“The ice helps,” the senior guard said.
If this is the Flyers’ version of Frozen, that would make Lear Dayton’s answer to Elsa, the star of the Disney film. She’s The Snow Queen who learned to harness her magical powers for good.
Lear led the Flyers again Thursday night with a game-high 20 points on 8-for-11 shooting. Playing a little over 23 minutes, she had just one turnover.
In the season opener three nights earlier at Illinois State – an 87-76 Flyers’ loss – she led UD with a career-high 22 points that included 3-for-5 shooting from three-point range and no turnovers in over 31 minutes of play.
This is the same player who averaged just 4.7 points per game last season and 4.1 the year before. And the same one who averaged 3.7 turnovers a game as a freshman.
“She’s killing it now,” Flyers coach Tamika Williams-Jeter said with a smile after the game. “She’s playing the best basketball of her career. She’s an offensive threat. She gives us defensive intensity, and she’s really worked on her turnovers.
“I’m just so proud of her and what she’s doing for us. She’s a team captain. She’s not one for a lot of words, but she’s a huge leader by example.
“She’s one of our smartest kids. You see that in the way she’s taken the g.p.a she first had when she came here and the standard she holds herself to now. She’s got something like a 3.4 in criminal justice. She’s an honor student who’s made multiple Dean’s Lists.
“And she’s the strongest kid on the team. She commits to the weight room. She’s got a six pack. She’s really cut.”
The most important thing about Lear though – especially in this day and age of the transfer portal, the lure of NIL money and the frequency with which players now leave one school for another on the belief there’s always something better elsewhere – is her loyalty.
She and senior walk-on Eleanor Monyek are the only two players who have been on each of the four teams Williams-Jeter has had since coming to UD for the 2022-23 season.
Those first two seasons were rebuilding years and there were a lot of losses both on the scoreboard and from the roster.
Monyek – who is not on scholarship and has played limited minutes in just 30 of the 93 games she’s been on the team – could have gone back to just being a student or moved to a lower level program where she’d be assured more of a chance to shine like she once did at her Illinois high school.
And Lear – who had started just 19 of 81 games coming into this season – could have followed some of her teammates to greener pastures at other D-I programs.
She said she never thought of it.
Credit: Erik Schelkun
Credit: Erik Schelkun
“I don’t even know how to enter the portal,” she said with dismissiveness. “NIL doesn’t really matter to me.
“I’m really big on loyalty. When I was a freshman, they took a chance on me here. Now I’m just trying to give back. I believe in honoring your commitment.”
A starter on her Thornwood High team just outside Chicago since she was a freshman, Lear starred and eventually drew interest from nearly 30 schools, including name programs like Illinois, Oklahoma, Penn State, LSU, Virginia and St Johns.
But once the fatigue she had been plagued with since sixth grade was diagnosed in high school as an iron deficiency – which can often bring with it everything from headaches to heart problems – she had some struggles on the court and in the classroom. And that’s when most big time programs backed off on their recruitment of her.
UD did not.
Williams-Jeter needed players – the cupboard was bare when she took over – and she saw something in Lear.
“Other schools quit on her, but we weren’t going to do that,” she said. “I told her when she came here it was going to be tough, and it was. But she stayed the course and matured on the court and off.
“She’s the most loyal kid on the team. She doesn’t run away from things.
“She and Eleanor bought in and have helped us build this back up.
“I’ll believe in Nayo Lear until the day she graduates. She’s everything I want a Flyer to be.”
‘It was not.’
Once Lear knew the cause of her health problems, she started getting IV infusions of iron. She took iron pills and changed her diet and claims now to even like spinach.
Listed at 5-foot-10 and thin, she built herself up in the weight room.
Last season when she took an elbow to the face in an early November game against Delaware State, she suffered a badly bruised nose and spent much of the season wearing a protective mask.
Her first game as a masked marvel was against No. 16 Duke in Durham, N.C.
Although the Flyers were routed, she came off the bench and was undeterred, hitting 4 of 5 shots.
It reminded you of the possibilities she showed in her very first game as a Flyer. She made her freshman debut at Providence and though the Flyers were roughed up, she came off the bench and made eight of nine field goals for 20 points.
“Back then I thought this was all going to be easy,” she said with a laugh Thursday night. “It was not.”
‘We All We Got’
Mercyhurst, which just moved up to D-I status in 2024 – was routed 125-39 in its season opener Tuesday night against No. 23 Michigan State in East Lansing. In that game, the Lakers had 36 turnovers.
Two nights later in Dayton they were struggling again and trailed by 17 points early in the second quarter. Then they went on an unexpected tear against the suddenly complacent Flyers and in just over four minutes had cut the UD lead to three, 26-23,
Williams-Jeter called time out to refocus her troops.
This year’s team has three transfers and several younger players with limited experience.
Asked how she’d characterize her team, Williams-Jeter grinned and gave a tongue-in-cheek assessment: “Young and dumb ... No, I better make that a little kinder. How about Dazed and Confused? That could be their movie.”
After the timeout the Flyers went on a 26-2 run over the next 10 minutes and 50 seconds.
Lear, who said the game has slowed down for her this season and is playing with more patience, scored nine of the points and Olivia Leung added 13 of her 14 points on the night.
Ajok Madol also had 14 points; Nicole Stephens had 10; and Fatima Ibrahim, a 6-foot-3 transfer from North Dakota, had nine rebounds, eight points and six blocked shots.
The one down side of the night was an apparent knee injury to sophomore transfer Jordyn Poole who left UD Arena on crutches. In her freshman season last year at Purdue, she missed much of the season with a stress fracture of her shin and then a high ankle sprain.
With Poole, a 5-7 point guard sidelined, more responsibility would fall on Stephens, the starting point guard, as well as Lear.
“Our slogan this year is ‘We All We Got,’” Lear said.
She’s tried to embrace that since she came here. It’s why she played out of position – as a point guard rather than a shooting guard – her first two years. That brought about many of the turnovers she suffered and the scrutiny that came with it.
“You do what you have to be part of the team.” she said.
She’s pushed her body to the limit at times and that’s why she wears the ice bags after the game.
And it’s why after this season she said her basketball is likely over. She’s not planning to try playing professionally.
“No, my body is screaming at me,” she smiled. “I’m going to graduate in May and after that I hope to be working in the cyber security field somewhere.”
When you have special powers, you harness them for the betterment of others whether it’s on the court …or off.
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