of his victories have come with neighboring Putnam County teams — rabid basketball schools Fort Jennings, Ottoville and Kalida — none of which are more than eight miles apart.
Alter’s Joe Petrocelli — whose Alter Knights are now 10-10 this season — is second on the all-time victory list with 782 wins.
I feel a special affinity to the 76-year-old Kortokrax, not just because I played for him when he was at Ottoville High in the 1960s, but because he had played for my grandfather, L.W. Heckman, who won 448 games with the Ottoville Big Green and, like Dick, is in the Ohio High School Coaches Hall of Fame.
Kortokrax always has given props to my grandfather — not that it helped when he was making me run laps (which I well deserved ) — and I wish my late grandad was here now to see what his protege has done.
To understand the full scope of Kortokrax longevity and accomplishments, consider that his first victory — with his Fort Jennings Musketeers on Nov. 13, 1959 — came the same year that Hawaii and Alaska became States and Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba.
Think of it — Kortokrax outlasted Fidel who relinquished power to his brother Raul two years ago.
In recent years Kortokrax has endured the death of his son, Rob, to leukemia, his own bout with bladder cancer, his wife Donna’s three-year battle with Alzheimer’s and an attempt after last season — after leading his team to the state tournament in Columbus — by a sizeable faction of the Kalida community to have him give up his coaching job.
He refused to fold the tents, withstood the siege and now has a young, talented team that has won the tough Putnam County League title and is ranked 10th in the state.
I am proud to have played for him. He taught me some lessons that have lasted a lifetime and for that — and so much more — I tip my cap to him.
Tweet5 Flyers Questions
After Dayton’s disappointing 73-71 loss to Duquesne Sunday, here are five questions:
1 — Might Brian Gregory consider keeping a hot hand — i.e. a Chris Johnson or a Chris Wright — in the game for 30-plus minutes so he can impose his presence on the play, become a galvanizing leader and take over the game?
2 — If this late-season swoon causes the Flyers to miss the NCAA Tournament, will that help springboard Wright’s early departure to the NBA or cause him to reconsider a season senior in a UD uniform?
3 — Will these struggles on the road late in the season cause UD brass to rethink the formula of piling up pre-conference wins with too many patsies at home and — regardless of the financial hit — take on a couple of more tough tests away from UD Arena earlier in the season to help steel the team for the rigors of league road play?
4 — Will the Flyers surprise folks in the A-10 Tournament and regain that swagger and smart play that enabled them to completely over-power Xavier and Charlotte back to back earlier this month?
5 — Or, are the Flyers headed for an NIT match-up with Wright State?
TweetCourtney Boyd brings the crowd to its feet
BROOKVILLE — Brookville High never has had an athlete quite like Courtney Boyd:
Not just for what the 5-foot-10 senior has done on the basketball court — she leads all area boys and girls in scoring this season — but for the unbelievable journey she’s made away from it.
“Her story,” said Amy Boyd, the Brookville High teacher who is her adoptive mom, “just tugs your heart strings.”
It also pulled people to their feet Friday night, Feb., 19, during halftime of the Brookville boys game with visiting Eaton.
Since her 18-3 girls team will be playing its second-round sectional tournament game at Tippecanoe High this week, this was Courtney’s last time on the Blue Devils court in front of a crowd.
The Wright State-bound senior had been brought to midcourt and saluted for setting several girls basketball records at Brookville, including most career points (1,527.)
She was given the ball from the game early this year when she eclipsed 1,000 points and that’s when Amy saw something remarkable: “Not just our fans stood and applauded, but so did everyone from Eaton. They all really seemed to appreciate what she’d done.”
And think if they knew the rest of her story.
While she’s averaging 29.2 points, 11.2 rebounds and 3.8 steals, her greatest accomplishments have to do with her backbone, her perseverance and making the right choices against all odds.
Before Brookville, she lived in the tough State Park Place, a “ghetto” neighborhood as she called it, near East St. Louis, where urban decay, violence, drugs, arson and gangs are prominent.
How she ended up honored on the Brookville court Friday night — which is the subject of my column in Sunday’s newspaper, a tale that also can be found on this web page — is a story worth applauding.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like that before,” she admitted quietly. “I felt pretty special.”
She should.
TweetNasty Slugs of Internet Strike Again
The nasty slugs of the internet — as gutless as they often are clueless — crawled out from beneath their rocks again this past week.
As always — hidden behind fake names and gerrymandered e-mail addresses — they slimed everybody from Olympian Gretchen Bleiler to Dayton Flyers basketball coach Brian Gregory to a half dozen teenage athletes mentioned on our High School Huddle blog.
From false assumptions and disparaging comments, they go into hateful personal attacks that often become sexist and racist and obscene.
Gregory was attacked because his team lost to St. Louis last Saturday. While you can critique his team’s play or his coaching decisions, some of the comments that appeared didn’t just cross the line, they obliterated it.
The same thing happened to Bleiler, the Olympic snowboarder who lived in Oakwood from just after she was born until she was 10 and then moved with her mom and brothers to Colorado.
I wrote about her in Sunday’s paper and some of the comments about her on our website got so hateful that we finally had to shut down the responses.
I mentioned she was active in environmental concerns and said how she had returned to Oakwood — while doing endorsement work for Proctor and Gamble in Cincinnati — by limo to see the places and a few of the people of her childhood.
P & G provided the ride as it does all its clients.
A few of the slugs beat her up for that, as well as for her Oakwood upbringing and the fact that her grandfather had started Lexis-Nexis, which, by the way, is a great boon to our community.
They disparaged the hard work and constant training she’s done to become a two-time Olympian and a silver medal winner. They took a decent story on someone our community can be proud of and turned it into a soapbox for their own sour and skewered views.
While I think these people are a small minority — sometimes maybe just one person using several fake names — they force us to discontinue comments for everybody.
It’s the old rotten apple ruins the whole barrel deal.
And that’s too bad because people like Blelier and Gregory and especially those high school kids don’t deserve that kind of treatment.
TweetKristin King: Piqua’s Olympic Hero
PIQUA — When it came to her hockey, the receptions Kristin King got ran the gamut.
As a Piqua seventh grader, she wasn’t just the only girl playing for the Miami Valley Bruins, she was one of the stars of that Hobart Arena team in Troy. And that didn’t always set well with opponents.
“We were playing in Indiana and I came along the boards and one of their guys caught me good and separated my shoulder,” she said. “As I was lying on the ice, there were all kinds of rumors — ‘he hit you ‘cause you’re a girl,’ — but I’m not sure . But while he might say it was clean, I’m pretty sure he had other thoughts on his mind.”
King is 30 now and — as my column in today’s paper explains, a story which can be found elsewhere on this web page, too — her ice hockey has made her everybody’s hometown hero in Piqua. In fact, there’s a big sign along County Road 25A just outside of town that shows an Olympic torch and proclaims:
“Home of Kristin King….2006 Olympic Ice Hockey Bronze Medal Winner.”
One of just a handful of Miami Valley athletes ever to medal at the Winter Olympics, she came home from the Torino Games in Italy and got a ticker tape parade, keys to various cities and made appearances at schools and civic clubs across the area.
But when the U.S. women’s hockey team begins play at the Vancouver Olympic Games, King won’t be there.
Her hockey stuff is all in storage in Piqua.
In graduate school now at Texas Tech, she’s into all kinds of sports adventure — from snowboarding and surfing to whitewater rafting and soon triathlons.
Along the way she ran into another guy who made an even bigger impact on her than did that kid in Indiana.
This one had “other thoughts on his mind,” as well.
TweetChris Wright did not slam an NBA scout — got it?
Here’s a point that needs to be cleared up about Chris Wright.
In my column in today’s newspaper, I relay a conversation I had with one of the NBA scouts who had just watched the Dayton Flyers rout Charlotte, 75-47.
He gave his honest opinion about what he liked about the Flyers junior forward and what he thought he needed to work on to become an NBA player of real note.
In the dressing room later — as we were talking about his many-faceted 30-point game, a performance that included shooting from the outside, his inside power and defense — I asked Wright if he has heard some of the criticisms of his game as far as going to the next level.
I never mentioned the NBA scout and I don’t know if he even knew an NBA scout was there Wednesday night.
I was talking about the way he sometimes gets beaten up on message boards — by always-anonymous posters — and that’s how he took it.
I wrote that he’s heard the critics before and then I gave his answer to me:
“For the people that say he’s got to do this to get to the NBA and he’s got to do that, I say, ‘Well, why aren’t you coaching in the NBA?’ That’s how I see it.”
He was talking about critics, in general.
And it wasn’t a big point with him…He answered me honestly and within seconds he was laughing and talking about something else.
So for those who are taking issue with Wright over this — those who are painting him as some kind of big timer or ingrate — stop.
You couldn’t be further off base.
He wasn’t dissing an NBA scout. After the game of his life — with dozens of questions flying at him — he answered candidly and then instantly moved on.
Chris Wright’s a good kid. — one of the very best I’ve dealt with in college basketball. There’s no big-time attitude with him. He cares about his team.
And, by the way, he does work extra on his game.
TweetLutz compares Flyers’ defense with Duke’s
The high flying dunks of Chris Wright and Marcus Johnson were worthy of the highlight reels and Chris Johnson’s deadly left-handed threes from the baseline corner drew some collective “ooohs” from the UD Arena crowd, but the thing that Charlotte coach Bobby Lutz will take from the 75-47 pasting his team got from Dayton Wednesday night is the defense the Flyers played.
Charlotte came into the game averaging 74.9 points per game, but was held to its lowest point total of the season and its second lowest offensive output in six years.
“That’s as good a job as anybody’s played on us defensively this year except maybe Duke,” said Lutz, whose 18 -6 team was blown out by the Blue Devils 101-59 early this season.
Charlotte guard Derrio Green — who came into the game averaging 17.7 p.p.g. in Atlantic 10 play, just killed Temple with 26 points , scored 34 on UMass four games ago and early this season scored 20 in a win at Louisville — was held to just 1-for-10 shooting by the Flyers. He finished with 9 points thanks to six-for-six free throw shooting.
“To get scored on — to continue to let someone keep scoring and scoring on you — is embarrassing in itself and Charlotte can do that to you,” explained UD’s Chris Wright. “That was a great team we played tonight. Charlotte prides themselves in their offense, just as we pride ourselves on our defense.
“Tonight , whoever had the most toughness — possession by possession — that decided the game. And our defense was really tough. That’s what won it for us.”
This was the second withering defensive effort in a row by the Flyers. Last Saturday they bottled up Xavier — the A-10’s scoring leader at 79.4 p.p.g. — allowing 65 points in what would end up a 25 point UD win.
Flyers coach Brian Gregory said his team played even better Wednesday night than it did in the rout of Xavier: “Our defense was even more focused.”
The stars suddenly seem to be aligning for the 17-6 Flyers and the biggest reason is their always-amped relentless defense.
TweetUD Flyers: Knock Them Suckas Out !!!
I know Chris Wright won the game’s MVP award after Dayton dismantled Xavier, 90-65, Saturday at UD Arena — and with 17 points, nine rebounds and three blocked shots he deserved it — — but I’d give the honor to two other Flyers:
1 — Brian Gregory
2 — Rob Lowery
Gregory — as was the subject of my column in Sunday’s newspaper — showed himself to be the master motivator when, just minutes before the Flyers would take the court for the opening tip, he came bobbing into the team’s cramped dressing quarters to the beat of LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out.”
The head coach was wearing a long red and white, hooded fight robe and boxing gloves and he fired off volleys of punches at each of the Flyers as LL Cool J — who Gregory, to the hoots of some of his players, calls “the greatest rapper of all time.” — provided the theme music:
“Rockin my peers and puttin suckas in fear Makin the tears rain down like a MON-soon…..
“I’m goin insane, startin the hurricane, releasin pain Lettin you know that you can’t gain, I maintain…”
“I’m gonna knock you out (HUUUH!!!) Mama said knock you out (HUUUH!!!)”
“None of us expected that,” senior center Kurt Huelsman said afterward. “He’s usually pretty serious and intense….But that really got to us. It riled us up and it really loosened us up, too…And that’s how we went out and played.”
Senior guard Mickey Perry agreed: “All year he’s just wanted us to get an identity of playing hard every game and today that’s what we did. He just wants us to always be able to show who we really are out there.”
No one did that more on Saturday than did Lowery
If you remember, a year ago when Xavier came to UD Arena, he tore the patellar tendon in his right knee midway through the first half. He crumpled right beneath the basket in front of the UD student section and lay on the court for several minutes cradling his knee.
When the training staff got him to the dressing room and told him the extent of the injury — that he’d need surgery and his season was done — he began sobbing uncontrollably.
He missed almost a year, returning Dec. 5 this season.
“I remember the play he got hurt like it was yesterday,” Chris Wright, who shares an apartment with Lowery, said after Saturday’s game. “We talked about that last night in the living room when we were watching SportsCenter and all the NBA games.”
Lowery admitted the memories of Xavier’s last visit — and what had happened to him — were on his mind Saturday.
“I thought about it a lot and it got me kind of emotional. This game does it to you anyway just because of the rivalry and all. When we go down to Cincinnati, they’re always on us and when they come up here our fans are on them.
“Our crowd makes us feel like we just can’t lose…That’s why I wanted to go out there and play with no fear. And I think I did.”
He finished with 16 points, five assists and two steals.
After the game as Marcus Johnson was about to hoist the Blackburn-McCafferty Trophy above his head to show the crowd, he looked for Lowery and called him over to help.
“I thought about what happened to Rob in this game last year,” Johnson said. “I remember going in the training room at half time and seeing him so upset and I told him we’d take care of things for him. Right after that I wrote 3s (Lowery’s jersey number) on my shoes to support him and, to this day, I still wear them at every practice.”
Lowery said when Johnson called him over, he understood:
“He knew what I had been through. I had cried to him that night it happened and poured my feelings out. And now he wanted me just to help show I was back and we had all done something pretty special.”
As LL Cool J — and Mama — had commanded:
They had knocked them suckas out.
TweetA Bear of a Super Bowl Story
Over the years, I’ve covered some 30 Super Bowls. Here’s one story I won’t forget:
I was headed to one of those cattle-call press conferences that precedes the game. In this case, some 1,500 media types were descending on about four dozen Denver Broncos scattered across the Rose Bowl field for some Super Bowl XXI talk.
I had planned to write about John Elway, but as our loaded bus joined the caravan heading to the stadium, my best friend, the late — and I’ve got to say great — Shelby Strother, a columnist for The Detroit News leaned over and whispered an amazing tale.
It involved Tony Lilly, the Broncos defensive back who was known for his tough-guy image.
“None of these guys know this,” Shelby whispered. “In the offseason, Tony was hunting with some fellows and stumbled into a bear trap. The thing clamped around his leg, but as he lay there on the ground writhing in pain, he gritted his teeth, pried the trap open and pulled his mangled leg free.
“Talk about a tough guy! After he wiped away the blood, he tied his T-shirt around the wound and kept on hunting. He limped through the woods, came up on that bear and took it home as a trophy.”
The story had me mesmerized and as soon as the bus door opened, I all but sprinted to Lilly’s side:
“Tony, tell me about your hunting trip … the one with the bear… you know, where you stepped in that trap, pried out your leg and then shot that bear.”
The other writers who had gathered around rolled their eyes. Lilly took a step backwards. I thought he was being modest. He thought I was nuts.
“This story shows how tough you are,” I said. `It …”
Before I could say any more, he threw up his hands:
“Stop….Stop… I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even hunt!”
As I slumped away in embarrassment, there stood Shelby, doubled over in laughter.
I looked across the field to where Elway was perched, but by then he had 300 media types mobbed around him. I’d never get close to him.
But looking back now I ended up with a Super Bowl moment that still makes me laugh.
TweetUD vs. Xavier — Cash replaces confetti
Just as Justine Raterman was about to shoot a free throw in the first half of the Dayton Flyers women’s game with Charlotte Wednesday, here comes a piece of gold confetti — about the size of an open matchbook — fluttering down from the network of rafters and catwalks high above UD Arena.
Referee Dennis DeMayo spied the glittery intruder as it pinwheeled downward, positioned himself in its flight path and snagged it when it got within reach.
Several times this season I’ve watched similar pieces of confetti — some blue, some silver, some gold — come flittering down from the heavens during Flyers men’s games.
For some the stuff was a big mystery. But folks at UD say the errant pieces confetti are left over from the Winterguard festivities that pack UD arena every April. They said they’re stuck on girders high above floor that are too narrow for anyone to walk out on to sweep them up.
Every once in a while an Arena updraft — or maybe it’s a backdraft from one of Chris Wright soaring, jet propulsion dunks — blows some of that stuff loose up there.
Saturday, though, at UD Arena — at halftime of Dayton’s much-anticipated game with Xavier — there will be cash dropping from up above.
As part of a promotion to announce its new autonomy, PNC Bank will be dropping balloons affixed with gift cards worth various cash values from the Arena catwalks at halftime.
The bank also will put red and white shirts on every chair. It’s part of UD’s attempt to create a “white out” atmosphere in the Arena, though the idea may be trumped — if our always breathless, over-amped weather reports around here are true — by 4 to 8 inches of snow outside.
To be sure that Flyer fans can sport all their school colors Saturday, White Allen will supply red and blue towels for everyone at the game.
And if Dayton avenges the smack down it took at Xavier last month — and I think it will — a little confetti might be in order, as well.
Tweet
