The University of Dayton athletics director didn’t want to read Archie Miller’s book, he just wanted to keep reading him.
It was a few days before the 2011 Final Four in Houston and Wabler was about to make one of the most important and certainly most scrutinized decisions of his job at UD:
He was hiring a men’s basketball coach.
Brian Gregory had left for Georgia Tech and as Wabler set his sights on a replacement, he embraced one thought:
“I was thinking, ‘We’ve got a good program, but you know what? It’s time to make a move!’ ”
Wabler and former associate AD Dave Harper were holed up in a conference room at a Houston hotel interviewing candidates when Miller came in.
Wabler chuckled as he remembered the encounter: “He came with this book about this thick.”
He stretched out his hand so there were five or six inches between his thumb and the tip of his middle finger: “He said it had a part on player development and one on program development and another on team development.
“This was their (the Miller family) playbook on how to build a program. It’s how his brother (Arizona coach Sean Miller) did it. And you could tell he was gonna live by that book — that it was his playbook — and it was great that he had a plan.
“He wanted me to look at it, but I just kept putting it to the side. It was more fun to talk to him about how he was going to develop the program and learn what was important to him.
“You saw the passion, the commitment and I’ve got to tell you, that made a real connection. We talked a couple of hours and afterward it was like ‘Wow!’
“We had a short list and we worked through it in Houston and then in Atlanta, but I kept going back to that conversation with Archie.
“I just felt this was the right person and the right time.”
Dayton hired Miller, and as the past four seasons have proved, Wabler was right.
The Flyers have gone 90-47 in that span and been to three postseason tournaments. Two years ago they advanced to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. This past season, with only seven bonafide players, they went 27-9 and made the tournament’s round of 32.
A proud Daytonian
Sitting outside a Wayne Avenue coffee shot a couple of mornings ago, Wabler was reflecting back over his UD career, which began in the early 1970s as a right-handed “drop ball” pitcher from Fountain Avenue and Chaminade High School and ended this past Sunday when, at age 63, he retired as the school’s AD.
The fact that he was the school’s first athletics director born and raised here was not lost on him:
“I’d get a little bit of a chill when I’d hear Doug Hauschild (UD’s director of athletic communications) use that term ‘first Daytonian to be athletics director.’ I’m very proud of being from Dayton, Ohio. This school, these teams, they mean a lot to people here.
“And little things always happened to remind me of those connections.
“One of the letters I got when I was named the athletics director came from Jack Kussman, a childhood friend of my father’s. It was very touching.
“He said he could remember tossing a baseball with my dad when they were kids on Demple Avenue over in Lower East Dayton. He talked about how cool it was for him to have that memory and then to see me get the opportunity to be the athletics director at ‘THEIR University of Dayton.’
“I kept that letter because it’s been a little bit of a touchstone for me. And I’ve got to tell you, every once in a while I picture those two guys — my dad (Bob) passed away, but Jack’s still here — and I say, ‘I hope they’re smilin.’ ”
They should be.
During Wabler’s seven years as AD, folks have had plenty to smile about when it comes to Dayton athletics.
Led by a stable of good coaches, UD teams have won 29 conference championships in eight different sports and made 21 NCAA Tournament appearances. This past school year Dayton won the Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup for finishing first among the 14 Atlantic 10 Conference schools in the all-sports standings.
The overall grade-point average of UD athletes has risen to 3.31 and the graduation rate is one of the highest of any school in the nation. External fundraising rose to over $6.7 million last school year, another record.
Still, basketball is the bell cow at Dayton and what Wabler may be remembered for most is his hiring of Miller, who has reinvigorated the school’s storied tradition.
“He pays rightful respect to the past,” Wabler said, “but at the same time it’s been, ‘Let’s go! Let’s make our own memories, our own history.’ ”
‘Little bit of swagger’
Growing up in the Five Oaks area of Dayton, the son of a tool and die engineer and a homemaker, Wabler listened to UD basketball games on the radio and occasionally saw one on TV, but he never attended one until he came to school there.
His older brother Bob had gone to UD and then he arrived to pitch for the Flyers.
He started all four years, was the pitching MVP for three seasons and the team captain as a senior. After graduation, he worked at the Arthur Andersen accounting firm in Cincinnati for four years and then for Dayton Power & Light for 11.
He came to UD in the early 1990s, working first in the development office and then joining new AD Ted Kissell as an associate director overseeing some of the financial areas of the job. When Kissell retired in 2008, Wabler, who is more low key and measured than his predecessor, took over.
Upon hiring Miller, who was 32 at the time and one of the youngest coaches in major college basketball, Wabler said he formulated a plan:
“I think when you get to a certain age, you start thinking about an end game to your career. But I thought it was really important that I spend the first four years here with Archie.
“If you looked at the recruits and the freshmen that left the year he came in, you had to figure that in year three and four there would be some real ups and downs, whether it was on the court or off. Because you don’t have enough time to recruit when you’re in a transition like that, I thought it was important I jump in that foxhole with him and make sure I’m there those four years.
“But even with the curveballs he was thrown the last two years, he hit ‘em out of the park.”
Of course there were some bad times, too, beginning with the dismissal of the team’s two big men — Devon Scott and Jalen Robinson — after multiple transgressions including theft from dorm rooms, a crime that got both jail time.
“That’s nothing you want to go through, but the decision at the end was pretty cut and dried,” Wabler said. “You bring kids in and you try to help them move from teen-ager to adulthood and we went long and hard to try to help them. But for a variety of different reasons it just didn’t work out.”
Another dismissal came over the summer when popular strength and conditioning coach Paul Ivkovich was involved in a fatal auto accident where alcohol was allegedly involved.
Wabler has not let many coaches go. The last higher-profile one was a young women’s volleyball coach under whom the recently stellar program floundered in his one year at the helm.
In his place Wabler brought back Tim Horsmon, who had built the program into a regular NCAA Tournament participant before he left for Maryland for six years. In his second season back, he’s revived UD volleyball again.
Several other programs are perennial powers, especially women’s basketball under Jim Jabir, which has been to six straight NCAA Tournaments and reached the Elite Eight last season.
“We’ve always been known to be really good academically, but I think now we’re known for our competitive success on the field of play, as well, and I’m proud of that,” Wabler said.
“There’s a little bit of swagger down there now and it feels good.”
Healthy and happy
Wabler said he feels the athletic department is healthier than it’s ever been and that makes it a good time to go.
And while we’re on the subject of health, he says his is fine, as well.
When he announced in July that he’d retire in two months, a move that took many by surprise, there was speculation he might have some health concerns.
“I’m all good,” he smiled. “And it’s because I have my health now that I think it’s a good time to go.”
He also admitted there are a number of issues coming up on the college landscape — especially with the press for autonomy by the five power conferences — that will require decisions at every school not in them.
“Down the way, some of the decisions will impact the school for years to come and I figured why should I make them when someone else is going to have to implement them,” he said. “That didn’t feel like the right thing to do. So it felt like this was the right time professionally and personally to retire.”
While he said he is going to miss the people most, he finally will get to spend more time with his wife Arlene, a Centerville school teacher who has been with him since they were high school sweethearts.
They have two daughters, two grandchildren and another on the way. They plan to travel, hike, ride bikes, he’ll play golf and they’ll do whatever else comes up, he said:
“Obviously, I’m just kind of tip-toeing into retirement. Forty some years ago Arlene and I decided to get married and that was the only plan. Now it’s like we’re revisiting that. The idea is let’s not have a plan and let’s just figure it out as we go.”
Once again, he’s not going by the book.
About the Author