Archdeacon: Dayton big man Tshimanga on Flyer Faithful -- ‘I love the fans and I hope they love me back’

Center shows potential in first appearance at UD Arena
Dayton’s Jordy Tshimanga scores against Houston Baptist on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019, at UD Arena. David Jablonski/Staff

Dayton’s Jordy Tshimanga scores against Houston Baptist on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019, at UD Arena. David Jablonski/Staff

He has played in only three games for the Dayton Flyers and he just made his UD Arena debut last Tuesday night, but he’s actually a veteran of the college basketball courts.

» PREVIEW: What you need to know about Sunday’s game

Jordy Tshimanga played 62 games for Nebraska, started 27 of them and had stellar performances against some of the Cornhuskers’ best opponents: 15 points versus Michigan State, 10 points and eight rebounds against then No. 3 Kansas, 10 rebounds against No 7 Wisconsin.

And yet, his local coming out party against Houston Baptist on Tuesday was a surprise for both the Dayton fans and for him.

 

The crowd of 13,166 was impressed by his size and – possibly expecting a more rough-edged or robotic effort from him — especially by his performance around the basket, where he hit four of five shots, and out on the perimeter, where he provided support defense and even got two steals.

As for Tshimanga, himself, he was taken aback by the overwhelming embrace of the Flyers fans.

Last season – adhering to NCAA transfer rules — he sat on the bench in street clothes. He was forced to do the same the first two home games this year, thanks to a lingering injury he said involved the tendons in his left knee,

He was in uniform for the third game – a Nov. 19 match-up with visiting Omaha – but did not play.

At the Maui Invitational he finally saw some action – 7 ½ minutes against Georgia and just under 2 minutes versus Kansas – but none of that prepared him for his first game a UD Arena and the reaction of the crowd.

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“Everybody was like ‘Jordy!…Jordy!…Jordy!’” he said with some lingering wonderment as he sat in the Flyers deserted practice gym a night after the game. “I was like ‘Whoooa! I didn’t know it was that big of deal!’”

Asked if he had liked it, he shook his head, then grinned:

“Liked it? I loooooved it!

“The whole thing is pretty lovely. I love the fans and I hope they love me back.”

The moment that really made him laugh, he said, came during an out-of-bounds play when he was in the game:

“We were running this one play – I’m not going to say the name of it – but I heard some guy in the stands right there say:

“’Hey Jordy. You’re a humongous dude. You take up so much space in the paint!’

“I tried to keep a straight face, but I started laughing. I was like, ‘That was actually funny.’”

And it was true.

Tshimanga is a big dude.

At 6-foot-11 and listed at 268 pounds, he’s the biggest player on the Flyers team.

He wears a size 18 shoe. His pants have a 38-inch inseam. He has a 7-foot-2 wingspan.

And that’s only the half of it. His personality dwarfs his physical side.

As head coach Anthony Grant told me soon after Tshimanga arrived on campus in the summer of 2018: “When you get a chance to meet him and talk to him and get a feel for who he is and his personality…you realize here is a pretty impressive story.”

Jacques Rivera – the coach of The MacDuffie School in Granby, Massachusetts where Tshimanga scored 1,123 career points and had 517 rebounds – was even more effusive when he told Nebraska reporters the day his star big man signed with the Huskers:

“He’s the total person. Jordy’s awesome. He’s the kind of kid you’d let date your daughter. He has great morals, great principles.”

And here’s no denying Tshimanga is more well-rounded than many college basketball players.

He speaks three languages: English, French and Lingala, a Bantu language of one section of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was once home to his dad and late mother.

And those linguistic skills were on full display when he stole the show at the team’s summer showcase last year. Standing on stage with his new teammates, he was handed the microphone and promptly began a French monologue.

Around campus this year he has been quite a sight at times.

“I’m kinda stared at sometimes,” he admitted. “Some people who don’t know my name call me the tall guy with the head phones. Or the guy with the funny clothes. I like fashion a lot so I try different things. Sometimes I wear all the same color – like all black, all white, all red or blue. People are like ‘Whooooa!’”

And what’s on those headphones?

“A lot of different music,” he said. “I love R & B, something smooth. The Weekend is my favorite singer.”

EARLIER COVERAGE: Archdeacon on Tshimanga’s big personality

He mentioned a few other artists and said, “The Young Thugs are pretty good….But that’s Jalen’s (Crutcher) favorite actually.

“With him it’s ‘Young Thugs!…Young Thugs!…Young Thugs!’

“For me, if it’s not all that, it’s French music: French rap, French soul, French R & B.”

When he heard the Grace UMC Church on Salem Ave. has a special service for Congolese refugees in Dayton, he said, “Ooooh, I’ve got to go over there.”

His interest, though, seemed as much about palate, as prayer: “I need some fufu and so moamba.”

He’s been to a show at the Levitt Pavilion downtown, has made regular visits to the Marianist brothers house on Stonemill Road in the Student Ghetto and has visited fraternity and sorority social affairs and rec league games on campus.

“I try to step away from the basketball aspect sometimes and not just be with athletes,” he said. “I’m with them every day.”

And yet when he takes the court with his Flyers teammates this season, he’s part of something that is getting national recognition.

Going into Sunday’s 4 p.m. game with St. Mary’s at the Jerry Colangelo Classic in Phoenix, Arizona, the No. 19 Flyers are 6-1 and considered one of the more talented teams in college basketball this season after their impressive showing at the Maui Invitational just before Thanksgiving.

And Tuesday’s game against Houston Baptist added another dimension as the back-up players – especially Tshimanga, Chase Johnson, Ibi Watson and Jhery Matos – saved the day.

The Flyers had started the game sluggishly – trailing the winless Huskies by nine in the first 6 ½ minutes – but they were rescued with 46 points off the bench. And that propelled UD to an easy 99-68 victory.

That game showed the depth this team has, a point that was emphasized by Johnson – who led the Flyers with 18 points – afterward:

“We’re really a talented team and everybody is happy for each other.

“We have so much farther to go. We haven’t reached our potential yet, but sometime during the season it’s going to click and we’ll really show how good we can be on offense and defense.

“We are going to be so special this year.”

Basketball family

When war broke out in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996, Tshimanga’s family fled, stopping briefly in Boston before settling in Montreal, where Jordy was born that same year.

His mother died in 2012. By then, many of the children of their extended family were involved in basketball.

Tshimanga’s older brother Yannick Wak was a 6-foot-3 point guard at California State University-Sacramento and another brother, 7-foot-1 Link Kabadyundi, played at Texas Christian and then Texas-Arlington.

His sister Yasmine was a 6-foot-6 center at LSU and since then has played professionally in Slovakia. Younger sister, Flo, now plays at Southern Methodist.

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A younger brother, 6-foot-10 Emmanuel, was offered a scholarship to UD, but chose UC-Irvine. And 6-9 Nathan is at prep school in Texas.

Initially, Jordy had been drawn to football – and possibly the dinner table – before he considered basketball. He didn’t play the sport until his early teen years and by then he said he was maybe 6-foot-5 and weighed 340 pounds.

“Whooo! I was a round ball,” he said. “What do you call it? ….I was a snowman.”

Yannick – who lives in the Boston area and whom Jordy calls “the overseer” of the family – brought him to Massachusetts and began to monitor his diet, exercise and basketball as he sent him to The MacDuffie School.

Tshimanaga became a four-star recruit and was offered scholarships to places like Arizona, Baylor, Boston College, LSU, Pittsburgh, Oklahoma State, UNLV, Providence, Southern Methodist and Minnesota.

He chose Nebraska, in part because of the relationship he had built with assistant coach Kenya Hunter.

“Nebraska was – and still is – a big deal to me,” Tshimanga said. “The fans over there are phenomenal, too. I had ton of friends there. I loved the guys on the team. I loved everything about Nebraska.”

But then Hunter left the program to become an assistant at Connecticut and Tshimanga felt a disconnect with head coach Tim Miles.

» OFFENSE THRIVING: Dayton ranks among nation’s highest-scoring teams

“When the basketball aspect didn’t work out, I had a really tough decision to make,” he said.

He decided to transfer and was connected to Dayton, in part, through an old high school coach who was friends with Flyers assistant Ricardo Greer.

And when he met Anthony Grant, he said he liked what he found:

“He’s a straightforward, quiet man and I like that. He’s been great.”

Maui boost

“Sitting out last season – after playing in all but two of Nebraska’s 64 games over two season — wasn’t easy, but Tshimanga said: “There’s a beauty in waiting, too.

“I try to take everything with a positive approach. And you can learn from any situation and when you’re sitting out, you see things you don’t see as a player.”

With his NCAA transfer requirements met, he was set to go this year when a knee issue cropped up in mid-October.

“Before this I went through the same process with my right knee,” he said. “It’s a quad and tendon issue and it takes time to heal. You can’t rush it. I’m still not 100 percent, but I’m getting there.”

He was cleared for full-contact practice two days before the start of the Maui Invitational and played 7:32 minutes against Georgia in the opener.

He made his only field goal attempt and added a free throw to finish with three points in a boxscore line that also included three turnovers, two fouls and a rebound in an 80-61 Dayton victory.

» A-10 UPDATE: Dayton, VCU look like favorites

He didn’t play a day later against Virginia Tech, but had a field goal and three fouls in just 1:51 against Kansas.

Playing 13:44 minutes against Houston Baptist, he settled down, scored eight points and played mostly error-free basketball. Along with a few of the other players off the bench, he was a big reason the Flyers turned an early embarrassment into an easy rout.

“Maui was really good for our team,” he said. “It was a conformation of our confidence. It proved to us that we are able to play against the best of the best. That we belong.”

He said the Houston Baptist provided a valuable lesson, as well:

“Now the hard part is to be able to maintain the effort that got us through Maui. When you hear all the hype that comes from that and when you think you got everything figured out, then ‘BOOM!’ It comes back and hits you.

“That’s what happened in the first part of the (Houston Baptist) game. That game taught us we have to stay on our toes. Whatever we did in the summertime and the offseason to prepare, we’ve got to keep doing it now and we’ve got to build from it.

“That’s a big thing to take from that game.”

It might turn out to be humongous.

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