At a recent Bexley block party, he darted from a bounce house shouting, “Run, run Rudolph!”
Lately, he’s been chanting, “I believe I can fly,” unaware of the song’s full lyrics.
This brings me to a good question: What would be the perfect slogan for the 2025-26 Dayton Flyers?"
***
Former Dayton coach Archie Miller made “True Team” a slogan in 2014, and it lasted the rest of his tenure.
The University of Dayton uses “We Soar” in a current fundraising campaign.
I could offer these AI-generated slogans:
• “Fly High, Fight Hard!”
• “Wings Up, Game On!”
• Or “Dayton Rising, Nets Burning!”
Maybe the perfect slogan would copy the title from a 2025 Best Picture nominee. “A Complete Unknown” describes the Flyers and could apply to most of the college basketball teams around the country.
There are eight newcomers on a 12-man roster. Two of those newcomers (Damon Friery and Jaron McKie) are freshmen. One (Malcolm Thomas) redshirted last season as a freshman. Another (Bryce Heard) entered college a year early and would have been a freshman this year on a normal timeline.
I have talked to all of the newcomers, except the newest player, Keonte Jones. I also talked to people who know those eight players — their high school coaches, mostly — so I know about their skills and potential. What I don’t know is how they will mesh with Dayton’s four returning players and if there is enough talent to get Dayton where it wants to go: back to the NCAA tournament after a one-year absence and back to the top of the A-10 after falling short the last five seasons.
I doubt even Dayton coaches and players know that, for sure. For what it’s worth, Grant was optimistic when he talked at Atlantic 10 Conference Media Day on Tuesday.
“I think our team is a versatile group,” Grant said. “We have guys that can play multiple positions. I think we have several guys that, just with the way we play, will be able to fill that. We’ve got 12 scholarship guys, and they’re all competing as hard as they can right now to try to earn those minutes.”
Observations from A-10 Media Day
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
At A-10 Media Day in 2024, I talked to Archie Miller about the 10th anniversary of the 2015 team. He asked if would talk again in 2025 about the 10th anniversary of the 2016 team.
That’s what we did Tuesday. I wrote long stories every two weeks during the season for a special section in the newspaper. Anniversary stories work well.
I wrote about the 2014 team in 2024 and the 2015 team in 2025, and I’ll write about the 2016 team — the third of Miller’s four NCAA tournament teams at Dayton — at some point in the months ahead and the 2017 team a year from now.
Those were good years for Miller, who’s now in his fourth season at Rhode Island.
“That year, we were really anticipating having maybe our deepest team that we had ever had,” Miller said.
The 2015-16 team featured Dyshawn Pierre, Scoochie Smith, Kyle Davis, Kendall Pollard and Darrell Davis — five players from the seven-man team that won 27 games in 2015 and added Charles Cooke and Steve McElevene, who both redshirted the previous season. Four freshmen also contributed: Ryan Mikesell; Sam Miller; Xeyrius Williams; and John Crosby.
The group finished 25-8 and won a share of the A-10 regular-season championship. Looking back now, for me, the season is most notable because it’s the only season McElvene played. He died on May 12, 2016, at 20.
I asked Miller if he still thinks about McElvene, and he said, “All the time.”
• I talked to many A-10 coaches 1-on-1 after their press conferences. They don’t have the roundtable interviews they had a few years ago. Now you have to grab the coaches after they finish their press conference. Often, I was their last stop on a long parade of interviews.
An interview with new Virginia Commonwealth coach Phil Martelli Jr. stood out. I told him my favorite story about his dad, the longtime Saint Joseph’s coach who was fired in 2019 after 24 seasons.
At A-10 Media Day in 2017, I posted a photo of a tray of cookies next to a pair of tongs, a utensil that had just been featured in an episode of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
“I’ll never be able to grab a cookie with a tong after watching Curb Your Enthusiasm,” I wrote on Twitter with the photo.
The elder Martelli saw that Tweet and mentioned it to me during Media Day. Then a year later, he called me — someone he didn’t know but had talked to a few times — out of the blue to tell me his own “Curb Your Enthusiasm” story. I don’t remember all the details, but it involved sitting next to a talkative kid on an airplane and how Martelli felt like Larry David in a Curb scene.
Martelli Jr. knew the story as well. He also knows all about Dayton, UD Arena and the Flyers’ rivalry with VCU.
“We all love Dayton,” Martelli Jr. said. “I’ve been part of the First Four a couple times now at Niagara and Bryant. Before one of those games — I think we were playing Wright State — I’m standing in the tunnel (at UD Arena), and I started up a conversation with one of the security guards who had been there for a million years. As soon as I said, ‘Phil Martelli,’ he lit up. He said, ‘Oh my god, I stood here with your dad.’“
Looking ahead to the season
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
My new favorite team is Team Yellow, aka the Bexley Bananas. I joined the Bexley 30-and-over co-ed soccer league in the spring at the invitation of Danny Hurley (not that Danny Hurley), a Bexley city councilman. I met him because my son is the same age as his oldest. Almost everyone I hang out with these days has kids the same age.
I have played thousands of hours of basketball in the last three decades but had not played full-field soccer since my intramural days at Ohio University. The last time I scored a goal that meant anything I was a 17-year-old senior at Fayetteville High School.
Team Yellow was the second-worst team in the league last season, and we are the worst right now, but we have a great time (mostly at our postgame watering hole, T.T. Murph’s). I have only two goals — one in the spring and one in this fall season — but they brought back all the feelings from my high school career.
I mention the soccer league because we’re playing the defending champion, Team White, on Sunday. Team White’s central defender is John Roll, a standout hurdler at Fairmont High School back in the day (state runner-up to someone named Ted Ginn Jr.), and a big UD fan.I didn’t get a sniff of the goal in our last game against Roll. I met Roll — of course — because his son Luke is the same age as Chase and they attended the same preschool for two years.
Roll’s family owns two of the best seats in UD Arena — on the floor next to the tunnel and UD bench. I took a photo of John and his dad Pete slapping hands after the victory against Marquette last December.
I’m sure I’ll see the Rolls soon, along with the 13,405 other fans who fill UD Arena. Dayton has not yet announced if the 2025-26 season will be sold out, as the previous four seasons were, but I expect the 77-game sellout streak will continue.
Fans will first see Dayton in action in an exhibition game against Penn State on Oct. 19 at UD Arena. Another preseason game at home against Bowling Green follows on Oct. 27. Dayton opens the regular season Nov. 3 against Canisius at UD Arena.
I will get my first glimpse of the Flyers next Thursday. UD is opening a practice to the media, as they do once every preseason. I will do a head count to see who is practicing and who isn’t. That’s a key question every preseason.
Grant did say Tuesday that Jordan Derkack remains sidelined after undergoing foot surgery in June. He is hopeful the Rutgers transfer will return to practice in the next week or two.
I asked Grant if any other players have been sidelined in the preseason. He would only say, “We’re not whole yet,” because of injuries and illnesses.
Fast Break
Here’s other news that might interest Flyer fans:
🏀 I watched a YouTube video featuring DaRon Holmes II’s appearance at Denver Nuggets Media Day and put together this story. The former Flyer will play his first NBA preseason game Saturday.
🏀 Forbes.com wrote about former Dayton star Obi Toppin last week. The headline was: “Obi Toppin Believes In Pacers Frontcourt, And He’s A Key Part Of It.”
🏀 Former Dayton forward Ryan Mikesell, who’s playing with the London Lions in England this season, underwent back surgery in September.
🏀 What do you want to know about the Flyers?
I want to hear from you. Reach out to me directly at david.jablonski@coxinc.com with your questions and feedback on the team or this newsletter.
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