Archdeacon: Dayton’s Wolf making strides in filling ‘big shoes’

The Dayton Flyers junior guard out of Minster thought about that for a couple seconds, then shook her head:

“My (family) accomplished some pretty cool things. I’ve got some big shoes to fill.”

Ivy certainly does have big shoes to fill and this year she’s often doing it with an insert in one of them. That is, if she’s wearing a shoe at all.

When we spoke Tuesday afternoon in the Cronin Center, she was wearing a protective boot on her left foot. It’s become standard footwear for her on campus this season.

Since the summer she’s been battling plantar fasciitis, an inflammation of the fibrous tissue along the bottom of her foot between her toes and heel bone. It’s often quite painful.

She spends a lot of time in the training room and has been getting various treatments, everything from icing it and stretching it and the shoe insert to recently getting an injection of Toradol, a non-steroidal, anti-inflammation drug that helps reduce severe pain.

Although she missed one game this year to rest her foot, she’s averaging 34.6 minutes a game, tops on the team.

She also leads the 7-8 Flyers in scoring (12.2 points per game); three-point field goal percentage for players with more than 10 attempts (36 of 94, 38.3 percent); free throw percentage (14 of 16, 87.5 percent); assists and is tied with Nayo Lear for most steals.

One of her best outings this year came last Saturday when the Flyers outlasted Loyola, 69-64, to pick up their first A-10 victory of the season. She hit three three-pointers in the final quarter, part of a 22-point effort that tied Destiny Bohanon for leading scorer honors.

Wolf transferred to UD this season from Miami, where she started every game in her two seasons there, scored 891 points and won All-Mid American Conference honors both years.

Ironically, she passed the 1,000 career point mark this season in early December when she returned with the Flyers to play Miami in Oxford. She scored 12 points in the 73-60 victory and, going into Friday’s game at St. Louis, now has 1,061 career points.

Credit: Erik Schelkun

Credit: Erik Schelkun

Shots, and more shots

“I was definitely not a good three-point shooter when I started high school,” she said. “It was either my freshman or sophomore year where I was shooting 13 percent from the three-point line and after a while I was like, ‘OK, something has to change.’”

Her mom — who named her after former Notre Dame and NBA player Niele Ivy, who now coaches the Irish — began tutoring her with extra, long-range shooting sessions before school each morning.

“School started at 8 so we’d go to the gym every morning at maybe 6:45 or 7 ,” Wolf remembered. “Mom would rebound and she had me make 250 shots before we could leave.”

Her dad once told me how she’d also go shoot 100 free throws before school if she missed the front end of a 1-and-1 opportunity at the charity stripe in a game the night before.

He said from the fourth grade on she’s shot 1,000 free throws a month and it’s paid off. While at Miami, she was one of the best free throw shooters in the nation.

This summer she said she and Bohanon often had high-volume shooting sessions overseen by UD assistant coach Darryl Hudson.

“He’d have us each make 50 shots at five or seven spots he had around the three-point line and then at the last one we had to make 100,” she said.

That has paid off in several games this year. She made 8 of 13 long-range attempts against Stetson and scored a season-high 25 points. She was 7-for-15 against Wichita State, 6-of-13 at Vanderbilt and went 5-for-9 last Saturday against Loyola.

Last season at Miami she had a huge game against the Ramblers as well, scoring 27 points and going 6 for 10 from beyond the arc.

She said her decision to transfer after last season was difficult because she was leaving some of her best friends — on the team and off — and she liked the school.

The RedHawks had had two losing seasons while she was there — going 20-40 overall — but she said she wasn’t “chasing” victories when she decided to leave.

There was also off the court turmoil — head coach DeUnna Hendrix was forced out at season’s end after an inappropriate relationship with another player was discovered — but Wolf didn’t mention that either.

Seven players left the program at season’s end.

“I was just trying to find a good fit for me on and off the floor,” Wolf said. “It was just kind of about values and finding a place where I was able to strive and develop more as a woman than just a basketball player.

“And Dayton was a great fit for that and offered some great opportunities for me.”

She said the coaches on the staff — especially head coach Tamike Williams-Jeter — have a variety of life experiences and can mentor her for success after basketball.

That said, she hasn’t cut all her ties at Miami.

Her two roommates from last year are still on the team and she’s been back to two games to watch the 2-10 team play, including its upset of Xavier in overtime.

“Yeah, I’m like their good luck charm,” she laughed.

Credit: Erik Schelkun

Credit: Erik Schelkun

‘A leader we really needed’

“She’s added a lot to our team,” Williams-Jeter said late Tuesday afternoon from Washington D.C. where she’d gone to watch a high school game.

“On the court, her ability to shoot the ball — to score from the outside — is huge for us. And she’s an IQ kid. She knows the game and is a leader we really needed.”

Williams-Jeter gave a few examples of the way Wolf had mentored younger players and inspired older ones: “No matter what the score, she plays to win until the final buzzer goes off.”

She said Wolf’s of-the-court accomplishments especially define her, too:

“Most kids, I’d just talk to you about their basketball, but for her there’s a whole list of ‘other’ things, too. She’s everything you want a Flyer to be.

“Since coming here she’s been active on campus and joined clubs and she’s even been holding a job and done really well with it. She’s like a regional manager now.”

Two summers ago Wolf began selling knives for Cutco. She sold $30,000 worth her first year and this past summer she became a manager of the company’s office on Far Hills Ave., hired a staff and then sold over $40,000 worth of knives herself.

“She’s really good at it,” Williams-Jeter said. “She wins trips she can’t go on, but it’s really built her leadership skills.”

The only knock the coach had on her was when she’s shown up at the UD basketball offices wearing a Tennessee sweatshirt. More than being a nod to her brother, it was meant as a playful gibe at her coach, who, as a former UConn player, always had an intense rivalry with the similarly trumpeted Tennessee teams.

“She really ticked me off when we lost a couple of games and she came in wearing that stuff,” Williams-Jeter said with mock indignation. “She’d even play good ol’ Rocky Top. She knows nothing boils my blood more than playing anything to do with the Lady Vols.”

With that, Williams-Jeter laughed: “She has a huge sense of humor…and I appreciate that, too.

“She’s just a great all-around kid, someone her community takes great pride in. There was that one game this year when it seemed like the whole town of Minster showed up to support her.

“She feels a real responsibility to her community. She’s someone little girls back there can look up to.

“For someone as young as she is, that’s pretty impressive.”

When it comes to accomplishment, Ivy Wolf seems to be filling those familial shoes just fine.