Key more or less said the same thing after he came off the Dayton Flyers’ bench against Duquesne for an 18-point effort and some final-minute heroics in a game that ended with a wild finish and an exhausting 77-76 victory at UD Arena.
The veteran 6-foot-8 post player — who transferred to UD last spring after a four-year, 121-game career at Ohio State — began this season on a strong note.
A cornerstone of a newlycobbled team, he started the first 16 games for the Flyers, something he wasn’t doing in his final year as a Buckeye.
But after three straight losses at the start of the Atlantic 10 schedule in early January, head coach Anthony Grant, looking for something to reignite his team, moved Key to the bench and inserted 7-foot-1 freshman Amaël L’Etang into the starting lineup.
The Loyola game at home was Key’s first in his new role and it came with a lot of bruises — physical and mental.
Early in the game there were a couple of moments on the sideline when UD coaches had animated conversations with him. At one point associate head coach Ricardo Greer walked down toward the end of the bench, motioned for Key to follow him and had him sit next to him not far from Grant.
In the sideline huddles early in the game, a subdued Key hung to the back.
When he got in the game, he was beginning to make contributions when he was undercut beneath the basket and took a hard spill onto his tailbone. As he lay there, Grant came out to check on him.
He tried to play in the second half, but said his back tightened up. He returned to the bench and didn’t play any more against the Ramblers or in the next game at Duquesne.
Since then ― until the last three games — his return to form had been slow.
The official word was that he was still recovering physically — and the back issue certainly was part of the problem — but you could sense it was more than that and in private Saturday, Key admitted that:
“It was tough. I’m not going to lie to you. It was definitely tough.
“I know AG was just trying to do anything he can to win — I understand that — but it was frustrating not playing.”
He talked about his midseason change in fortune during Saturday’s postgame press conference. He called it “a little slump” and then added:
“I tried to play hard and get back in the groove to how I was playing before …but once you sit out, you kind of lose your mojo, your energy.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
‘There’s a lot of opportunity’
Early in the season, Key played substantial minutes in the Flyers biggest games: 30 minutes in a victory over Northwestern; 29 minutes in a win over No. 6 Marquette; and 27 in a triumph over No. 2 UConn. He played 30-plus minutes against Cincinnati and 25 in a near upset of No. 5 Iowa State.
He scored in double figures in 11 of the first 12 games.
After his move to the bench, there were games he played just single-digit minutes: seven against Saint Joseph’s; eight versus St. Bonaventure; nine against Davidson.
In his first seven games as a sub, he averaged 4.1 ppg.
A shoulder injury as a junior at Ohio State — when he was averaging 10.8 points and 7.5 rebounds a game — had precipitated a move from the starting lineup there, too. Last season he came off the bench in 34 games.
With his OSU diploma in hand, he decided his basketball needed a fresh start and focused on a place he knew. The Flyers had recruited him in 2018 when he was a high school player back in Bay Shore, N.Y.
But then this January he was right back to where he had been at the end of last season.
While Austin Powers had to battle his arch nemesis, Dr. Evil, to get his mojo back, much of Key’s struggle was with himself.
But he said he had plenty of help from his teammates, his coaches and especially his family.
After every home game at UD Arena — as his Flyers teammates head back toward the players’ tunnel after slapping palms with the rowdy students in the Red Scare end of the Arena — Key would trek up into the stands to see his dad, Zed Sr. — sometimes his mom was there, too — and his girlfriend. They told him the same thing:
“My family would say, ‘Look, we’re always in you corner. We know you’re a good player. Just work hard in practice and then just come in and do what you do.’”
Grant and his staff had some heart-to-heart talks with him, too.
“It was more about helping him refocus and understand what we need from him,” Grant said in a private moment of his own after the game. “It was getting him to see what the opportunity is here and really what he wants to do moving forward.
“We helped him put that all together to understand there’s a lot left. There’s a lot of opportunity in terms of what you can do for this team and what you can do for yourself.
“It was about: ‘This is what you have to buy into.’”
After a moment of silence, Grant framed those thoughts with something he wanted to stress:
“He’s a good kid.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
Frantic ending
Saturday’s game ended on a roller-coaster ride with several good plays and two or three boneheaded ones in the final half-minute by the Flyers.
Once again, UD saw an opponent’s late-game rally erase their lead. Against Davidson they gave up a final 8-0 run by the Wildcats, who then lost on a knucklehead play of their own: A player taunting the Flyers got hit with a technical that resulted in five UD points — two free throws, an inbounds play lay-up and a foul that UD converted at the line — and a squeaker of a victory.
A 12-0 run by VCU on Feb 7 doomed Dayton in what would be a 73-68 loss.
Saturday, UD botched a five-point lead with 30 seconds left when guard Malachi Smith turned the ball over twice in the in the final 27 seconds.
Key was key in keeping the collapse from being fatal.
Following Smith’s first turnover, he slapped the ball out of the hands of Duquesne’s Jakub Necas, recovered the turnover and then was fouled by the flustered Dukes’ forward.
He made both free throws to give Dayton a bit of a cushion again.
In the end — after his bad pass gave Duquesne guard Cameron Crawford an easy layup to knot the score 76-76 with seven seconds left — Smith got redemption when he was fouled just one second later.
He made one of two free throws to give UD — after an errant three-point hoist by Duquesne at the buzzer — the 77-76 win.
Enoch Cheeks led Dayton with 19 points.
Key’s 18 points came in just 19 minutes of play. He made six of seven field goal attempts, went six for six from the free throw line and had six rebounds, five on the offensive glass.
And there was that final seconds steal that Grant called “huge.”
After the press conference, where he talked about just wanting to do “whatever I can now to help the team,” he headed back out to the court where his family waited for him.
He said his dad and his mom — who was a hoops star herself in high school and played at the University of Buffalo — had given him some advice the past six weeks that he had taken to heart:
“They said, ‘Your time will come.’”
And Saturday, it did.
Like Austin Powers, he now could say:
“I got my mojo back, Baby!”
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