“He’s incredible,” Finn said. “I didn’t get a chance to meet him personally, but from everybody I talked to, he’s a great kid and super nice, which is something you always want from your superstar. You don’t want him to be a jerk. Obviously, he was super electric. It seemed like every week he was in the top 10 for doing something. It was awesome.”
Finn, a 7-foot center who played for Dayton from 2000-04, still holds the single-season field-goal percentage mark (128 of 181, 70.7, in 2002-03). He lost his consecutive field goals made record (18) to Josh Cunningham, who made 22 straight in 2017.
Finn also ranks 49th in school history with 1,003 points. Jalen Crutcher and Toppin passed him last season.
Sixteen years after his college career ended, Finn lives and works in Kansas City, Mo. That’s about a 3½-hour drive from his hometown of Hays, Kan.
Finn committed to Dayton in the spring of 2000, picking UD over in-state schools Kansas State and Wichita State. He made his decision two days after Ramod Marshall informed coach Oliver Purnell he would sign with the Flyers. Marshall scored 1,538 points in his career and, along with Finn and Keith Waleskowski, helped lead Dayton to one of its best four-year stretches. Dayton won 90 games from 2000-04 and played in the NCAA tournament in 2003 and 2004.
Finn has remained close to his Dayton teammates and saw Waleskowski a couple of months ago. He attended one game last season and picked a good one to see: the March 7 Senior Night victory against George Washington, the last game of the season.
Finn hoped to see the Flyers play in South Dakota this season, but Dayton withdrew from that event because of the rising COVID-19 numbers in the state. The coronavirus pandemic has hurt businesses across the country, but in many areas, it’s a good time to be in the real-estate business. Finn’s company, Clear Mortgage, is doing well.
Dan Helm, a student manager at UD during Finn’s years, runs the company’s Ohio branch, Finn said.
“We’re very fortunate, and I almost feel bad at times in celebrating success because so many people are hurting,” Finn said. “A lot of businesses have closed down. We’ve seen record months every month since this started. Money’s cheap right now. Interest rates are crazy. Everybody that bought last year is refinancing this year. The purchase market is still strong. There’s just not a lot of inventory here. We’ve seen a lot of growth. We’re expanding. We have a branch in Florida. We just opened a branch in Ohio. I just haven’t been able to spend any time on it because we’ve been busy here.”
Away from work Finn and his wife Adriana Bates, who played basketball at Brown University, are busy looking after their three boys: Sebastian, 6; Sawyer, 4; and Spencer, 1.
The two oldest boys are active in sports. Finn wonders if Sebastian is over-extended because he plays in two baseball leagues, soccer and football leagues and two different basketball leagues. He also does some indoor baseball work in the winter. Sawyer plays soccer and will play in a 3-on-3 basketball league in the winter where traveling and double-dribbling is common as the kids learn the game.
“They all like it,” Finn said. “I’m trying not to be the overbearing parent.”
Finn has been asked to help coach but said he doesn’t have the patience for that just yet. He does a lot of one-on-one coaching with his kids. All three boys are showing signs they will be as tall or almost as tall as Finn, one of the three 7-footers in UD history along with Wes Coffee (1989-92) and Bill Uhl (1953-56).
“They’re big,” Finn said. “They’re 99th percentile. Sebastian is one of the taller kids but he’s not like freakishly tall. Sawyer looks like he’s a first grader. He’s a monster. Then our baby is huge, too. If Sebastian doesn’t get as tall as me, I expect the other two to be just as tall.”
The boys have big shoes to fill — literally and figuratively — if they’re going to follow in the footsteps of their dad. Finn not only had a successful career at Dayton, he followed his college career with a decade in pro basketball in Europe. He played in Germany, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and Austria.
“I had a good experience,” Finn said. “I got to see a lot of things, meet a lot of people, make a little money. It got to a point I was still probably healthy enough where I could have played another couple years because— knock on wood — I was very fortunate to escape without any major knee or back issues or anything. The body still feel feels remarkably great for being almost 40 and almost 7 feet tall. It got to the point where it wasn’t as fun. It became a business. Being away from family and friends for 9-10 months out of the year was also kind of tough. Epecially if you’re in a place where you don’t really like it, it wears on you. I had a good run. I was happy with it. I was at peace with being done and kind of ready to start the next chapter of life.”
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