“My wife convinced me that this was a great opportunity,” Pacher said. “I’d be joining a great bunch of guys and there was the fact that I could play again in Dayton, my hometown, and give people who haven’t watched me play in almost 10 years a chance to come see me.
“She thought it would be an incredible experience.”
The last Nutter Center appearance in his record 133-game career at Wright State was March 11, 2014, a 69-63 loss to Milwaukee in the championship game of the Horizon League Tournament.
Since then, he’s had an impressive nine-year pro career in Europe that’s included stops in Switzerland, Hungary, and France, but most of his time he’s been in Italy. He’s played for seven different teams in seven seasons and will rejoin Treviglio for the upcoming season, though his departure date hinges on the birth of the couple’s second daughter, Amara Jade, who is due Aug. 24 and will join her 5-year-old sister, Addisen.
Although he’s new to the Red Scare, the top-seeded team in the TBT’s Dayton Region, the 6-foot-10 Pacher has played in the tournament before. A few years ago, at a teammate’s request, he joined Louisiana United, which made the regional finals.
This time — at least after the Red Scare’s first two days of practice — Abigail was looking like a prophet.
Her 31-year-old husband has been embraced by his teammates.
One of the first to do so was Smith, who sought him out on the court at the start of Saturday’s session and had an animated conversation with him.
“I knew Scoochie just from afar because I’ve followed UD basketball and the TBT last year,” Pacher said. “I had a friend who was on his team in Poland last year.”
Some of the 150 fans who showed up for Sunday’s open-practice — and not just the handful of Wright State followers in attendance — focused on Pacher, as well, especially when he put on a three-point shooting display early in the session.
“That guy from Wright State can really shoot,” said Phil Robertson, a UD season-ticket holder who was sitting a couple rows up from the court. “He hardly missed!”
Rotating to different spots to shoot, Pacher made 35 of 39 trey attempts.
Pacher’s parents were in the stands, as were Abigail and Addisen, who’s already an old hand at basketball gyms — she goes to games in Italy — but was sporting a new look.,
She’s missing a few of her front baby teeth, but dismissed any talk of their absence, boasting: “I can an eat a whole apple like this!”
Her dad talked of accomplishment amidst loss, too, when asked about his previous playing efforts at UD Arena.
“I only played here once before,” he said of his days at Vandalia Butler High School.
“We got beat by Northmont (54-46) in the second game of sectionals. Jim Brown (Northmont’s coach) played a box-and-one on me, but I remember I still had a pretty good game (21 points.)”
While he averaged 6.6 points a game during his Wright State career, Pacher has doubled and nearly tripled that scoring rate in many of his pro seasons in Europe.
“A.J. is a true professional,” said Red Scare coach Joey Gruden. “He shoots really well and can do a lot of different things. He just won a championship in Italy. He’s a good player and, just as important, he’s a really good guy. He’s a perfect fit for our team.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
Embracing Italy
Wright State’s basketball team is leaving Thursday on a 10-day trip of Italy and will play multiple games and see the sights just as Pacher did a dozen years ago after his freshman season at WSU.
In the summer of 2011, the Billy Donlon-coached Raiders played four games in 10 days in Italy.
“I was just a young skinny kid — a teenager — and after a few days a lot of us were ready to come,” Pacher laughed.
“We couldn’t bring our phones. The only thing we could do was Skype on the computers in the hotel lobbies. We had to take actual cameras. We missed our food. At first. I didn’t appreciate the opportunity.”
A big upside of that trip came, he said, when he had a couple of good games against Italian pros:
“That’s the first time I realized, ‘OK, I can do this. I could have a pro career after college.’”
Today, he speaks Italian, his agent is Italian and he said he loves the country, its culture, food and people.
“Our daughter started school over there this past year and her classes were half in Italian and half in English.
“And she knows more Italian than she lets on. We’ll be out in the city and all of a sudden she’ll say something in Italian. She picks stuff up and is really smart. And we want to expose her to as much of the world as we possibly can.”
Although they have a townhouse in the Austin Landing area, the Pachers are provided in-season housing , a car and medical coverage by A.J.’s Italian team.
The couple has made a point of taking in the sights and experiences from all across the country. “This wouldn’t work if my wife didn’t get into this, too,” Pacher said.
Abigail, who’s from Columbus, said when she met A.J. it was a kismet-like connection.
While she comes from a sports family — she played high school basketball, her mom played hoops at Ohio State, she said, and her dad played football at Ohio University — she said it was far more than that:
“It was one of those deals where you just know when you know. He’s kind-hearted and humble, just an amazing person. I couldn’t find a red flag …and that’s not just me.
“Last year the coach who was recruiting him called 27 different people and not one had something negative to sat about A.J. "
That’s why Gruden and fellow coach Jeremiah Bonsu added Pacher to the roster this year.
“The big thing for us is getting good people who want to play together because with one loss, you’re done here,” Gruden said. “A lot of teams have better players than us, but they can’t play together. They don’t jell. Our model is to make sure they’re a good person before anything else.”
UD vs. WSU? ‘It’s a shame they don’t play’
As you watched Pacher, especially with the former UD players, you saw what Gruden was talking about.
There was the embrace from Scoochie and there was a spirited, three-point shooting competition where he was matched against Chatman, who won by a fraction of a second, 11 baskets to 10.
And there was a drill where he was guarded by former Flyers’ star Chris Wright, who may play for the team this year.
After the drill, Wright patted Pacher on the back and they parted smiling.
Pacher said he followed Flyers basketball when he growing up in Vandalia and attended some games at UD Arena.
But once he joined the Raiders, it was like he was relegated to another part of the planet.
He said he wishes the two teams still played each other, like they once did in the Gem City Jam:
“Dayton is a place that loves basketball and UD fans are incredible. They pack this place every game. So many things become real events here and I think it super would be the same if Dayton and Wright State played. I think it would be exciting for the city.
“It’s a shame they don’t play. It could benefit some cause important to everyone here.”
The mass shooting in the Oregon District — which happened just about four years ago — comes to mind.
Pacher was in the District that night, as was his Red Scare teammate Ryan Mikesell, then still playing for the Flyers.
“Me and my friends were at the bar (the Hole in the Wall) next to Ned Peppers, where the shooter was trying to get to,” Pacher said. “When you hear that many gunshots, you know something is going on.
“I finally got out the back gate, but I went back to find my friends. They were hiding in truck beds, different places. Just seeing the blood and stuff, it was tough.
“It was a crazy experience for this city and I think after that would have been a good time to implement the game and maybe help heal the city just a little bit after something so tragic.
“A game at UD Arena is special with the way people embrace basketball here. You see that with the First Four and now the TBT.”
And Sunday — as the Red Scare practice ended with players standing along the railing for an autograph session with fans — no one was getting into the moment more than Addisen, who was quick to note: “I’ll be six September 1st.”
As the crowd pushed toward the players, she asked her mom to help her get out onto the Arena floor.
“I can’t get there,” she said as she looked at the gleaming, inviting court.
“After every game in Italy she gets to go out on the court,” Abigail whispered.
And sure enough, as the autograph session wound down, you saw Addisen cavorting out at the foul line.
Down near an opening in the railing, her mom smiled.
Abigail Pacher now had another assist at the TBT.
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