That’s how the 6-foot guard felt last spring when the University of Dayton women’s basketball program imploded soon after the 26-6 season and a second-round loss in the NCAA Tournament.
Head coach Shauna Green left for Illinois and took two of the most promising players with her. Five players – four of them starters – graduated and three more transferred elsewhere.
Suddenly, the top six scorers, the top six rebounders and all five starters were gone.
That left just four players – all averaging less than 11 minutes and 2.5 points per game – on the roster. One was Perry.
It was the second time in her career she’d been caught up in a program experiencing a mass exodus.
The first time – four seasons ago at Auburn — she was one of the people “jumping off.” After playing in the first three games of her 2019-20 freshman season, she left the Tigers program, which she’d chosen after first making recruiting visits to Michigan, Ohio State, North Carolina, N.C. State, Wake Forest and Cincinnati and also seriously considering Kentucky.
Soon eight players had left the Auburn program and the following season – after the Tigers went 0-16 in the Southeastern Conference – coach Terri Williams Flournoy was fired.
“When she signed, she said it really felt like home” her dad, DeAngelo Perry, said during a break on his construction job the other day. “But Maliya’s a real family-oriented person and she was 10 ½ hours from home.”
Although she won’t go into detail, Perry said it was more than homesickness that drove her to leave:
“This was more about my mental health. I don’t want to get into too much depth about it, but the culture of the program just wasn’t there. There as a lot of stuff going on behind closed doors.
“It took a lot to go into the office and tell all the coaches who just recruited you that it wasn’t the right fit and, basically, I didn’t want to play there anymore.
“They think you’re just a freshman and you don’t know what you’re talking about. But I’ve been a mature person all my life and I know when something isn’t right. And at the end of the day, I knew if I wanted to be a better person, a better player, I had to leave.”
That’s when she did think about home.
And when it came to college basketball, she realized home was the Dayton Flyers program.
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
‘New door opening up’
“I loved Dayton since I was in eighth grade,” she said. “They were the first to offer me a scholarship, back when I was just a 14 or 15-year-old kid. I always loved their program and the tradition they had.”
Even though she grew up in Reynoldsburg, she said had often visited UD Arena:
“I used to come to games all the time. Our high school coach would bring our whole team.
“I loved watching that (2016-17) team with Saicha (Grant Allen) and No. 24 …(Lauren) Cannatelli. I loved watching her play.”
Her dad recalled UD, too” I remember the guy who first recruited her (Jim Jabir), he preached family. And that’s big with us, too. But then he ended up stepping down and we didn’t know which way the program was going.”
And so Maliya headed to Auburn, which had gone 22-10 and made the NCAA Tournament the year before she came.
In her freshman debut, she played 11 minutes and scored five points for the Tigers. She played in the next two games, but by December she was at Dayton.
She sat out the rest of the season to meet NCAA transfer rules and in the two years that followed, she had a modicum of success. She’s played in 42 games and scored 76 points, but never started and averaged just 7.6 minutes a game.
“When everybody left after last season, I definitely was thinking about leaving, too,” she said. “But I love the school and I finally thought the best thing to do would be to trust the process and see who they brought in first.”
When UD hired Tamika Williams-Jeter it was somebody Perry knew and respected.
“She’s a legend in Ohio,” said Perry, whose younger sister Mya committed to Ohio State in January of 2021, when Williams-Jeter was a Buckeyes assistant coach.
“It would have been pretty stupid of me to pass up such a great experience with a great coach, just to hope something would be better someplace else.
“The four of us who stayed decided we were gonna stick with Coach Meek and the new team and ride it out.
“The way I see it, this is a new door opening up and we just need to walk through it and have an amazing season that surprises people.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
‘It’s our job’
When she was hired in late March, Williams-Jeter had to hustle to fill the Flyers suddenly depleted roster that would end up losing 10 players from the previous season.
She brought in four transfers and two freshman, though one of the newcomers – freshman Saija Cleveland – will miss the season with a knee injury. That leaves UD with just nine scholarship players.
In the preseason poll released Tuesday, Atlantic 10 coaches picked the Flyers to finish 10th. Over the past dozen years, UD had never been selected to finish other than first or second.
While an early guess at the starting five would be transfers Taisaya Kozlova (Maryland), Sydney Freeman (Ball State) and Anyssa Jones (Ohio State) and returnees Destiny Bohanon and Mariah Perez, Perry is in the mix and is going to be counted on heavily.
“She has an extremely high basketball IQ and she won a lot of games at Pick Central, so she knows what it takes to win,” Williams-Jeter said of Perry, whom she has pressed to get in better shape, commit fully to all the aspects of preparation and be open to playing different positions.
She said in the last month, she’s seen Perry make a real transformation:
“I told her some of the disappointments from past seasons are on her, too. That you can’t blame every other coach, when the outcome is the same. I know it’s not always easy to be challenged like that, but we need her to step up if we are going to be successful.”
Williams Jeter said all four returnees are crucial in helping shape the culture of this team:
“The four of them remember being in a winning gym here and what it feels like. Whether they played or not, they took something from that. They were practicing against Whitehead, Giancone, Bradshaw and Whalen (the four, since-graduated senior starters.)
“They know what the crowd at the Arena should look like and how the starting lineup is called.
“They know how hard to go in practice in order to win in the A-10 and go to the NCAA Tournament. They bring so much to the table.”
Perry understands that, too:
“Part of my responsibility is just in keeping the tradition alive. Dayton has always been a great program. We have to help the new people coming in understand that. The women who came before us kept that tradition going and now it’s our job. It’s my job.”
In the process she believes this could be the season she has been hoping for.
“I’m proud of her for hanging in there,” her dad said. “She has kept working, even when things didn’t turn out how she planned.
“I’ve told her to be patient. To relax. But when her name is called, she has to be ready.
“It only takes one year to get your name out there. One year to turn everything around.”
And if that happens, Maliya Perry will be having the conversation she expected to be having four years into her college career.
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