The Flyers, on the other hand, do have more height and length than they did a season ago. Nine of the 12 scholarship players are 6-foot-4 or taller. Last season, seven players fit into that category.
The height gives Dayton positional versatility, and that’s been a topic throughout the offseason and the preseason as Dayton inches closer to the start of the 2025-26 season.
“I think the whole team is very versatile,” said 6-5 sophomore guard Bryce Heard, a transfer from North Carolina State. " We have a team that just wants to compete, and it’s going to be a fun year, for sure."
***
Dayton opened its practice Wednesday to local media for about 15 minutes. There was a similar opportunity near the end of the summer practice period in the first week of August.
Someone sent me a message Thursday asking for my impressions of what I saw in practice, and I said I don’t know much new. We saw the players stretch. We saw them run up and down the court. We witnessed several defensive drills. I didn’t see enough to draw any conclusions.
The opportunity did give me the chance to see who was practicing and who wasn’t.
Jordan Derkack, the Rutgers transfer who had been sidelined since June after undergoing foot surgery, was a full participant in the action I saw. A week earlier, coach Anthony Grant told me he was hopeful Derkack would return to practice in the next week or two. His return is good news for the Flyers, who play the first of two preseason games Oct. 19 against Penn State at UD Arena.
Heard stretched with his teammates but did not practice. He was one of three players, along with De’Shayne Montgomery and Jacob Conner, who talked to the media before practice. Heard said he’s been out for two weeks but would be back at practice Monday. He did not say what type of injury has sidelined him.
Jaron McKie, a freshman guard, also did not practice. Grant said he is injured but did not specify the type of injury.
With two scholarship players sidelined, Dayton used its three graduate assistant coaches as practice bodies.
• CJ Napier, a Miamisburg graduate who played one season as a walk-on at Dayton, is in his second year as a grad assistant on Grant’s staff.
• Nik Stadelman, who played at Illinois State and worked at Radford last season, is a new graduate assistant.
• The other new grad assistant is Honore Niyongira, a native of Canada who played at Acadia University.
A-10 loses most famous fan
A day before Atlantic 10 Conference Media Day last week, I took a four-mile hike along the Ohio River in Pittsburgh. The bike path follows the river for miles.
My dad Jeff hiked the path from Cumberland, Md., to Pittsburgh last year, and walked the other direction, from Cumberland to Washington, D.C., this month. Not bad for a 72-year-old former Alter punter. I hope my knees survive all the soccer and basketball I play so I can replicate some of my dad’s hikes when I retire.
I’ve still got at least 12 more Dayton seasons before I get to that point, though maybe I’ll stay on the beat until I’m 106. Sister Jean, the famous Loyola Chicago fan, turned 106 earlier this year. She made the most of her century-plus on this earth, and her death on Thursday resulted in sad headlines around college basketball.
“The Atlantic 10 Conference joins the Loyola Chicago community in mourning the loss of Sister Jean Schmidt,” A-10 Commissioner Bernadette V. McGlade said in a statement. “Her passion inspired student-athletes and basketball fans all across the world, and her enlightening presence at Ramblers games will be forever missed. We offer our prayers to her family, the LUC basketball program and the entire campus community. The A-10 also celebrates a prayerful life well lived, inspiring to so many.”
Speaking of A-10 celebrities, I met famed NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski, who’s now the general manager of the basketball program at his alma mater, St. Bonaventure, at A-10 Media Day. I told him of my desire to visit the greater Olean area in the summer one of these years. I’m sure it’s beautiful. I’ve only seen it in January and February.
Woj, as he’s known, is out of the business of dropping Woj Bombs on NBA fans. This is his second season at St. Bonaventure. It’s too early to tell what kind of impact he will have on St. Bonaventure’s win-loss record. The Bonnies were 22-12 overall and 9-9 in the A-10 last season.
Fundraising is a big part of Wojnarowski’s new job. He’s starting a YouTube series, called “The Program,” this season that will bring in sponsorship money. According to The Athletic, he will “interview big-name team builders using his vast contacts from his decades in sports media and first year in the front office.”
Wojnarowski talked about his job on The Jim Rome Show
“I just think it’s humbling to start over in something brand new,” he said.
Wojnarowski said he’s immersed himself in a “completely new discipline” and done “more learning in a year than I’ve done in a long time.”
Voting for top 25 is a guessing game
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
I submitted my Associated top-25 college basketball preseason poll on Friday. For what it’s worth, I ranked Purdue No. 1, and it’s not worth much. In the preseason poll last year, I was one of 18 voters who did not rank Florida, the eventual national champion.
If I had complete access to every locker room and practice and could visit every team in the country, while reading the minds of every coach, my poll wouldn’t be much better. It’s a guessing game.
I have voted in the AP football poll for six seasons and in the basketball poll for five seasons. The polls run into each other for a two-month stretch, so I’m getting up every Sunday and Monday and working on those polls right away. There’s a 10 a.m. deadline both days.
Fans love to complain about the polls and obsess over individual ballots. I guess it’s good for the polls. Any publicity is good publicity. The Cover 6 podcast does a great job of analyzing the ballots every week during football season in a segment called “Poll Assassin.” They provide a fair-and-balanced approach.
Most fans take the opposite approach. The term “Clown Show” is thrown around a bit too much when they talk about voters. They need some new insults. Someone called me a “Jabroni” once. That was at least a new way of coming at me.
Needless to say, Dayton did not get a preseason vote from me this year. It’ll have to play its way into the poll, and its schedule gives it a chance to do that. I did give A-10 preseason favorite VCU a vote, but I might be the only one who voted for the Rams.
Fast Break
Here’s other news that might interest Flyer fans:
🏀 Former Dayton forward Obi Toppin led the Pacers with 14 points in the team’s annual FanJam event Sunday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
“It’s amazing,” Toppin told reporters. “We have the best fans in the world. So coming here, even for a scrimmage, playing in front of them is amazing. You see all the smiles on the kids’ faces. They enjoy it. That’s what we do it for.”
🏀 Former Dayton forward Toumani Camara had 14 points, four rebounds and three assists in the first preseason game for the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday.
“Toumani Camara … man, this guy was already good last year,“ wrote Jason Quick, of The Athletic, on X, ”and tonight in the preseason opener, he looks like he’s WAY better than last season. On his way to becoming a household name around the NBA."
🏀 The expansion of the NCAA tournament from 68 to 76 teams seems more and more like a done deal. It could will mean the end of the First Four, as we know it, though I would expect Dayton to continue playing host to opening-round games.
Most fans have been bashing the expansion. An additional eight teams won’t affect my enjoyment of the tournament, though I don’t see it helping Dayton or the A-10 more than once every three or four years.
🏀 What do you want to know about the Flyers?
I want to hear from you. Reach out to me directly at david.jablonski@coxinc.com with your questions and feedback on the team or this newsletter.
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