Dayton Flyers will play in NCAA tourney in late teammate’s home state

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Dayton senior point guard Scoochie Smith saw that comment and thought it was fitting his team will get to play not far from McElvene's hometown, Fort Wayne, Ind., in the NCAA tournament. Dayton (24-7) earned a No. 7 seed on Sunday and will play No. 10 seed Wichita State (30-4) on Friday at Banker's Life Fieldhouse in Indianpolis.

Ten months after McElvene’s death, the team will return to his home state to play its biggest game of the season. Shoals will be there, senior forward Kendall Pollard said. She was in Pittsburgh for the A-10 tournament and planned to travel to see the team wherever it played in the big dance. She won’t have to travel far.

Her presence will mean a lot to the players because McElvene means a lot to them.

“Steve is definitely going to be in our minds when we’re playing,” Smith said.

Four straight: The last time Dayton played in three straight NCAA tournaments (1965-67), it finished 21-9 the next season and played in the NIT. UD won the 1968 NIT. Don May was the star of that team, averaging 23.3 points per game as a senior.

Dayton’s seniors traveled a tough road back to the tournament, but all the experts had them as a lock entering Selection Sunday, and the experts were right. Smith, Pollard and Kyle Davis will be the first players in UD history to play in four straight NCAA tournaments.

“It’s a great feeling,” Davis said. “Me, Kendall and Scoochie came in with the mindset of setting the bar high for this program. It paid off.”

Proud alum: Graduate assistant manager Brian Frank, who played at Kent State, attended the Mid-American Conference championship game Saturday in Cleveland with Brian Walsh, UD's assistant director of basketball operations. Frank played at Akron.

Kent beat Akron 70-65 to earn a NCAA tournament berth. It is a No. 14 seed and will play No. 3 UCLA on Friday in Sacramento, Calif.

“We have a saying at Kent that tradition never graduates,” Frank said, “and we went back to support the guys that are playing there now.”