Some fans will buoy their optimism with his success as a member of Billy Donovan’s staff at Florida and as a head coach at VCU and his early years at Alabama. Skeptics will dwell on the last two seasons with the Crimson Tide that ultimately saw him get fired. Players have already expressed an eagerness to learn from someone who spent the past two years as an assistant with the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder, coaching the likes of Russell Westbrook.
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My optimism and enthusiasm about Anthony Grant, the coach, comes from my days covering Anthony Grant, the player. When I first talked to him he had just committed to UD as a high school senior. I got to know him as a quiet freshman, who worked hard in practice but seldom saw the floor.
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“It didn’t help that Chapman scored 51 points against him in our first intra-squad scrimmage,” remembered former teammate Dan Christie. But he knew that Anthony would be a good college player. “I just got to campus and we were shooting around in the PAC (the old Physical Activities Center, the site of today’s Cronin Athletic Center) and with no effort he jumps up and reverse dunks the ball. We didn’t have too many people do that in Oak Harbor, Ohio.”
Grant moved into the starting lineup as a sophomore, averaging 10.1 points a game. His numbers tailed off slightly as a junior and then as a senior captain, he led the team in scoring (13.0) and rebounding (6.0).
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One game that senior year remains etched in my memory. Dayton was playing the Miami Hurricanes in Anthony’s hometown. Through the years I have seen players go back home and have a hard time handling the emotions — sometimes paralyzed by nerves, other times amped up and trying to do too much. Not Anthony. He let the game come to him, never forcing the issue, and led the Flyers to victory with 17 points (6-9 from the field, 5-6 from the line) 9 rebounds and 3 steals.
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I reminisced about the game with former Dayton coach Don Donoher, who said: “He was just steady. Poised. But he was like that all season, every game.”
So how will the new Dayton coach, who patiently waited his turn as a player and brought a blue collar approach to the game relate to today’s generation of players?
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“Kids nowadays are different, but the same,” he told me in a recent interview. “ They want to know you care about them and have their best interest at heart.”
That sincerity and work ethic that I first saw in a young player in 1983, I see still, in a now mature coach. Welcome home, Anthony Grant.
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