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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.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2007 > November
November 2007
“Deja vu all over again” for Dayton Flyers
OXFORD — In the words of Yogi Berra, this one was “deja vu all over again.”
When Brian Roberts put on a one man show in the final 64 seconds Wednesday night at Millett Hall — scoring 12 of his 20 points to lead the Dayton Flyers to one of their most unbelievable comebacks ever, a 63-62 victory over Miami — it was just a little more glorified enactment of almost the exact same performance by another Flyer in the home of the the RedHawks.
The last time Dayton had won here at Millett — December 6, 2000 — it was Tony Stanley’s end-of-the-game heroics that sunk a dagger deep into RedHawk hearts.
In the final 2:30 of that game, Stanley hit three straight three-pointers to help Dayton come from behind and trip Miami, 55-54. Stanley’s last three came with 50 seconds left and Miami never scored after that.
Roberts’ KO shot was a little more dramatic. He hit his with 4.2 seconds left.
And there were other similarities between Dayton’s two stunners at Millett. The Flyers trailed by eight in that 2000 game with less than four minutes left. Wednesday night, UD trailed by eight with 65 seconds left.
Miami lost that game seven years ago because it scored one field goal in the final 5:58. Wednesday night the RedHawks — who opened the game with a 30-9 run — went ice cold for a big span of the second half, not scoring a single point during an 11 1/2 minute span.
And if that dry spell didn’t do them in, then it was their four missed free throws in the final 40 seconds — three by guard Kenny Hayes and the last one by Bramos — spelled doom.
For Dayton, this game could be a catalyst for the season. UD coach Brian Gregory said his team finally realized just the kind of heart and grit it had in it in and that can only pay dividends down the road.
As for Miami coach Charlie Coles, he was stunned that December night in 2000, but Wednesday night’s loss seemed to hit an even deeper chord with him. I watched him walk off the court with his two little grandkids tugging at each hand and he looked like he was in a trance.
His RedHawks had come into this game on a high note. They were off to one of their best starts in years, upsetting Xavier on this very court in the season opener and then going out to Southern California — for the eight-team Anaheim Classic — and beating South Alabama and Mississippi State and nearly knocking off Southern Cal, losing by just four to the host Trojans.
Even with what should have been jet-lag weariness — the RedHawks had just gotten back to Oxford from California some 48 hours prior — that same playing-their-best karma seemed to carry into the Dayton game.
Miami all but steam rolled the Flyers into submission in the early going as RedHawks forward Michael Bramos put on a three-point shooting display. He had seven treys in the first half and would end the game with nine.
And that brought up the night’s other deja vu moment. Before the game, Miami honored one of its most memorable players ever — guard Jamie Mercurio — who was rolled onto the court in a wheelchair.
In a 1992 NCAA Tournament game at Riverfront Coliseum, Mercurio hit eight three-point shots to all but single-handedly lift Miami over Dean Smith’s powerful North Carolina team. In the end, Miami fell just five points short.
As Mercurio left the court that game, RedHawks AND North Carolina fans stood and applauded him.
Just 20 months later, Mercurio — then the girls basketball coach at Anthony Wayne High — fell asleep at the wheel of his car and missed an S turn. He hit a fire hydrant and tree before the car barrel rolled down a hill.
He was not breathing when rescue workers found him. Although revived, he had serious internal injuries, several broken bones and a brain stem injury. Doctors never expected him to live, but he pulled through, has continued to battle and today is still recovering from that crash.
With Jamie sitting with his dad at the edge of the court near the RedHawks bench, Bramos put on a similar shooting display Wednesday night. His nine threes slipped him past Mercurio and David Scott — both with eight treys in a game — and put him one long-range shot behind Jason Stewart, Miami’s all-time leader of threes (10) in a game.
With Bramos all but unstoppable in the first half, Miami appeared to be making this one a rout. When Dayton trailed 30-9, the student section at Millett began to chant: “Three more touchdowns!…Three more touchdowns!”
But the chant that really came back to haunt the Hawk students was their early taunt of Roberts, whose first long-range hoist of the night missed everything — rim, net, backboard.
After that, every time he touched the ball for a while, the students chorused: “Air ball…Air ball.”
In the end, “Air ball” became “Nothing but net!!!”
TweetUrban Krag: Coolest Sports Facility in the City
Karl Williamson was recounting an unforgettable view, one that left him momentarily reeling.
No, he wasn’t talking about his solo scaling of The Prow on Washington Column in Yosemite Valley, a climb that included sleeping on a portaledge some 800 feet above the deck and reading by the light of a full moon, an experience, he said, that was “surreal.”
And no, he wasn’t talking about some of those other sights during climbs at Joshua Tree in Southern California. The Arches and Zion in Utah, The Winds, Grand Tetons and Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, the Cascades in Washington State, City of Rocks in Utah or on those various treks in the Sierras and Yosemite Valley.
The reeling vision he brought up in our conversation at a Fifth Street coffee shop a few days ago happened on a winter day in the mid 1990s. That’s when he found himself a few blocks away — at the corner of Cass and Clay streets in the Oregon District — standing in a long-abandoned and once-condemned 1859 church into which he’d sunk all his money in an effort to turn it into the area’s only rock climbing gym.
“It seemed there was more snow inside the building than outside that day,” Williamson said. “Right about then I said to myself, ‘What in the hell are you doing?’”
Some 11 years later, he has the answer.
His gym — called the Urban Krag — is the coolest sports facility you’ll find in this city. It still has the church’s original stain glass windows and the bell at the counter — the one customers ring for service — is actually the 300-pound brass bell from the original log cabin church that was here in 1839 and later burned down.
Along with 11 climbing walls — one reaching 58 feet — and 109 ever-changing climbing routes, there’s also a weight room, pro shop, showers, lockers, special instructional classes, regional competitions, memberships and six-days-a-week general admissions (Gym telephone: 937-224-5724.) .
Three decades ago, Williamson — who I also wrote about in the Sports People segement of todays newspaper — was growing up in Piqua and seemed destined to be the town’s pizza king.
“I grew up in a pizza house,” said Williamson, who’s now 44. “My dad had a small Cassano’s chain and from the time I was 11 to 20 I was making pizza. Back them I made the best one in the joint.”
After graduating from Sidney Lehman Catholic, he took a trip to Missoula, Montana to visit friends and soon was introduced to mountain climbing at Glacier National Park.
That hooked him, so when he returned to Piqua — where he would run a drive-thru and wine shop — he began climbing at Clifton Gorge when that was still permitted, then making regional treks to West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Eventually he began to pursue the sport in the West: “I’ve climbed in about every state west of the Continental Divide.”
In the mid-1990s, he decided to immerse himself full time in climbing and began looking for a place to open his gym. He said a lot of realtors simply hung up on him when they heard his dream.
Driving around the Oregon District, he spotted the old church. Originally a German Evangelical worship house, it later became home to serpent-handling pastor Wavil B. Lewis and his Spirtual Temple of the Burning Bush. He moved his congegation down the street to another church and by the early 1990s, he went down on a drug conviction. By then the old church had stood deserted for a couple of decades.
It took Williamson two years — and a lot of help from his Oregon District neighbors and some folks with the City of Dayton — to turn the old building into the Urban Krag.
He had two construction crews working at the same time. One to restore the building, the other group from Seattle to build the rock climbing shell inside.
“We got it off the ground by the skin of our teeth,” he said. “When I opened up the door, I had $300 in my checking. I didn’t even have enough money to pay the first week’s payroll”
Today, Urban Krag is one of the most regarded rock climbing gyms in the Midwest and Williamson has become one of the cornerstones of the sport in southwest Ohio.
“About 90 percent of the people new to climbing have been introduced by the indoor rock gyms,” he said. “There is some good to that and some bad.
“Some of the changes going on — I’m no fan of. Instead of someone tending the ropes for you, it’s all mechanical now. I know it’s a matter of proft for some, but it’s being turned into an amusement ride.
“And that’s not what this is about. That’s when people get hurt. They don’t learn proper procedures, don’t learn safety and you’ll see people in real trouble when they go out to the crags.
“That’s why right now I believe we have a great opportunity for laying the groundwork of safety.”
As for his own climbing, he’s moving more to ice and alpine — he does a lot of winter climbing in Canada, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Colorado. He talks of one day climbing at Patagonia.
And the ultimate dream?
The fantasy made him smile and suddenly he saw himself in the Himalayas on the second highest peak on the planet: “If I had the where-with-all and the time to train, I’d love to go do K-2 That’s the Mountaineer’s Mountain.”
He smiled and nodded at the thought.
Now that would be unforgettable.
TweetChris Wright “Be Ballin’!!!”
Josh Benson summed it up best.
The 6-foot-10 Dunbar High senior who’s already committed to the University of Dayton showed up in the corridor of the Donoher Center after the Flyers held off visiting Toledo, 76-70, Wednesday night.
He immediately sought out Chris Wright, gave his future teammate a big hug and gushed:
“You be ballin’!!!”
A few minutes before that, as long-time Flyers’ fan Larry Hayes was filing out from his mid-court seat, he put a similar spin on Wright’s night:
“It looks like this one may be for real.”
Teen peers to paying customers, they all agreed Wednesday. Chris Wright put on a show. And Flyers fans can thank the stars he did,
He’s the reason a UD team that lost its focus through much of the second half — a team that saw a 16-point lead slip to five against a disjointed Toledo bunch that lacked depth — was able to win this game.
The 6-foot-8 freshman forward from Trotwood Madison High lifted his team in every way imaginable. He did it with his game-high 26 points, his game-high 12 rebounds, his clutch six points and three rebounds in the final 2:02 and, he especially did it with that Energizer Bunny attitude on the court, a style that often jump-starts many of his teammates.
“The way he plays brings so much energy to the court and it rubs off on other people,” said junior forward Charles Little, who finished with 20 points and three rebounds.
“He really is infectious out there. Chris goes after the rim, so it makes me go after it, too. He gets one (dunk) and he’s like, ‘I got one.’ So I get one and I’m like, ‘I got one back!’ I can’t let him out-dunk me out there. Then Marcus (Johnson) got in the action, too.”
That’s all true, but the only headliner on this night was Wright.
Uncharacteristically, senior guard Brian Roberts — the heart of the UD team — had an off night against the college in whose shadows he was raised.
Averaging 28 p.p.g. through the Flyers’ first two games, Roberts had 12 Wednesday. He made four-of-11 shots and turned the ball over six times. On the plus side, he had nine rebounds and eight assists.
As for the team’s other veterans — Andres Sandoval, Jimmie Binnie, London Warren and Kurt Huelsman — the Flyers got almost nothing, except some timid board play, a couple of bone-headed fouls and some clank-the-rim shooting. They need to step up or this team will be in trouble against a more formidable opponent than the 1-3 Rockets.
Wright, on the other hand, got better as the game wore on and that’s saying a lot considering he opened the first half with a drive to the hoop that he finished off with an authoritative, high-above-the-rim, one-handed slam. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen that kind of glide and power around here.
After that came a play where he snared a rebound while behind a crowd of Toledo players, then went back up, stretched over them and dunked one handed.
There was a diving steal and occasions when he out-battled Toledo rebounders two and three times on one possession. There were his clutch free throws (he was 6-for-6 Wednesday) and those rebounds down the stretch.
“I figured out they were tired of boxing me out, so I just went hard every play,” Wright said. “I even told the (Toledo) guy, ‘I’m gonna go up hard every time, so you got to block out.’…But he didn’t.”
Flyers’ coach Brian Gregory called Wright “a warrior who just keeps fighting.”
As for Wright lifting the others, Gregory could only temper his assessment so far:
“That’s a lot to throw on one kid — especially a freshman . He’s supposed to be getting help that from the other guys.
“But you can see, especially in the first half for sure, everyone was lifted Marcus Johnson gets a baseline drive, then it was Charles and now Chris….He’s a tremendous player who plays with tremendous energy.”
Or as Josh Benson put it, he “was ballin’!!!”
TweetA Woody Hayes Story That’s Not Been Told
Woody Hayes — his glasses fogged, water dripping off the bill of his ball cap — was standing in the pouring rain and nighttime darkness, pounding angrily on my rolled up car window.
“Quit following us,” the OSU coach growled before I even could crack the window. “Get out of here.”
As Ohio State and Michigan go at it again today, I can’t help thinking about the one figure who looms larger over this game than anyone else.
And here’s a Woody story I have.
It was a late night in the early 1970s and Woody was in Homestead, Florida. He was hoping lightning would strike twice, but at the moment, all he was getting was some of South Florida’s tropical rain.
He had come here a couple of years earlier and signed Herman Jones, the star receiver of the local South Dade High School, and now he was back trying to convince Willie Jones, an exquisite 6-foot-4, 225 pound defensive machine, to join the fold in Columbus.
Woody had agreed to speak at the school’s football awards banquet, a chicken and green beans affair held at the local American Legion Hall. The only stipulation was that no media would come to the dinner.
I was a young sportswriter at the local paper — The South Dade News Leader — and I’d also worked as a substitute teacher (and later a full-time teacher) at South Dade High.
On this night, rather than my still very new press pass, I used my teaching certificate — and some local connections — to get into the gathering.
It was a swell affair and Woody and I talked awhile. I told him about the small Ohio town I’d come from and teaching and, finally, my sportswriting. We left on good terms.
When the affair ended, I heard through one of Willie’s teammates that Woody was going over to visit with the big defensive star and his mother at the tiny apartment they lived in in one of those dismal projects in the neighborhood where Southwest Homestead butts up against Florida City, another small town on the edge of the Everglades.
It was raining pretty good when Woody and the guy piloting him in a big dark car — maybe a Town Car — left the gathering. I slipped out to my old Chevy and, thinking I’m like one of those TV dectectives, began to tail him, discreetly, I thought.
We’d gone halfway across town and were on a darkened side steet when the tail lights flashed red in front of me. The car stopped and the next thing I know, the passenger door opens and here comes Woody tromping full steam.
That prompted the pounding on my windiow.
When I finally got the window down, I said, “You remember me, I’m the guy from Ohio, the school teacher.”
He shook his head: “Right now you a sportswriter….Get out of here.”
I didn’t argue, I just turned off and went a back way to Willie’s place and parked a little ways away.
When Woody finished with Willie and was driven off, I went in and talked with Willie and his mom.
She asked me if Ohio State would be a good place for her son. I told her I thought it would be a fine place. I told her about the following the Bucks have and what it was like on game day and especially, the rivalry with Michigan.
I told her the best thing would be playing for Woody, that her son wouldn’t only learn football, he’d learn some great life lessons.
In the end, Willie chose to go to Florida State, had a great career with the Seminoles and was drafted by the Oakland Raiders.
Still I think he lost out by not being under Woody’s tutelage. Willie’s NFL career was derailed by some drug problems, although now, as best I know, that’s all long past .In fact his son now plays for the Seminoles.
A side note, I saw Woody again a couple of years later when the Bucks came down to play in the Orange Bowl.
We were standing outside after a press gathering and Woody looked up at the beautiful sky, the sunshine and with that gap-tooth grin, simply said:
“Sure beats the rain.”
TweetOrange Bowl Memories: Goodbye to an old friend
I went down to Miami last month with my wife and we visited an old friend of mine for the very last time. When we go back next year, she’ll be gone.
I’m talking about the Orange Bowl, a stadium that means more to me than any in which I’ve ever been.
We worked our way through the same busy Little Havana streets I used to traverse almost every autumn weekend for 16 years. We stopped along the way at a little bodega with an outdoor counter for a sweet jolt of Cuban coffee and some croquettas and then we finally pulled up to the 70-year-old horseshoe of a stadium.
The place was closed , but I found an open gate and soon we were tromping through the visiting team’s tunnel and out onto the field, where I just looked up and around, letting the past come flooding back.
In the early 1970s — when I was a still-wet-behind-the-ears sportswriter, not far removed from my small town Ohio days — the Orange Bowl was where I was introduced to big-time sports, press box camaraderie and the bless-my-luck prospect of free hotdogs at every halftime.
To me, the Orange Bowl was heaven on earth.
I would cover the Dolphins here for good chunks of two decades, same with the Miami Hurricanes. Covered Super Bowls, too, the yearly Orange Bowl extravaganza, Friday night high school games, the Florida A & M Rattlers’ annual Orange Blossom Classic, one of the greatest world title fights I ever saw, pro wrestling, pro soccer and even a Prince concert when the little electric gnome turned the place into the “Purple Bowl.”
I remember my first wondrous look out the open east end zone — past the scoreboard and over the palm trees — at the downtown Miami skyline.
I can remember chuckling as I watched the big, fat linemen from the pro teams up north wilting in the afternoon heat of October, their bench catching all the sun while their jumbo sideline fan — similar to the one that cooled the Dolphins across the field — “mysteriously” wasn’t working.
And I remember the way the Hurricanes’ crowds — and those of the Dolphins, too — would stomp their feet in double time on the old metal stands until the racket became so loud it seemed they were about to shake loose the bolts and beams until the grand old stadium would come tumbling down.
And now, all these years later, the landmark place is about to fall.
When Miami hosts Virginia tonight, it will be the Canes 473rd — and final — game in the Orange Bowl. They are moving 16 miles north to the antiseptic Dolphins Stadium with its luxury suites and other top-dollar amenities.
The Miami Dolphins made the same move 21 years ago and even the fabled Orange Bowl Game left here in 1996.
After tonight, about all that’s left for the place that hosted 14 national title games, five Super Bowls and six decades of Orange Bowl Classics are three games involving Florida International University and a high school all-star game in January.
After that the Orange Lady — now rusted and sagging and leaking — is scheduled for demolition.
Tonight, a bunch of former players and coaches plan to make a tunnel onto the field through which this version of the Hurricanes — not quite the world-is-ours bunch of the ’80s and early 90s that won an NCAA-record 58 straight games here — takes the field.
I wish I were there.
This is where I watched the curly-headed Bernie Kosar scamper like a daddy long legs spider, where I watched Ottis Anderson carry an entire Miami team on his back, where I got caught in the crush of jubilant players as Jimmy Johnson was carried off the field after his Canes won the national title.
Four years earlier, on that January night in 1984, I had been standing on the sideline, right at the goal line, when Howard Schnellenberger’s Canes won the embrace of a stadium, a city and, finally, the entire world of college football.
For years, the Miami teams I had covered would get drilled by the football powers from up north. The crowds were small, the players battered and the magical moments few and far between.
Then came that Orange Bowl night that no Canes’ fan will ever forget. Nebraska scored in the closing seconds to come within one. Huskers coach Tom Osborne decided to go for the win and Miami safety Kenny Calhoun batted down the pass giving the U its first of what is now five national titles.
This is also where I covered some of the great Dolphins teams and would sit with coach Don Shula in his cramped dressing quarters after games, and try not to ask — in what he described in his unwavering jutting -jaw way — a “horse shit” question.”
It’s where I saw bent-nosed Larry Csonka bull for touchdown after touchdown and where I watched gunslinger Dan Marino emerge as one of the greatest quarterbacks ever.
It’s where I witnessed Kellen Winslow Sr. turn into a real life Rocky Balboa in arguably the greatest NFL game ever, the San Diego Chargers’ overtime victory in a hot, muggy exhausting 1982 playoff contest with the Dolphins.
Thanks to the Orange Bowl Classic, this is where I first interviewed Bear Bryant, had my last interview with Woody Hayes and where I nearly got run over by Ralphie, the buffalo mascot of Colorado.
It’s where I saw a Miami team get flattened in an instant by the Flutie Miracle of 1984. I was standing there at the back of the west end zone — sportswriters used to be able to roam the field near game’s end — as Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie lofted that 46-guard Hail Mary that Gerard Phelan, just a few feet in front of me, gathered it in for the stunning 47-45 victory
For me, the losing moments have left as many indelible memories as the winners.
This is where I sat for 45 minutes in the dressing room with veteran Dallas Cowboys tight end Jackie Smith after he’d dropped a sure touchdown pass in Super Bowl XIII, a miscue that unfairly has turned into the the mantle of an all-time Super Bowl goat.
It’s where — 25 years ago this Monday night — I sat up against the ring apron and watched my friend, Alexis Arguello, fall right in front of me after that 14th-round rampage by Aaron Pryor in their junior welterweight title fight.
I can think of dozens and dozens of stories here, but let me give you just one last one.
In 1979, Csonka , near the end of his career, returned to the Dolphins for a season. After a road game in Cleveland, Bill Reinke — a photographer who worked with me at The Miami News and, later, here in Dayton — joined me, Csonka and Csonka’s pal Squeaky Williams for an off-day hunting trip on Csonka farm in Lisbon.
Csonka and I hit it off well and a few weeks later in a game, he crashed into the end zone for a touchdown and got poked in the eye.
He stumbled off the field, hands to his face — the crowd hushed — and lumbered into the dressing room. Soon after, there was a loud speaker announcement for a doctor to head to the dressing room.
I grabbed a brief case, headed down the elevator and got to the dressing room door where a young security guard held out an arm of resistance.
“Didn’t you hear the call for a doctor? I said impatiently.
The guy lifted his arm and let me in as the game raged on behind us. I went to the training room, where Csonka was sitting on a table. An assistant trainer was there, but I came up and looked and that’s when Csonka, although in pain, managed a shake of the head and a smile.
Just then, Dolphins’ owner Joe Robbie — who, it appeared, had been on a long tail-gate party of his own in his private box — walked in with the team’s security advisor, who knew me and, without a big display, tried to get me out of the room.
We circled the table a couple of times and finally I stepped lively toward the door, only to have Robbie stop me. I thought the jig was up, but instead Robbie asked:
“How’s he going to be?”
I told him there’d be some blurred vision, but his trainer had it under control. As I headed out the door, Robbie said, “Doc, thanks a lot.”
“Anytime,” I said disappearing out the door. “Anytime.”
I thought of that moment as I stood out there on the field last month. It made me laugh and then it made me sad.
I knew “anytime” was now “never again.”
TweetWho Dey? Dey be the Browns!!!
Who Dey?
Dey be the Cleveland Browns, the best pro football “team” in Ohio.
I say this not so much because of their 5-3 record — compared to Cincinnati’s continued downward spiral to 2-6 — but because of that one word:
Team.
Cleveland truly has become a team — and that was never showcased more than in the Browns 33-30 overtime win against Seattle, Sunday — while the Bengals mostly are just a collection of individuals.
You want an example?
How about when running back Jamal Lewis caught the overtime screen pass Sunday that he turned into a game-saving 34-yard scamper to put his team in position for Phil Dawson’s winning field goal.
On that play, wide receiver Braylon Edwards did all he could to bottle up two Seahawk defenders. At about the same time, here comes 315-pound center Hank Fraley — sprinting, well, make that quickly lumbering down field — in time to put a leveling block on Seattle safety Brian Russell.
And how about the Browns defense, so often maligned, making the crucial stop on fourth-and-one — the unit’s third such shut-down in two weeks — as the offensive stars hugged the sideline, urging them on just before the snap?
“We became a team today,” said Dawson, who’s been a Cleveland Brown longer than anybody.
Tight end Kellen Winslow — who had a career day with 11 catches for 125 yards — agreed through his exhaustion as he sat at his locker afterward:
“I’ll always remember this game. It was a total team effort, We really got tested tonight. We didn’t let anyone, anything, distract us. We stayed together. Before the game, Coach (Romeo) Crennel said we’d need everybody this game and he was right. This is the game that might turn our season around.”
And soon Winslow bowed his head and began to cry. It took a while for him to compose himself and while he was a bit embarrassed at his emotional display — he finally mouthed “I’m sorry,” — he then whispered:
“I’m just proud of us, man. We fought as a team…we fought as a team.”
The Browns now have won three in a row for the first time in six years. They’ve got four straight victories at Cleveland Stadium. Next week they play Pittsburgh in a game that will have play-off connotations — for them!
What’s really fun here is to see the way the Browns fans — the most loyal in the NFL — are becoming more giddy by the moment. It’s like they walked through a door and straight into a surprise party — for them.
“They believe, like this team is beginning to believe,” Crennel said.
Clutch receiver Joe Jurevicius, the Cleveland boy who was with the Seahawks when they made the Super Bowl two years ago, sees that too:
“I said a long time ago that I came home for a reason. What we are seeing from our fans and our football team — I made the right decision.”
As the season progressed, the Cleveland Indians’ success was expected. But this? After the turmoil at the start of the season? The thumping by the Steelers in the opener. The ousting of quarterback Charlie Frye. The debate on how long Crennel would last.
Instead, Crennel’s even keel has worked beautifully. In my book, new offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski is the team MVP, so far. And quarterback Derek Anderson is having a Pro Bowl season.
And that brings us to the most amazing thing of all at this half-way point of the season:
No one even mentions Brady Quinn anymore.
TweetFlyers Basketball: Cause for Concern?
Going around town Friday and Saturday morning, I had a half dozen University of Dayton basketball fans — in one form or another — ask “What the hell was that all about?”
They were talking about how the Flyers needed a controversial, home court foul call & technical at the end of Thursday night’s exhibition game to come from behind and squeak by Division II Findlay, 81-78.
The Oilers were under-sized, lots younger — they only have one senior on the team — and are far less athletic, yet they had UD on the ropes.
Everyone wanted to know if Thursday night was a sign of troubling things to come this season or was it just one on those blips of the exhibition season, like Division II Grand Valley State upsetting Michigan State — No. 8 in national preseason polls and the Big Ten favorite — in two overtimes Friday night?
I don’t think you can put a whole lot of stock in one practice game, but I do believe the Flyers have some real areas of concern.
They got almost nothing out of three veteran players, Andres Sandoval, Jimmy Binnie and London Warren.
Sandoval seems to be going backwards and may be destined for Desmond Adedeji’s vacated spot on the Flyers bench.
The senior Binnie was embarrassed twice in a row on the press. Both times he was caught napping on defense and the Findlay deep man beat him for an easy lay-up. Plus, he still has trouble hitting the big basket in a pressure situation.
As for Warren, he had as many turn-overs as he did points — four each.
The other thing that stood out Thursday was that three of the newcomers to the team — transfer Thiago Cordeiro and true freshmen Stephen Thomas and big man Devin Searcy — seem to have a long way to go before they are to be considered steady, productive options.
To be fair, Cordeiro — who had trouble hanging into the ball all night long — has been hampered by an injured hand and it was the first college game ever for the other two.
All that said, there were some bright spots, too:
Freshman Chris Wright had a resounding debut — rebounding, hitting clutch shots and being a real presence around the basket. He finished with 20 points and seven rebounds.
Brian Roberts — who finished with 25 points — showed once again he may be more valuable to his team than any single player in the A-10 is to his. There are spans of games where he carries the Flyers almost solely on his back. I’m not sure if UD fans fully appreciate what they are seeing game in and game out from this guy.
The player I think may have a break out season is sophomore guard Marcus Johnson. Against Findlay he made four of six field goal attempts, had three rebounds and three blocks. I think he could be the clutch player that Monty Scott often was not last year.
One other thing stood out Thursday night.
When quizzed in the post-game press conference about how he’s prepared Wright for the crush of hype and expectations this season, head coach Brian Gregory seemed to have a little edge in his tone when he answered.
He let it be known he’s been dealing with that for three years already and that Wright need to worry about no one else but his coaches and teammates.
The intimation was for media, fans and hometown folks to butt out.
It’s going to be an interesting season.
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