Forced to fly into Dayton the morning of the game because a monster snowstorm had closed all East Coast airports Sunday and Monday; playing without two top players who were injured; and after trailing by 15 points in the first half, the Rams beat all those odds and stunned the Dayton Flyers, 81-76, in overtime.
It was UD’s third straight loss in just a six-day span.
While the first two setbacks came on a trip to Philadelphia, this one was at the usually insular confines of home and when Rhode Island finally took the lead on an uncontested layup with five minutes left, the Flyers were booed by some in the sold-out crowd.
When Rhode Island’s Keeyan Itejere, getting no resistance from UD defenders in overtime, forcefully dunked an offensive rebound with 40 seconds left to put the Rams up by four, many fans had seen enough and started streaming to the exits.
The mood in the Dayton dressing room afterward was mostly numbness and silence said one person who was there.
Redshirt sophomore Jaiun Simon, one of the players who’s been with the program the longest in these ever-on-the-move transfer portal times, also is one of the team’s most introspective thinkers.
Afterward he took the loss hard: “Everyone seems kind of lost. We don’t know what’s going on with our team.”
When Flyers coach Anthony Grant heard those comments, he said he thought Simon, who finished with seven points and four rebounds, was speaking more for himself out of frustration than for the whole team.
But then, in so many words Grant admitted the team did seem lost, having drifted away not only from that night’s game plan but its overall identity of resilience and gritty resolve that early in the season fueled wins over Marquette, Georgetown, and Florida State and provided so much promise for what lie ahead.
Time and again in his postgame comments Tuesday, Grant took the blame for the loss.
He said he had to do a better job coaching.
He said the team’s failures — and some of them, he hinted, may be about certain players worrying about individual goals and issues rather than the greater good of the team — were all on him.
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
“I’ve got to do better,” Grant, who’s in his ninth year at the helm of the team he once played for, said quietly. “ That’s my job to get them ready … I’ve got to do better.”
A special place
Miller was given the head coaching job at Dayton in 2011 when he was just 32, making him one of the youngest Division I head coaches in the game.
He thought of that Tuesday night when asked if he still had special feelings about UD even though he left here nine years ago.
“It’s kind of hard not to have feelings,” he said as his wife Morgan — who said she had had an early dinner here with her “girlfriends,” before the game — leaned against a wall nearby.
Their daughter Leah, who had been a regular at games as a grade schooler here, was not around. She’s now a junior gymnast at LSU and has twice been named a World College Gymnastics Association Academic All-American and gotten similar recognition from the SEC.
“Obviously, this is a special place for me and my family,” Miller said. “And I would center it not on basketball as much as I would the people.
“The longer you go in this business, the more you really learn to appreciate the friendship and, to be quite honest with you, the people that allowed you to do certain things.”
He especially singled out former UD president Dan Curran and former athletics director Tim Wabler.
“I was given this opportunity at 32,” he said, then smiled. “I’m not 32 anymore. Looking back at the opportunity, it’s kind of unheard of that you skipped a lot of steps to get to this place.”
He admitted it wasn’t easy when he first started, although his teams never had a losing record at UD.
The Flyers were 20-13 his first season and 17-14 with an 11th place finish in the A-10 his second year. Then came three years with national rankings and four straight trips to the NCAA Tournament, including a run to the Elite Eight.
He said, “Once we were able to break through … It created a great environment for everybody and the city of Dayton.”
And that’s when he got to the part where he didn’t want to offend anyone at Rhode Island, where he’s in his fourth season after spending four years guiding the Indiana Hoosiers following his UD days.
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
“This is one of the most special places you can coach basketball or play, regardless of (where you are in) America, or the league you’re in. It doesn’t really matter.
“When you play here or coach here it ultimately will always be your favorite place.
“Don’t put that into words because I’m at a place now, but ultimately when I’m dead and in the grave, they’ll look back on it and say, ‘He probably liked that place the best, I’m sure.’
“This is the place that gave me the start.”
‘That’s on me’
Grant knows all about playing here — his 1984 team made it to the Elite Eight — and he knows about coaching here.
His 2019-20 team led by Obi Toppin, went 29-2, was ranked No. 3 in the nation and would have been a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament had the COVID pandemic not cancelled the entire postseason.
Credit: David Jablonski
Afterward Grant was named the national college coach of the year.
Now there is a faction of the Flyer Faithful — or maybe not quite so faithful — who think it’s time to look for a new coach.
And a night like Tuesday only fuels that discontent.
The Flyers at times looked lost, especially in the second half, when the Rams, after some adjustments at intermission, figured out ways to beat the UD press which hampered them early.
In the process Rhode Island ramped up its own defensive pressure and got more aggressive on offense, especially inside.
Every chance he could, Tyler Cochran, the Rams well-travelled guard who previously was at Northern Illinois, Ball State, Toledo and Minnesota, barreled down the court and bulled to the hoop.
He was fouled nine times and made 12 of 17 free throws and finished with 21 points.
Meanwhile the Rams inside players — especially 6-foot-6 Jahmere Tripp, who led the way with 24 points — dominated.
In the overtime alone, Rhode Island overpowered the Flyers four times in the post, scoring on a put-back dunk, an alley-oop dunk, a tip in off a miss and an offensive rebound and put back.
When Simon said “we’re out of whack now,” he was right on the money.
The most concerning situation is the talk about some players being “disconnected” and worrying about other things than, as Grant put it, “How do we win today? How do I help?”
He promised to “work my tail off” to find a group of guys who would be committed to working together, playing for a common goal and understanding their “responsibility to the university, to the community, to everybody.”
“We didn’t honor that today,” he said. “And that’s on me.”
‘All about the game’
The only other time Miller brought a Rhode Island team into UD Arena to play the Flyers was two years ago and his Rams were routed 96-62 by Grant’s team.
In a private moment before slipping back into the dressing room Tuesday night, Miller admitted he “hated” coming back here as an opponent: “It sucks.
“You fly in, like you’ve done a thousand times before and get on the bus, but it’s a real eerie feeling. You’re the visitor now. At that point you try to think not just about the basketball, but about seeing friends, the things like that.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
Tuesday he saw several of them and was embraced after the game by everybody from UD band director Dr. Willie Morris to major Flyers boosters Ron and Andrea Morton.
“But when the ball goes up you forget about all that,” he said “Then it’s all about the game.”
You could tell that Tuesday as he worked the sideline, same as he did when he was here — pacing grimacing, gesturing wildly, giving players pep talks and pats on the butt and sometimes delivering an earful of pull-no-punches appraisal — all in an effort to will them to win.
It can be an exhaustive way to coach, but it’s the only way he knows how. It worked when he was here with the Flyers and Tuesday night it worked for the first time when he was on the visitors end of the floor.
“I’ve only been back here twice, both times as an opponent and you’ve got the game on your mind,” he said. “I’d love to come back here one day soon and not have a basketball in my hands.”
For the Flyers, that would have been great had it been the case already Tuesday night.
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