»» Isaac Jack — “Yeah, two first names,” he said with a chuckle — has a personality that seems as big as his 6-foot-11 body, which makes him an inch taller than the roster heights listed for junior DaRon Holmes II and incoming Serbian freshman Vasilije Erceg.
While he played in 31 games as a Buffalo freshman last year, he is not the most famous college athlete in his family. That distinction belongs to his mom, Anna (Mosdell) Jack, who played basketball at Brigham Young University, was the two-time NCAA discus champion and is in the BYU Athletics Hall of Fame.
»» Javon Bennett — listed at 5-foot-11, which makes him an inch shorter than junior guard Malachi Smith — was huge on the court as a freshman last season at Merrimack College. Over the years he has been underestimated because of his size and he admitted that has left him with “a chip on my shoulder,” a belief that ends up bad news for opponents. He was second in the nation in steals last season (averaging 2.9 a game) and was named the Northeast Conference (NEC) Rookie of the Year.
His initial connection to UD came through associate head coach Ricardo Greer, whose son R.J., now a star at Alter High School, began playing AAU basketball in Florida when Ricardo was on the Central Florida basketball staff and Bennett’s dad, Corey, was R.J.’s first coach.
»» Enoch Cheeks — named by his mom for the biblical figure who was a descendent of Noah — is a first generation American of Liberian descent. He grew up in Minnesota and Providence, Rhode Island and played three seasons at Robert Morris University.
His 78 college games are two less than Koby Brea’s 80, which are tops on Dayton’s roster. His 67 starts are two less than Holmes’ 69, which lead the Flyers.
Among the trio, Cheeks is the only one who has been to UD Arena for a game — and that one he played in. Last season he scored 15 points in the Colonials’ 60-51 loss to UD in mid-November. He said he loved the atmosphere that night, especially the way Flyers’ fans embraced their team.
Actually, it was not his first UD game.
During that magical 29-2 season of 2019-20, Cheeks said he got a free ticket when Rhode Island hosted the Flyers:
“I watched Obi Toppin get his 100th dunk!”
Still nothing prepared him for last year’s visit to a rockin’ UD Arena:
“Previously I’d played at Kentucky and Ohio State and UCF (Central Florida), but Dayton, by far, was the best atmosphere.”
When he decided to transfer after last season — “I’d had 22 teammates in two years and my whole freshman class was gone,” he said — he immediately thought of Dayton. And when he came on a visit, he found his second impression was as good as his first:
“I fit right in with the guys. There was no animosity. Everybody was welcoming and I knew this was the place for me.”
Jack did visit Vanderbilt before he came to Dayton and afterward he had planned to go to Clemson and a few other schools.
“But Dayton just stole the show,” he said. “The coaches, the players, the people who come to the games, there are a lot of good people here. It felt like a good fit.”
It was the same for Bennett. After entering the transfer portal, he accepted invitations for a few college visits.
First up was UD and once he got here, he said: “I felt like Dayton was a good home and I could really flourish here. I knew there was no other place I’d rather be.”
And that caused him to cancel his visits to William and Mary and Charlotte.
Although playing at a sold-out UD Arena each game is a foreign experience for him — Merrimack averaged crowds of just over 1,200 — he said he’s excited to come out of the tunnel with his teammates as 13,000 people cheer.
“I haven’t done it yet, but I’ve heard the stories,” he said.
In turn, he and the other transfers have some stories of their own that UD fans need to hear.
‘He was there for me’
The cover image on Cheeks’ Twitter page shows a gravestone engraved with:
“Joseph Wulu Dorfor”
“June 15, 1939 – May 4, 2020″
“To know him was to love him.”
That was his beloved grandfather, who he said he lost from COVID:
“Before that he was one of the healthiest men around,” Cheeks said. “His death really came out of the blue. He was here on a Monday and gone on a Friday. That was really hard for me and it’s why I have that picture there. It’s to remind me of him. Anytime I needed a ride, a word of wisdom, a laugh, he was there for me.”
Both of Cheeks’ parents came from Liberia, the West African nation founded in the mid-1800s by returning African slaves and free-born African Americans. Two civil Wars, one starting in 1989, another a decade later, caused the deaths of 250,000 people, the displacement of half the country’s population and human rights atrocities including torture, rape, summary executions and the conscription of child soldiers.
Cheeks’ mother Josephine — she’s Joseph’s daughter — explained Friday by phone from her Georgia home how her family was uprooted by the wars. She told how they fled to Sierra Leone, then the Ivory Coast, where she met Enoch’s dad, and how they ended up in a refugee camp in Ghana for five years.
Eventually, she came to America and settled in Rhode Island where her mother lived. Her husband (Isaac) ended up with his family in Minnesota.
Enoch was born in Rhode Island and from ages two to 14 lived in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, before returning to Providence.
He said his father played soccer in Liberia and his mother had been a kick ball player of note.
“That’s one of the largest sports for females in our country,” Josephine said. “It’s played like baseball — you run to bases — but you kick the ball instead of using a bat. I played volleyball, too, and was the only girl on the team. I was just a tough girl. Here they’d call me a tomboy. Nothing slowed me down.
“Enoch was just like me.”
As he embraced basketball, he said he found a mentor in Corey Wright Jr., a former LIU Brooklyn guard whose father, Corey Sr., was on the Providence team that made Elite Eight of the 1997 NCAA Tournament.
Corey Jr. is the co-founder of the Elite Skills Club New England and early on told Cheeks he thought he could be a Division I basketball player.
Cheeks would play part of his prep career at Putnam Science Academy, the private boarding school in Connecticut where UD standout Scoochie Smith once played.
At Robert Morris, Cheeks averaged 10.8 points over his 78-game career. Last season he averaged 15.4 points per game, scored 32 points in his two games against Wright State and won third team All-Horizon League honors.
His first games with the Flyers will come in an early August preseason trip to Italy and France.
And he said there’s a side benefit to this international travel:
“I’ve never been to Liberia, but one day I want to go there for sure and see my roots. And now I finally have a passport to do that.”
A ‘bittersweet moment’
Throughout much of his career, his son was prejudged because of his height, Corey Bennett said:
“That was a constant throughout his basketball career growing up. Basketball is a big man’s sport and Javon is not that.
“A lot of people never really gave him what he deserved. He had to work a little harder than most kids just to not be over-looked. He has a high skill level and he’s had coaches and scouts tell him if he was just a little bit taller, the blue bloods would be after him.”
Not only was Bennett a prolific scorer, but he made people take notice with the harassing defense he played.
“He’d always get put on the best ball handler,” Corey said. “He has a knack for playing the passing lanes and when he plays man-to-man, he beats guys to the spots and gets charging calls.”
He would unsettle his opponent and often that helped set up his steals. Sometimes an opponent couldn’t take the constant pressure and embarrassment that followed.
“Yeah, we have a story, with that,” Corey said. “We went to play an AAU Tournament in Melbourne (Florida) and the other team’s guard was very good, so we heard. Javon was picking him up full court and stole the ball a couple of times and got easy layups.
“Finally, when Javon went to get the ball from him again, the guy outright hit Javon right in the chest with his shoulder. Javon fell backwards and broke his wrist.”
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
At his Orlando high school — Trinity Prep Academy — he broke the school record with more than 2,000 career points and in the words of his coach, Eric Schneider, was a “one-man press.”
Even so he said he had just a few Division I college offers: Stetson and Jacksonville in Florida and Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass.
“He didn’t have the shooting percentage and scoring there at first, but his mother (Vanessa) and I knew what he could do and by the end of the season he put it all together,” Corey said.
Merrimack won the NEC regular season title and then the postseason tournament — Javon made the all-tournament team — but didn’t get the conference’s automatic NCAA Tournament bid because it hadn’t completed its transition period from Division II to Division I.
So runner-up Fairleigh Dickinson went in Merrimack’s place. The Knights came to Dayton and romped over Texas Southern in a First Four game, then two days later upset mighty Purdue and became only the second 16th seed in NCAA Tournament history to knock off a No. 1 seed.
“Watching that was a bittersweet moment,” Bennett said. “We wished we were the ones in the NCAA Tournament.”
And yet, in less than a month after FDU came to Dayton, Bennett announced he was headed to Dayton, too.
‘An instant click’
Isaac Jack’s mom was a special education teacher and now is the academic advisor at Alberni District Secondary School in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island. She’s also been a celebrated track and field coach for over 26 years.
When we spoke Friday afternoon, she was guiding her team at the Provincial High School Championships in Langley, which is part of metro Vancouver. During a break, she talked about Isaac, who is three years younger than his brother Ethan.
“He was 8 pounds 13 ounces when he was born,” she said with a pause, then the punch line. “But he came a month early ... Thank God!
“And he was always tall. You know how you have those little wall charts where you mark heights? Isaac came up behind Ethan, but each time, at the same age, he was 2 or 3 inches taller.”
With a laugh, she added: “Yeah, his brother ended up a puny 6-foot-6.”
Living in an outdoors wonderland like Vancouver Island, she said the boys ran the gamut of activities: “They rode bikes, skateboarded, scootered, played soccer, hockey, basketball, ran cross country, did track and field, hiked, fished, you name it.”
While Isaac eventually gravitated to hoops, the transition included a little hurt he admitted with a grin:
“I remember playing 1-on-1 with my mom when I was like in grade eight. We were about the same height then — both about 6-1 — but she was a great athlete and had the footwork and the moves.”
And some might:
“She turned and caught me with an elbow and about broke my nose. That’s the last time we played 1-on-1.”
While Vancouver Island and their town Port Alberni, with a population of just over 18,000, is an idyllic place to grow up, it is not the easiest place to nurture an elite athletic career.
The island is reachable by ferry and seaplane, which makes it a little harder for budding talent like Isaac to be seen or find varied elite coaches on the island.
To develop more, he finished high school at Fort Erie International Academy in Ontario, just 6 ½ miles from Buffalo, N.Y.
While he developed as big man, he still got limited college offers, he said. He chose the short drive across the Peace Bridge spanning the Niagra RIver when it connects with Lake Erie and went to Buffalo, where he started 20 of his 31 games last season and averaged 5.6 points and 4.2 rebounds.
When he decided to transfer, Dayton, in his mom’s words, was “an instant click.”
While it’s a long way from Port Alberni to Dayton — 2,600 miles — Anna said she and her husband Al plan to make as many UD games as possible.
“I’ve never been to Dayton,” she said. “It wasn’t on my Bucket List ... but it is now.
“We’re thrilled to come to the games and be part of the 13,000 and the Red Scare.”
Credit: Kathleen Batten
Credit: Kathleen Batten
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