Archdeacon: Flyers’ one-two punch KO’s UMass

Against UMass — three days after she scored a career-high 33 points in a victory over VCU — Wolf netted 26 points, 20 in the first half.

Smith had 16 rebounds and 17 points — nine in the fourth quarter — Wednesday night, after notching a double-double against VCU, as well.

Wolf is third in scoring in the Atlantic 10 conference, averaging 17.7 points per game.

Smith, who was the league’s top rebounder last season, is currently fifth, averaging 8.7 boards. She leads the A-10 in field goal percentage, making 60.6 percent of her shots.

Thanks in a big way to these efforts, the resurgent Flyers are now 9-6, their best start to a season in three years.

Standing outside the locker room after the game, Smith was asked if she and Wolf had picked up any catchy nickname for their continued gun-and-grab heroics.

For the first time all night, Smith was stymied.

“Aaaah, naaah, not really,” the 6-foot-2 senior said. “She plays outside, I’m inside, but we haven’t really gotten any kind of name.”

A few minutes later Coach Tamika Williams-Jeter stepped out of the Flyers’ quarters and didn’t hesitate.

“They’re Batman and Robin,” she said with a smile, then a qualifier. “But our Robin is nasty! Just a junkyard dog!”

She was referring to Smith, but the nasty reference wasn’t meant in a negative way. She wasn’t calling her dirty, malicious or mean-spirited.

The Flyers’ inside force is just relentless. She gives no quarter and will not be denied. And that doesn’t always bode well for the opposition.

“That last play explains who Nany is,” Williams -Jeter said. “Their kid goes down. Nany goes up and finishes.

“Their player is bleeding. Nany’s elbow’s bleeding and there’s blood on the ground. That kind of summed it up.”

In the final 30 seconds of the game — with UD leading, 63-61 — Smith got the ball down low and had two UMass players muscling her on defense. Gripping the ball with two hands, her elbows out to fend off the opposition, she wheeled around for a lay-up and her elbow caught the Minutewomen’s Lilly Ferguson in the jaw.

The 5-foot-10 defender crumpled to the floor in pain, her hands to her mouth, as the blood began to flow.

After Smith’s score, Ferguson lay there while UMass personnel cared for her.

She eventually left the court with a towel pressed to her mouth. She was tended to back in the dressing room as referees reviewed the play to make sure there was no ill intent in the collision.

By the end of the game Ferguson had returned to the bench, one hand holding a towel to her mouth and the other pressing an ice bag to her cheek.

“They said her tooth went through her lip,” Smith said. “Afterward, I went up to her and said, ‘I’m so sorry. It wasn’t on purpose. It was just a basketball move.’”

Although UMass’s Allie Palmieri did drain a three after that, UD’s Rikki Harris scored the game’s final points with a pair of free throws.

Smith’s end of the game dominance — along with nine points, she had four rebounds in the final quarter — was reminiscent of her play in the 69-49 win at VCU Sunday.

“She had to rip through a double team at the end tonight and that was like a play from VCU I showed the team yesterday in our film session,” Williams-Jeter said. “In a big part of the game she boxed out both their post players and they went over her back and fouled her.

“Nany is just relentless. She’s all grit. "

Wolf said it showed Sunday against VCU: “She’d catch the ball and five girls were on her. The attention she draws in the paint makes our lives easier. She kicks the ball out and we get open shots.”

Against VCU, Wolf made 12 of her 15 shots, including a dizzying eight of her nine three-point attempts.

It was one of her greatest shooting nights in a college career that already has yielded 1,501 points in 3 ½ seasons.

‘No days off with shooters’

Wolf was known as a long-range threat back at Minster High and then in her first two years at Miami University, where she tallied 891 points before transferring to UD last season.

But she admitted there was a time when she missed most of her shots from beyond the arc:

“I think freshman year in high school I was shooting 13 percent from three-point range.”

In the past she explained how her mom — the former Shelly Jackson, a hoops ace at Ben Logan High and Ohio Northern University before marrying former UD football player James Wolf — helped her hone her shooting chops.

Shelly has coached at all levels in Minster and currently is an assistant coach with the girls’ varsity there.

“She had the keys to the gym, and she’d take me in for shooting drills before school,” Wolf said.

Her dad once told me how they had the young Ivy shoot 100 free throws the next morning before school if she missed the front end of a one-and-one in a game the night before. He said since fourth grade she had made 1,000 free throws a month.

Although she comes from one of the most accomplished sports families in the Miami Valley — her dad was a defensive end on the Flyers Division III national championship team in 1989; her two brothers played in the NFL; her older sister played for the Division II national champion Ashland women’s team; her two other sisters both have the hoops gene, too — Ivy admitted she still works daily at her craft.

“I go 8 for 9 the last game and the first thing Coach Hudson (assistant Darryl Hudson) texted me the next morning was, ‘Gotta stay sharp on the shot! Come in before practice tomorrow.’

“There are no days off with shooters. That’s something you can do when you’re tired. You can put up shots any time.”

‘I enjoy doing the dirty work’

Like Wolf, Smith transferred to UD.

A product of Africentric High in Columbus, she played her first college season at Indiana State, where she started 16 of the 28 games and averaged 7.2 points and 4.5 rebounds a game.

She underwent major knee repair right after the season, transferred to Dayton and played her first game for the Flyers in late December of 2022, eight months after her surgery.

As she regained her form, one thing stood out.

It was the same thing coaches saw in her when she was a freshman in high school, just starting in the sport.

“Even though I was just learning back then, they told me I had heart,” she said. “And I learned heart is a big part of rebounding.”

With a grin, she added: “I enjoy doing the dirty work that some of my teammates don’t want to do. That’s who I am.”

Williams-Jeter agreed: “Some kids have that dog (doggedness) in them, some don’t. Nany was born with it. You see it in her rebounding; the way she finishes around the rim and the way she goes after every 50-50 ball, attacking it with two hands "

Wolf said Smith has the key opponents that make her the force she is:

“She’s played a lot of college games (86.) She has a real basketball IQ and when you add her hard work and physicality, she’s a real presence inside.

“And the rest of us are able to shoot the ball confidently because we know we have somebody in the paint who cleans the board on our misses. She helps all of us.”

The Flyers are getting solid efforts from several other players this season. Wednesday night, point guard Nicole Stephens, graduate guard Rikki Harris and senior Shannon Wheeler off the bench, all contributed significantly, as the Flyers improved to 3-1 in conference play.,

Getting back to her Dynamic Duo reference, Williams-Jeter was asked if Smith might have something to say about being relegated to the Robin role.

“I’m good with it either way,” the coach laughed. “They can take turns and trade off every night. Both of them can handle it.”

They are the Flyers’ one-two punch.