Being in front of the players on Selection Sunday is a different experience. On Sunday, I had two cell phone cameras — one mounted on a small tri-pod — and my Canon DLSR ready to document the reaction of the players whenever they heard their name called.
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I had only covered two NCAA tournament announcements in the previous 10 seasons. In 2014, Archie Miller only allowed WHIO’s Mike Hartsock into his house to cover the watch party. A year later, I was there with the Flyers in Yonkers, N.Y., when the NCAA selection committee shocked the team by giving them a First Four game.
In 2016, the year of the leaked bracket, Miller again held a closed-door watch party, so I wasn’t there. In 2017, Miller invited all local media to his house in Kettering, so I was sitting on the floor in front of him and the players in his basement when Dayton received a NCAA tournament bid.
The last six years, there were no NCAA tournament berths for Dayton and thus no watch parties. I wasn’t sure how coach Anthony Grant would handle Selection Sunday but was pleased he let local media attend the gathering in the Connor Flight Deck at UD Arena.
Maybe if workers hadn’t been busy preparing the court and the arena for the First Four, UD would have opened the building up to whatever fans wanted to join the team, but even during the watch party, there was work going on throughout UD Arena as the shift from the girls high school state tournament to the First Four continued.
It was only fitting everyone in the Flight Deck had to wait through almost the entire Selection Show to hear Dayton’s name because UD had already waited seven years for the moment. By the time the No. 7 vs. No. 10 game in the West Region came on the screen, it was either that game or no games for Dayton. But as expected, the Flyers made it into the tournament.
Now I’m sitting at the airport early on Tuesday morning, waiting to board a flight to Houston, where I’ll catch a connection to Salt Lake City, where Dayton plays Nevada on Thursday.
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