“I was maybe 10 and me and my little brother, Delan, was in my dad’s house and we snuck into his pantry. He had just come from grocery shopping and there was a lot of snacks in there.
“And, well, we finished a whole bag of powered donuts.
“We was young, just doing whatever…just being bad.”
The memory made him laugh, but then he shook his head: “But yeah, we was dumb. We made a little video of it and posted it on YouTube.
“So, our dad comes home from work, and he played it smooth. He called us downstairs and we thought it was normal. But he already had seen the video and now he had it up on the big screen and he hits ‘play!’
“Well, me and my brother look at each other and it’s like, ‘Damn, what’s he gonna do?’”
As he stood there in a deserted stairwell beyond the media room and recreated the memory from a dozen years past, he managed a chuckle still tinged by a little pain:
“He whupped us…with his belt.”
Taking that incident and this night both into account, the lesson is simple. Montgomery more or less was saying:
When you’re a thief, sometimes you get your butt warmed and sometimes you just light up the scoreboard with a victory.
The latter happened for the 6-foot-5 guard, a delightful and dynamic addition to the Dayton Flyers this season, and his teammates against East Tennessee State University (ETSU) Tuesday night at UD Arena.
Using a harassing full-court press much of the night, coupled often with half-court traps and double teams whenever they could pull them off, the Flyers stole the ball 14 times, forced 22 total turnovers and won 88-71.
Keonte Jones led the Flyers with five steals and Jordan Derkack had four.
Montgomery, a junior out of Fort Lauderdale who leads the team in steals, had two thefts to go with his career-tying best 27 points, game-high seven rebounds and three assists.
“I think everybody on our team is a thief for real,” Montgomery said at the postgame press conference. “We create havoc on the defensive end and run down in transition. I think that’s the best way to play.”
It appears the entire team thinks that way and that’s why this group – quickly cobbled together with six transfers, two freshmen, four scholarship holdovers and three walk-ons – has coalesced impressively and is 7-2 going into Saturday afternoon’s game against Virginia in Charlotte. N.C.
“Coach Grant is big on defense, and he’s brought in a lot of athletes and all you got to do is buy-in and follow his blueprint,” Montgomery said. “I think we’re doing that and we’re learning more about each other and what each of us can do.
“That’s why I think we’re still far from the best basketball we can play as a team.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
‘He chipped my tooth’
Derkack – who, like Montgomery, played in two other college programs before this – said the embrace of defense by this diverse group happened in the summer, on the very first day of drills.
“We started out 1-on-1, full court the very first day,” said Derkack, who began his career at Merrimack, where he was named the Northeast Conference Defense Player of the Year, just as UD teammate Javon Bennett had been the year prior for the Warriors.
Last season Derkack played at Rutgers and he came to Dayton this season to get more playing time and more of a leadership role.
He’s gotten both – he’s now a starter – and he’s a principle cog in the defense.
He said the Flyers often did those 1-on-1 drills with the offensive player using a “heavy ball” which gave the defenders an extra couple of seconds to set up.
“It was competitive,” Montgomery, who began his career at Mount St. Mary’s and then played at Georgia last season, said as he nodded his head at Derkack who sat next to him. “He chipped my tooth.”
Derkack said after the intense solo drills, it got “a lot easier when you’ve got four other guys looking at the ball, too. We’ve got some really good guys who can steal the ball for sure.”
And once the offensive player was given a regular ball the action really picked up, he said:
“Then you got Adam (Njie)….bang, bang, bang, bang, (dribbling) and he’s running down the court you have to catch him.”
Njie, the speedster from Iona, has yet to play for the Flyers. He’s sitting out as the NCAA looks into eligibility issues.
Even without him the Flyers have developed a nine-man rotation and five of those players had steals Tuesday night.
Ironically, point guard Javon Bennett, who led the nation in steals as a freshman at Merrimack and has led the Flyers each of the past two seasons, had no thefts against ETSU and is fourth on the team in steals this season.
Bennett does lead the team in scoring, averaging 16 ppg to Montgomery’s 15.8.
Along with steals – and he’s second in the Atlantic 10 Conference, trailing only national leader Tyler Cochran of Rhode Island – Montgomery leads the Flyers in three-point accuracy. He is second in field goal percentage and rebounds.
The move to Dayton has suited him, Montgomery said.
He said playing in this program has given him his best college experience: “And I’m not just saying this because I’m wearing a Dayton jersey right now.
“It’s because of my teammates, my coaches, the community, the atmosphere. It’s everything. I just like it over here.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
‘I just took a little play off’
Montgomery said the Flyers’ defense is the key to all their success so far.
“And so far, I think, any time we get two turnovers in a row from a team, I feel we got them for the rest of the game. You can tell the pressure has got to them and they’re like just throwing the ball because they don’t want to get trapped.”
That two turnover scenario happened twice Tuesday night.
Early in the second half Jones forced ETSU guard Brian Taylor into a turnover in the paint that Montgomery quickly turned into a lay-up.
Just 18 seconds later, on the very next possession, Jones caused the Buccaneers’ Brayden Crump to lose the ball, and Bennett converted it into a lay-up to give UD a 57-38 lead with 15:29 left.
A little over three minutes later Derkack and Jones forced ETSU into back-to-back turnovers that UD turned into four more points.
Fittingly, it was Montgomery who got the Flyers final steal of the night.
Near midcourt with just over two minutes left, he lunged and poked the ball away from ETSU guard Allen Strothers. The deflection went downcourt where Derkack grabbed it, scored the lay-up and was fouled.
Meanwhile, back just beyond midcourt, Montgomery lay on his back, sprawled on the floor with his head briefly raised to watch the action. He was just a couple of feet in front of ETSU coach Brooks Savage and he was surrounded by a sellout crowd of 13,407.
He didn’t care. It was as if he were relaxing in his living room.
“When I hit the ball out I saw Derkack and Keonte in the 2-on-1 fast break,” he said. “I knew right then it was either gonna be a foul or two points for us. So I just took a little play off.
“I just lay back and waited for my teammates to come help me up. I felt pretty good just laying there.”
He bore the look of a satiated man, almost like a guy with a belly full of powered donuts. Except better. There would be no butt warming on this night.
From where he lay, he could see the distant scoreboard.
It was lit up with what would soon be a Flyers’ victory.
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