Doug Hauschild, Dayton’s longtime sports information director, offered local media a rare opportunity Tuesday. He made every player on the Dayton Flyers men’s basketball roster available for interviews before practice at the Cronin Center.

I made the most of the 45-minute session, talking to all 12 scholarship players and the six walk-ons. I wanted to ask C.J. Napier, the Bishop Fenwick graduate who played four seasons at Ohio Northern, about the story behind his decision to play for the Flyers. I wanted to talk to the seven newcomers about their first experience playing in front of a sold-out crowd at UD Arena on Sunday.

I also used the time to ask every player about how they chose their uniform number and about their first memories of dunking, a story I last wrote five years ago before Obi Toppin’s first season. Those two stories will run in late November. The uniform question brought about an interesting answer from one player, but I can’t mention it yet because it would spoil a surprise.

Marvell Allen also impressed me by saying he first dunked in the sixth grade. I’m in like 36th grade and haven’t dunked.

My phone battery barely survived these interviews. We also talked to coach Anthony Grant about the first exhibition game against Ohio State and the exhibition game Saturday against Cedarville.

“I was pleased with the way our guys responded to their first exposure to UD Arena and 13,000 (fans),” Grant said. “With so many new guys, this was our first exposure to outside competition. We’re not where need to be with the schedule that we have, but I think we’re moving in the right direction from where we were two weeks ago.”

Respect goes both ways in Cedarville, Dayton exhibition

On Tuesday, I talked to Cedarville University coach Pat Estepp, whose team plays the Flyers at 2 p.m. Saturday. I’ve known him since his first season. I double checked that by searching for his name and my name in the Springfield News-Sun archive and learned I wrote about his first loss as a head coach in December 2008. I was then more seven years into my run with Cox Ohio, now Cox First Media. Estepp’s team won its first eight games that season and was ranked No. 4 in NAIA Division II before losing to No. 18 Rio Grande.

”It was pretty unlikely we were going to go undefeated,” Estepp said then. “That was never an expectation.”

Estepp, now in his 16th season as head coach after eight seasons as an assistant, still has a sense of humor. For a story that ran in the Dayton Daily News today, I asked him about UD fans, who were asked to treat Ohio State with respect on Sunday because of the circumstances of the charity game.

“I have a tremendous amount of respect for their fan base,” Estepp said, “and even though they’ll ride me as a lowly D-II coach for two hours on Saturday, it is so much fun.”

Estepp wasn’t the only one who remembered being heckled by the UD fans, most likely the Red Scare student section near the visitor’s bench.

“I remember,” said Tom TenHove, whose son Conner played against the Flyers in 2019 and 2021, on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “They were brutal!”

Despite the reception they’ll get by a few fans, Dayton likes playing its neighbor from the east.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for the program,” Grant said. “I’ve got a lot of respect for the university.”

‘The best version of ourselves’

At the end of our interview Tuesday, Grant asked how my move into a new house in Bexley went the previous week. I told him it was over — we’ve been living on Remington Road for a week now — but that it was brutal. I probably spent 15 hours moving stuff up and down steps, out the front door and then into and out of moving vans or cars before repeating the process across the street at the new house.

Then there was more work as we realized how much of our junk wouldn’t fit into the new house, which is significantly smaller. I decided to throw out my entire press pass collection, all but my very first newspaper clips and all my media guides. Everything flew into a dumpster I rented. I feel much lighter. If only I could shed a few pounds the same way.

I also need room for 1,500 UD Arena books that will be delivered sometime in the next few weeks. I was told yesterday by Post Printing in Minster they are working on printing plates for my book and that they would give me a printing date today or Monday. They will go on sale soon after I receive them.

The book ends with the 2022-23 season, though there’s very little from that season in it. I had hoped the Flyers would write a happy final chapter, but last year was not that. From what I saw Sunday in a 78-70 loss to Ohio State, this year could be the year fans have long awaited. Dayton looked capable of reaching its goals. All 12 players had positive moments.

Enoch Cheeks, who made 5 of 5 3-pointers in the first half, was the big star. DaRon Holmes II got off to a good start with 10 early points but then had some rough moments with a team-high four turnovers, including two travel calls as he worked for shots in the paint. Javon Bennett sparked a comeback in the second half by being a pest on defense but missed all four of his 3-point atte3mpts. The last of the scholarship players to see action, Marvel Allen, showed poise by making four straight free throws to tie the game in the second half before Ohio State took control for good.

All in all, the Flyers did enough to make everything think this could be the year that last year wasn’t. We tried to get some specifics from Grant about what he liked and didn’t like Sunday when we talked to him on Tuesday, but he didn’t want to draw any grand conclusions from those 40 minutes.

“I think some things that we saw defensively will help us continue to move the needle and get better,” Grant said, “and there were some things we learned offensively. For me, it’s just about trying to get ready for two weeks from now. We are our opponent right now. We’ve got to make sure that we continue to become the best versions of ourselves.”

Fast Break

Here’s other news that might interest Flyer fans:

🏀 Toumani Camara scored seven points Wednesday for the Portland Trail Blazers in his NBA debut.

🏀 One of Virginia Commonwealth’s top players, Utah State transfer Sean Bairstow, will be sidelined six to eight weeks with a right foot fracture. He made the A-10 preseason third team.

🏀 Matt Norlander, of CBSSports.com, ranked Dayton 25th in his preseason top 25. “The Atlantic 10 is due to be better,” Norlander wrote. “Dayton will be the biggest reason why.”

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.