Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2008 > March > 25
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
A Buzz Around Flyers Basketball Again
NORMAL, Ill. — All of a sudden the Dayton Flyers postseason is relevant again. There’s an excitement to it. A buzz. A reason to watch.
When UD missed the NCAA Tournament and fell into the NIT, that bid elicited yawns from a lot of folks. Ticket snafu or not, there were fewer people at UD Arena for the Flyers’ NIT opener against Cleveland State than there were the night before for the NCAA Tournament’s play-in game featuring two little-known teams from Maryland, neither with any Dayton connection.
As for the Flyers’ second-round game at Illinois State, nearly everybody from the Vegas bookmakers to the basketball junkies figured UD would lose. Illinois State was 16-1 at home this season. The Flyers were 7-point underdogs. A lot of folks thought the UD season would end on a whimper far from home
Instead Dayton pushed aside the Redbirds, 55-48, and in the process shut down Osiris Eldridge, he of the Mohawk dubbed O-Hawk hairdo, the first-team all-Missouri Valley Conference honors and Monday’s 4-for-20 effort from the field (he missed 13 of his first 14 shots) for 10 points, six below his average.
Meanwhile, it’s back to the good old times for the Flyers. Monday night they drubbed a quality opponent. Injured freshman sensation Chris Wright — out since Jan. 9 with a broken bone in his right foot — returned and gave flashes of his early-season brilliance.
The Flyers play Ohio State on Wednesday and the winner advances to the NIT’s version of the Final Four at fabled Madison Square Garden. UD not only has a glorious history there, but New York City would offer a bit of a national showcase that almost all thought had been lost for this season.
Last Wednesday I posted a “Through the Arch” blog that suggested — regardless of what so many of those folks in the know were claiming — that Wright may very well play against Illinois State.
I had stumbled into a closed workout at UD Arena — just Wright and assistant coach Anthony Solomon — and watched the freshman cut hard backward and forward, side to side, time after time after time. When told what I’d seen, a UD administrator admitted that Wright might play Monday night.
After that blog, I got several e-mails and calls debating the sanity of such a move. A lot of people thought UD should shut Wright down for the season. That a rush back to the court now could risk even worse injury and jeopardize a young career, not to mention next season as well.
I wondered about some of that, too, but Monday night I saw and heard differently.
Wright showed some of his old hops — swatting two shots, skying high for a few rebounds, even leading a fast break once. He defended well, gave UD a burst of energy like it hasn’t seen lately and finished with nine points in 10 minutes of play.
“Why not play tonight?” Wright’s uncle, J.D. Grigsby, and a former Flyer himself, asked Monday night. “Whenever he was going to play, he still was going to have to take that first step on the court, and they say he’s not at any more of a risk now than he would be next season.”
Ernestine Grigsby, Chris’ mom, said her son needed to play “for the mental side of it. He needed that reassurance in his mind. It was in his heart and he had to have it set in his mind, too.”
Maybe that’s why afterward Wright said “it felt like Christmas time out there on the court. This is what I’ve dreamed about, what I’ve lived for my whole life — to play in the postseason.”
UD coach Brian Gregory was like a proud father. After Wright finished talking at a post-game press conference and senior leader Brian Roberts began to address the media crowd, a glowing Gregory turned to Wright and quietly patted him on the back.
Gregory said his team is better with Wright on the floor. He talked about the pure burst of energy he brings, the physical gifts and the toughness. Plus the more minutes he plays, the more other starters can catch a breather, he said: “We were a lot fresher team in the second half.”
Roberts summed it up best when he said: “Chris is going to get better and better and now we are going to get better.”
With Wright back on the floor, Ohio State on the horizon and Madison Square Garden awaiting after that, the Flyers’ postseason is relevant.
Suddenly there’s a buzz around Flyers basketball again.
