Christmas is right around the corner, at least in the mind of a 6-year-old, who has no sense of the calendar and has skipped Halloween and Thanksgiving in his mind. My son Chase bugs me constantly about his gift list. He tells me the list is complete and then updates it five minutes later, telling me to scratch off previous toys. Chase wants (at this moment): • The Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie Chase Transforming Cruiser. • Beyblades, the spinning top toy. • Transformers Rescue Bots Toys. The list continues, at least in his head. I, on the other hand, am a 47-year-old dad with few needs. All I want right now is to cover some basketball games. I got to do that Sunday at UD Arena. Dayton lost 98-74 to Xavier in an exhibition game. The Flyers kept it close for about 14 minutes before Xavier took control. Xavier’s Sean Miller played a nine-man rotation. Dayton’s Anthony Grant used 11 players. Xavier’s starters played a bit more than Dayton. Even so, no one left the arena thinking the lesser team won. Xavier looked more like the team that won 27 games in Miller’s first season two years ago and less like the one that suffered the program’s first losing season (16-18) since 1995-96 last season. The Musketeers were picked to finish third in the Big East preseason poll this week. The bright spots for Dayton were: • Malachi Smith surviving a number of tumbles to the floor one season after suffering a season-ending knee injury in the first half of the season opener. • Amaël L’Etang, a 7-foot-1 freshman center from France, making his first 3-point attempt. • Zed Key scoring an efficient nine points by making 3 of 3 field-goal attempts and 3 of 4 free throws. Stats from one game don’t matter too much, of course. Koby Brea made 1 of 11 3-pointers in Dayton’s two exhibition games last season and then led the nation in 3-point shooting. We’ll learn a bit more about Dayton when it plays Ashland University in its second and final exhibition game at 6 p.m. Saturday. Then the Flyers will try to win their season opener for the 20th straight year, facing St. Francis University (Pa.) on Nov. 4. It’s harder than ever to predict what kind of success Dayton will have in any given season because of the roster turnover every team deals with in the age of the transfer portal. I still made the attempt, doing my annual series of interviews with the UD basketball experts on Monday for a story that we’ll publish Nov. 3. I talked to Larry Hansgen, Keith Waleskowski, Brooks Hall and Matthew Schwade. “It’s going to be one of those years where it’s going to be fun — well not fun for a lot of fans — because it is going to be so unpredictable,” Hall said. “It actually will probably be game to game for a while in terms of what team we see on the court because there’s just a lot of new pieces. We lost so much experience. And not only that, the main thing we’ve lost with that experience was the chemistry. At this level, chemistry is so crucial. Chemistry is kind of that tiebreaker when teams are even. That chemistry gets you through when you’re not playing well. Like yesterday, when the ball is not going in the hoop and Xavier’s knocking down everything, chemistry and defined roles are what allow you to overcome days like that. And right now they’re still building chemistry. They’re still defining roles.”
Exhibition game makes an impact in multiple ways Dayton Daily News columnist Tom Archdeacon and I often consult about what we’re focusing on in our stories after games. That way we don’t overlap too much. I wrote about the basketball Sunday. Tom wrote about the bigger picture, that the game was shining a spotlight on mental health. Anthony Grant’s postgame press conference went back and forth between talking about both subjects. “At the end of the day you don’t have to go through what my wife and I went through for this to touch you,” Grant said. “I’d venture to say everybody in this room knows somebody that has had to deal with their own mental health crisis.” Dayton players wore T-shirts that read “Take Hope to the Hoop” in pregame warmups Sunday. The players have also participated in discussions, filmed for use on social media, about mental health. “Whenever I’m going through something,” Dayton guard Javon Bennett said in one video, “I’ll just pick up the phone and call my dad or my brother, and we can just chop it up. It’s hard to be down on yourself when you have those people around you.” “After every practice, we have a gratitude circle where all hold hands,” guard Enoch Cheeks said, “and people who are willing step up and say what they’re grateful for and speak their piece.”
Maui Invitational right around the corner I leave four weeks from tomorrow for the Maui Invitational, flying from Columbus to Salt Lake City and then on to Kahului Airport on Maui. Please consider subscribing to the Dayton Daily News to support our coverage of the tournament and the Flyers throughout the season. The number of beat writers who get to travel to every game, like myself, is dwindling. No one else in the A-10 gets to do it. Speaking of Maui, my credential got approved this week, and I received an email from tournament officials with an itinerary for coaches and media. The coaches will hold a press conference at 8 a.m. Nov. 24, at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa. This is one day before the tournament begins. They will pose for a photo with tournament surfboards at 8:20 a.m. and participate in a charity free-throw contest with Maui youth to raise money for local schools at 8:30 am. I did not witness the free-throw contest in 2019 when Dayton last played in Maui because I was traveling that day. I’d put my money on North Carolina coach Hubert Davis or Connecticut coach Dan Hurley winning this year. Davis shot 81.9% as a player with the Tar Heels. Hurley shot 72.5% at Seton Hall. Penny Hardaway, of Memphis, should contend as well. I won’t count out Anthony Grant, but he shot 65.9% in four seasons with the Flyers. This week, I put together a long story on Dayton’s Maui Invitational history that will run on Nov. 17. For the story, I sent a text message to Ryan Mikesell, a redshirt senior in 2019, asking him to tell me the story behind him, Obi Toppin and Ibi Watson jumping off the Black Rock Beach cliffs in Maui two days before their first-round game against Georgia. “If I remember correctly,” Mikesell wrote from Germany, “I don’t even think we asked the coaches or anything beforehand. I think we just went for it. I think it was one of those things like ‘instead of asking for permission, just ask for forgiveness’ if they said something. But with that group of guys that we had, I think the coaches allowed us to all hang out and take advantage of being in Hawaii.”
Here’s other news that might interest Flyer fans: 🏀 There was heartbreak across college basketball Thursday when news broke about the death of South Florida coach Amir Abdur-Rahim, 43. According to the school, he “was undergoing a medical procedure at a Tampa-area hospital when he passed away due to complications that arose during the procedure.” Adbur-Rahim succeeded former UD coach Brian Gregory at South Florida in 2023. 🏀 Brea made 2 of 10 3-pointers in intrasquad scrimmage played in front of Kentucky fans last week but looked more like his normal sharp-shooting self Thursday, making 3 of 5 3-pointers and scoring 15 points off the bench in a 123-52 exhibition game victory against Kentucky Wesleyan. 🏀 Joe Rexrode, of The Athletic, published a 2025 NCAA Tournament Bracket Watch on Friday. He gave the A-10 three bids and listed Dayton as a No. 8 seed playing No. 9 seed Saint Mary’s.
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. Also be sure to follow our Flyer Nation Facebook page for the latest news on the team. I’ll have updates, photos and videos on Twitter, as well. | 
