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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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Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2010 > March > 15 > Entry

An NCAA Tournment tip from Mike Kelly

By Tom Archdeacon | Monday, March 15, 2010, 11:59 PM

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.

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:

“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:

“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.”

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