She sat on the steps, right up against the metal railing overlooking the players’ tunnel that leads from Blackburn Court back toward the dressing rooms.
She wore her UD cheerleading uniform and held a small plastic bag in her hand that was filled with beaded bracelets she had made with only a little help from her mom.
She’s a preschooler at Wild Child Nature School in Centerville and her routine is the same at every UD home game. She hands out the bracelets she makes each week to Flyers players and cheerleaders as they come off the court following the game.
A video of the cute give-and-take — with the players and cheerleaders lined up eager to get her offerings — was posted on TikTok early this season and soon had 3 million views.
Tuesday when the last of the group crush had filed past, Caroline stayed put.
She knew there was one player left on the court,
Jordan Derkack, the hero of the game for the Flyers, was across the floor, headphones over his ears, doing a radio interview.
Caroline kept an eye on him and when he headed back to the tunnel, he first stopped in front of a clamoring kid to do a selfie with him while flashing a V for victory sign.
Then he beelined straight to Caroline.
The 6-foot-5 guard’s long arm — bruised and scraped from the way he played — reached up and the little girl’s hand peeked through the railing.
She handed him the colorful bauble.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “Thank you. I love it!”
She beamed.
The two might have more in common than you imagine. When the weather is a little warmer, the Wild Child kids spend a lot of time on the ground: exploring nature, sitting on blankets or rugs for crafts, having reading time, doing yoga and just playing.
And when the Dayton Flyers are playing, no player spends more time on the ground — make that the hardwood court — than Derkack.
‘Bigger than just the numbers’
He dives for loose balls; he gets pinballed around rebounding against opponents five inches taller and 40 pounds heavier; and he especially hits the deck when he drives to the basket, straight into the teeth of the defense and, whether he gets the shot up or not, he usually gets fouled.
The latter happened Tuesday.
Seven times Bonnie defenders fouled him and almost every time he was knocked on his back, on his side, once face first.
He ended up making 12 of 15 free throws — including the two game-winners with 2.3 seconds left — and finished with a season-high 18 points.
The way Derkack plays goes back, he said, to when he was just a few years older than Caroline and learning the game in Colonia, New Jersey, his hometown:
“I was taught at a young age, ‘If there’s a ball rolling on the floor, you gotta be the first one on it!’
“And, offensively, I know I’ve got a knack for getting fouled and sometimes when that happens you get knocked down.”
That gritty, give-no-quarter style served him well over the years.
It first got him to Merrimack College, where he started 20 games as freshman; was the Northeast Conference Player of the Year as a sophomore; and once had a game against Long Island University where he scored 34 points, had 11 assists, 10 rebounds and five steals.
Last season he played at Rutgers and though he started 10 of 31 games and averaged 5.7 points per game, he did have some big outings, including 26 points against Michigan State and 15 against Notre Dame.
He followed Javon Bennett, his old teammate at Merrimack, to Dayton in hopes of getting more playing time and a chance to showcase his game.
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
Although he missed the entire summer of workouts with an injury, he had played in the first 16 games of the season, started 13 and was averaging 8.1 points and 4.3 rebounds a game.
Then he suffered a foot injury again on January 6th against George Washington and missed five straight games, three of which UD lost.
He played in the Flyers blowout loss at St. Louis last Friday night and Tuesday night he came off the bench against the Bonnies.
Bennett led the Flyers with 20 points and 7-foot-1 sophomore Amaël L’Etang added 16.
With Derkack back on the court though the 15-8 Flyers are a different team. They have more mettle, more moxie, more doggedness.
“We’ve said it before for him, Jordan’s impact is bigger than just the numbers,” Grant said after Tuesday’s victory.
“The leadership and the confidence that he interjects into the group with his presence can’t be measured.
“Those type of things are inspirational to his teammates — just to know he is willing to do what we call the dirty work things.
“Those kinds of things are contagious for your team. The extra effort, the hustle plays inspire and motivate guys to understand what they have to do to go out and win.”
And that was missing in the four-game losing streak that turned this season upside down.
A little swagger in his step
“The word we were using was pride,” Bennett said. “I think we kind of lost our sense of pride and what it means to play at Dayton.”
Pressed to explain that more, Bennett offered:
“I think it comes with complacency. We won without some key contributors on the team — without our big men — and we kind of felt a sense that we accomplished something.
“The truth is, we didn’t. We still have a bunch of basketball left to play.”
He said Grant hammered that point home with them and basically told them, “We’ve got to be willing to get out of our comfort zone. You’re not going to be able to win doing what feels easy to do. You’ve got to be able to do the hard stuff.”
Derkack has made a career out of the latter.
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
But in a private moment after the postgame press conference, he had a little different take than Bennett:
“I think it’s hard to lose your pride as a grown man, but there was a sense that we kind of lost our swagger. We weren’t walking into gyms like we should be walking into them.
“It should be: ‘We’re going to do this and this.’
“‘We’re going to play hard as hell.’
“‘We’re going to win this game!’
“You could feel we weren’t doing that. After you’ve played basketball so long, you can feel the vibe and ours wasn’t right.
“We’re trying to change that now, but we need everybody locked in at the same time.”
Derkack said sitting out those five games — no matter how much he tried to give vocal support from the bench, in the huddle or at practice — was “torturous.”
“I’m a competitor,” he said. “I want to be out there on the court doing something.”
Tuesday night that’s just what he did.
And after he’d finished with all his postgame commitments, he went walking alone down an inner hallway in the Arena, toward the darkened ramp that would take him to the team’s Donoher Center dressing quarters.
He had a win under his belt; and a new beaded bracelet on his right wrist, just below his bruised elbow.
And if you looked closely, you noticed he also had a little swagger in his step.
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