It’s too big to display anywhere, but it would bring back many memories for fans of the Dayton Flyers, who remember that NCAA tournament and that season so well 35 years later.
In a transitional year as Dayton turned the page from the Don Donoher era, handing the reins of the program to Jim O’Brien, the Flyers finished 22-10, beat Xavier in the Midwestern Collegiate Conference tournament championship game and won a NCAA tournament game for the first time since the Elite Eight season of 1984. Using a fast-paced offense, Dayton set a school record that still stands by averaging 89.7 points per game.
The Flyers started what the Flyer Faithful hoped would be a memorable decade for the Dayton basketball program — and it would be but for the wrong reasons. The setbacks that followed the 1989-90 season haunted the program for years, but the success of O’Brien’s first season is still fondly remembered.
“We put in a lot of hard work,” said Norm Grevey, a fifth-year guard that season, “and the city really came together behind us. The arena was special that year as well — the way the fans rocked and rolled. They were on their feet the whole game. It was just an exciting brand of basketball. If you get 90 points a game, there’s a lot to cheer about.”
Here’s a look back at that season:
MVP: Negele Knight, a 6-1 guard from Detroit, led Dayton with 22.8 points per game and 6.8 assists as a senior. That’s the seventh-best single-season scoring average in UD history. No one has topped it over the last three decades. He shot 49.3% from 3-point range (71 of 144). That’s the fourth-best mark in school history.
Knight, who was the fourth pick in the second round of the NBA Draft that year, ranks eighth in school history in scoring (1,806 points).
“I think that season for Negele Knight was probably the greatest season by a guard in the history of UD,” Grevey said. “He played himself into the draft and had a decent, successful NBA career. At that time, I felt like we had the best point guard in the country, or at least one of them.”
Knight averaged 28 points and 8.1 assists in the last 12 games, including three MCC tournament games and two NCAA tournament games.
“He made everybody better,” Grevey said. “That’s the true sign of a great player — if you can elevate the play of your teammates. He completely did that. He was finally healthy, along with myself, and was just an amazing point guard. He was strong. He was nailing his 3-point shot. He was just almost unstoppable. Johnny Davis was probably the best 1 guard here at Dayton, but for that season, I don’t think anybody will ever do what he did.”
Best rebounder: Anthony Corbitt, a 6-6 senior forward from Patterson High School in Dayton, led the team with 8.3 rebounds. He ranked second on the team with 16.3 points per game. He ranks ninth in career scoring (1,760) and 14th in rebounding (814).
Corbitt was Dayton’s team MVP as a sophomore and junior. Knight won the honor when they were both seniors.
“Anthony Corbitt was just a consistent, solid 14 to 16 points and 10 rebounds,” Uhl said. “He was doing that game in and game out.”
Corbitt earned a starting spot 10 games into his freshman season and never lost it. He chose to play at Dayton over Tennessee, the only other school he visited, but had plenty of other options.
“There were a whole bunch of schools ... Tennessee, Xavier,” Corbitt told the Dayton Daily News in 1990. “I could have gone to Clemson, Virginia. I got an autographed picture of Danny Manning from Kansas. I got posters from Maryland, North Carolina State. I could have gone to Minnesota. I still have all those letters downstairs in my house.
“Dayton probably had the advantage because I’d never been away from home. I don’t think I was ready my senior year to go away from home. Now that I look back on it, I know I could have made it, but back then it was a deciding factor.”
Best freshman: Alex Robertson, a 6-4 guard from Chicago, averaged 5.0 points in 11.7 minutes per game. He filled Dayton’s last scholarship in August of 1989.
Most prolific 3-point shooter: Grevey, a 6-3 guard from Hamilton, ranked fourth on the team in scoring (9.8) despite playing the sixth most minutes (15.3). He made one more 3-pointer than Knight (72 of 153, 47.1%).
Grevey put up those numbers three years after suffering a season-ending left knee injury as a freshman. An injury to the same knee caused him to miss two-thirds of his senior season in high school.
“There were doctors who told me I’d never play again,” Grevey said in 1990. “I wasn’t going to accept that.”
Biggest change: Dayton finished 12-17 in Donoher’s final season, averaging 74.4 points per game. O’Brien inherited a team that returned eight of its top nine scorers — everyone except Steve Pittman, a forward who averaged 8.7 points as a senior in the 1988-89 season.
O’Brien embraced the 3-point shot, which first came to the college game in the 1986-87 season. Dayton made 88 of 276 (31.9%) 3-pointers in Donoher’s last season and 261 of 666 (39.2%) in O’Brien’s first season. The Flyers averaged 7.2 3-point attempts per game in the first season they were allowed, 7.5, 9.5 and then 20.8 in the 1989-90 season.
O’Brien, then 37, got the Dayton job after working the two previous seasons as an assistant coach with the New York Knicks. He talked about his offensive style in an October 1989 story in the Dayton Daily News.
“There’s nobody that I’ve told that they can’t shoot the 3,” he said. “And I’m not going to chart at practice how many they make and how many they miss. From an offensive standpoint, I don’t want these guys thinking, ‘Is this all right to do?’ Yes, it’s all right to do. Shoot the three! Run, pass, move. The only mistake you can make is if you don’t move. I don’t want them to think they’re coming out of a game because they’re not making a 3.
“This is not a hard shot. The reality of it is: It’s too close. I think it’s way too close at 19 feet, nine inches. We’ve got guys like (6-8) Bill Uhl and (6-9) Sam Howard who will shoot it as much as any of them. I’d expect to have Bill Uhl shooting like (Bill) Laimbeer (of the Detroit Pistons) out there. It’s going to take a big guy away from the basket.
“The interesting thing about the 3-point play is that, other than the foul line, it’s the only place on the court where you can groove your shot. It’s always 19-9. So your body becomes very accustomed to shooting with the tension that you need. If you get good at that, the only thing that can mess it up is your brain.”
Biggest adjustment: Along with the new reliance on the 3, O’Brien also used a pressing defense and wanted to push the tempo at every opportunity. That meant he had to condition the players to play at a faster pace.
“I would say it was incredibly refreshing,” Uhl said. “Most of us probably didn’t know it was kind of becoming a new style of basketball. You saw Loyola Marymount play. They would run and score as much as you can and speed up the game to where you’re trying to back tip the ball running down the floor. The style was totally new and fun. We had to get in such incredible shape to play that style of basketball. We played sometimes 10 or 11 or even 12 players sometimes. There were a lot of opportunities for people to play. It was exciting. It was fun.”
Best early-season victory: Dayton improved to 5-2 with an 84-73 victory at DePaul on Dec. 20. It was Dayton’s first road victory after losses at the University of Miami and Cincinnati. Knight scored 22 points.
“This means a lot because they’re a good team,” Knight said after the game. “We haven’t gotten the respect we deserve.”
Ray Springer, a 6-2 senior guard from Meadowdale High School in Dayton who would average 8.5 points and 3.4 points, took Ken Branch’s spot in the starting lineup and would remain there the rest of the season.
Worst early loss: In the second of eight games Dayton would play against Wright State between 1988 and 1997, the Flyers suffered their first loss: 101-99 on Jan. 6, 1990, at UD Arena.
Freshman forward Bill Edwards scored 25 points for Wright State, which fell into an early 11-1 hole but built a 14-point lead in the second half.
“That was a great victory for Wright State,” O’Brien said. “They were hungry and showed a great deal of poise. They attacked the press as well as it has been attacked all year.”
Turning point: Dayton lost three straight games to Notre Dame, Xavier and Loyola Chicago, falling to 11-9 on Feb. 8. Then they beat Marquette 79-77 in Milwaukee on Feb. 10.
Knight hit the tie-breaking, game-winning shot with 3 seconds to play. It was the 11th time in his career he made a shot in the final seconds to win or tie a game. He had 33 points, eight rebounds and seven assists.
“Negele Knight put on as good a one-man show as I’ve seen for a long time,” Marquette coach Kevin O’Neill said after the game. “He made some huge shots down the stretch.”
Best stretch: The Marquette victory started an 11-game winning streak for Dayton. It won the final seven games of the regular season, including a 111-108 victory on Senior Night against No. 19 Xavier, and then three games in the MCC tournament and one game in the NCAA tournament.
The three losses preceding the streak were all on the road. Grevey remembers a team meeting in O’Brien’s hotel room putting the team back on the right course.
“He basically challenged us,” Grevey said, “and said, ‘We have six weeks left to fulfill our dream. I haven’t given up on you. Our run needs to start tonight, or else there’s going to be some changes in personnel.’ He completely threatened us and challenged us, and we completely responded, and we never looked back.”
Dayton’s late-season success happened in part because it took the team time to get used to O’Brien’s system. The coach leaned on analytics years before that became popular at the college level.
“We wanted an open 3 versus a contested 2,” Grevey said. “As the season progressed, we didn’t take contested jump shots. Everything was wide open. We moved the ball. Everybody bought into their role. That was the other thing. We played for the name on our chest versus what was on our back.”
Sweetest victory: Dayton finished second in the MCC regular-season standings with a 10-2 mark, two games back of Xavier.
In the MCC tournament, Dayton was the No. 2 seed but had a big advantage: the tournament was held at UD Arena. This was the second of a three-year run of Dayton hosting the tournament. Xavier won the championship on UD’s home court in 1989 and again in 1991, but the Flyers made the most of the advantage in 1990.
Dayton beat No. 7 seed Detroit 90-72 in the quarterfinals. In the semifinals, despite a 44-point performance by Loyola’s Keith Gailes, Dayton won 97-95. Uhl and Robertson each made two free throws in the final 30 seconds to clinch the victory.
Dayton then beat No. 1 seed Xavier, ranked 24th in the Associated Press top-25 poll, 98-89 in the championship game. Knight had 32 points and set a school record that still stands with 15 assists.
“I’m speechless,” O’Brien said. “If there’s a better feeling in the world, it can only be when your children are born and you are there.”
NCAA success: Dayton earned a No. 12 seed in the NCAA tournament and was sent to the Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas. The Flyers beat No. 5 seed Illinois 88-86 in the first round. Knight scored 27 points. Corbitt added 23.
The game was tied at 75 with 4:55 to play when Uhl scored four straight points. Dayton led the rest of the way. With 23 seconds remaining, Uhl made 1 of 2 free throws to give Dayton an 86-83 lead.
Steve Bardo, of Illinois, missed a 3 with 9 seconds remaining. Corbitt grabbed the rebound and was fouled. He made both free throws to seal the victory.
“I feel good and excited,” Knight said after the game, “but there’s still an empty feeling. I still have that desire to go farther.”
NCAA disappointment: Dayton lost 86-84 to No. 4 seed Arkansas in the second round. They played without Grevey, who hurt his hip in a collision with Bardo during the game against Illinois.
According to a report at the time by Bucky Albers, of the Dayton Daily News, “Bardo hammered Grevey in the chest with a forearm to stop him from making a fast-break layup late in the first half. Grevey landed on the left side of his back and hip and received a nasty bruise.”
Knight made a game-tying 3-pointer with 36 seconds to play, completing Dayton’s rally from a 12-point second-half deficit. Todd Day, of Arkansas, missed a shot with 8 seconds remaining but grabbed the offensive rebound and scored with 4 seconds left.
Knight struggled in his final college game, making 3 of 12 shots and scoring 16 points. Noland Robinson, a 6-5 senior forward from Williard, Ohio, who averaged a career-best 10.3 points that season, led Dayton with 20 points in his final game.
“Unless you’re a coach or a player, I don’t think you can understand the pain I have right now,” O’Brien said. “I’m very proud of all the individuals who make up Dayton basketball. The turnaround this year is remarkable.”I think you saw in the last eight minutes why it has been a privilege to coach the team this year. They never quit. We gave it our best shot.”
Postscript: Dayton lost six seniors from the 1989-90 team: Corbitt; Knight; Troy McCracken, a 6-9 center who averaged 1.8 points; Robinson; Springer; and Uhl. The success Dayton experienced in their final season did not carry over to future seasons.
The Flyers finished 14-15 in the 1990-91 season and then 15-15 in 1991-92. The two worst seasons in UD basketball history followed: 4-26 in 1992-93; and 6-21 in 1993-94.
“Coach had a great mind,” Grevey said, “but I don’t think he enjoyed recruiting.”
Grevey pointed to several near misses by Dayton in recruiting during O’Brien’s tenure. Juwan Howard, who would become part of the Fab Five at Michigan, considered Dayton. Damon Flint, who would end up at Cincinnati, also was a big target by O’Brien’s staff.
“They just were never able to recover after all of us graduated,” Grevey said.
O’Brien was 61-87 in five seasons. Two months after losing his job at Dayton in 1994, he found a spot on Rick Pitino’s staff at Kentucky. He was part of Kentucky’s national championship team in 1996. O’Brien followed Pitino to the NBA in 1997 with the Boston Celtics and then took over the team in 2001 when Pitino resigned.
O’Brien later coached the Philadelphia 76ers and Indiana Pacers. Grevey stayed in touch with over the years.
“We were fortunate enough to have two great coaching minds in our careers,” Grevey said, “even though they were completely different philosophies. It really was heartbreaking and we were down and out when Coach Donoher got let go. We felt we were kind of responsible for that. With our injuries, we didn’t play up to our potential. That’s not Coach’s fault. We weren’t connecting. We weren’t playing up to our abilities. So it took a while to gain our confidence back. Coach O’Brien did a great job of building our confidence and believing in us.”
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