DaytonDailyNews.com

FAIRBORN — For a week, he had been getting the calls.

Some people wanted tickets to his game at Wright State. Others just said they were coming to see him play. Most of them — dozens, he guessed — said they would see him after the game.

Kenny Hayes was coming home.

His Miami RedHawks basketball team was playing Wright State Monday night, Nov. 24, at the Nutter Center and the former Northmont High guard was going to be center stage.

That's why he called home in a panic last weekend.

"He said, 'Mom, I got to get back there and get my hair cut first," Shelia Johnson said with a laugh. "'I can't play in front of all my fans with my hair not cut.' "

So Saturday Hayes slipped back to Dayton from Oxford and went straight to Talking Head barbershop, on Salem Ave., where he wants just one guy — Smoke the Barber — to cut his hair:

"I wanted to look good out there on the floor."

And did he ever, though it was due not so much to his shorn locks as that fully-grown game he showed off. He finished with a game-high 20 points, five rebounds, two assists, a block and a steal to lead Miami to a 55-37 victory over the Raiders.

The win helped rid the RedHawks of the bitter taste of the past two years when Wright State beat them each season with a last- second shot.

"Actually, last year alone I lost two home games — at Dayton on a last-second shot and here," Hayes said. "All summer I had to deal with 'Y'all can't beat the Flyers or the Raiders.' So tonight, no matter how many points I got, I just had to make sure we won.

"All week (the coaches) let us know how (WSU) got the extra loose balls, the rebounds, how they outhustled us last year. We just had to out-fight them every play and not give up this time."

That's the way he said he grew up here playing basketball with his cousin, Chris Wright: "We played in the backyard all the time. We'd go at it — 1-on-1 — and it'd go back and forth ... but then he just started growing and growing."

And Kenny?

He got cut from his eighth grade team in Trotwood. Soon after his stepfather died and the family moved into the Northmont school district, Sheila said.

"It was the best thing that ever happened to Kenny," she said. "The coaching staff, especially (Bolts' head coach) Jim Brown, were a support system for me. Kenny just loves Coach Brown."

Although Hayes was recruited by then-WSU coach Paul Biancardi, he needed to beef up his academics and ended up first at St. Catherine Junior College in Kentucky and then Cincinnati State.

"A lot of people thought I wasn't going to make it," said Hayes, who will graduate from Miami on time after this season. "When you first go the junior college route, a lot of people forget you. The ones who didn't, they were all here tonight.

The Northmont High basketball team was at the Nutter Center, as was Brown and former Bolts assistant Jim Ehler. So was Smoke the Barber, Kenny's girlfriend, his twin sisters, Kia and Kelly, and lots of family and friends.

"About 60 people in all," Sheila said.

Kenny laughed: "I had to block em out cause they were all calling my name."

Afterward they gave him a rousing ovation when he emerged from the post-game dressing room.

"Last year I left here with tears in my eyes," Sheila said. "It was so heart-breaking. This is so different.

"To put it in one word it feels like Thanksgiving — Thanksgiving come early."