Not on the court or the sideline.
Later, as she talked quietly, just around the corner from the Flyers’ dressing room after the 61-51 loss, she first discussed the game and, with three losses in a row, her 13-11 team’s prospects going into the final five games of the regular season: “I think we’re going to be OK.”
Then I steered the conversation to her American Bully, the companion dog she calls Kilo.
That’s when she lit up.
Kilo is well-known around the UD campus. He often attends class with her, sleeping at her feet through art and photography instructions — two subjects she especially likes — and may only lift a sleepy head, she said, if somebody crinkles the wrapper on a snack. Then he dozes right back off again.
Usually, she said, he’s wearing one of the many colorful hoodies he has: “His drawer of clothes is so full at home, I bought Command strips so I could hang up some of his hoodies.”
She said he knows how to open elevator doors — “He can press the button” — and she claims he, not Cesar Millan of TV fame, is the real dog whisperer: “Yeah, he can whisper.
“He going to be two in June and he’s 50 pounds now, He might look a little intimidating, but he likes everybody: people, cats, ferrets, dogs…everybody.” Later, Williams-Jeter weighed in:
“I love her dog. He is the best trained dog out of everybody who has a dog on the team. She can tell it to go pee, poo, eat, sit, stay, you name it, and he does it just like that. She does all the training by herself. She does it all using a clicker.”
The coach quieted and then smiled, knowing what I was about to ask next:
“Yeah, it’d be great if a clicker worked on her.
“She could really be a force for us like she was at times last year. She got in today’s game and gave us some great minutes. Late in the season, not a lot of people have someone 6-foot-5 running around out there who is agile and can play defense and can dunk.”
Dunk?
“Yeah, but I need one dribble to get me going,” Fiala said. “I dunk in practice, but I never tried it in a game. I wouldn’t say I couldn’t dunk when I came here, but I just didn’t know I could.”
And therein lies the whole story of Eve Fiala.
She is better than she realizes.
She may be the tallest player ever to wear a UD women’s jersey. Her grandfather, Edward Fiala, and her hometown newspaper back in Indiana, Pa. some 60 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, say she’s 6-foot-6. She’s not sure.
Over the years, the Flyers have had four players listed as 6-foot-5: Theresa Yingling, Bonnie Quellhorst, Saicha Grant-Allen and Tenin Magassa. Fiala is as naturally gifted as any of them. Maybe more so.
And yet, coming into Wednesday’s contest, she was averaging just 5.9 minutes a game and hadn’t played in five games.
A year ago, she averaged twice as much time on the court, played in 23 games, started five and after a double-double versus Saint Louis — 15 points, 10 rebounds — and 12 points in an overtime win against LaSalle, she was named the Atlantic 10 Rookie of the Week.
This year she has had highs of seven points versus South Dakota and nine rebounds against Central Connecticut. She didn’t score in 12 games and in seven of them she never took a shot.
Williams-Jeter called it “a confidence thing.”
Fiala said it was “a sophomore slump” that she thinks will pass.
Then again her fortunes already may be turning.
She played a season-high 13 minutes and 13 seconds at Rhode Island two games ago and had six rebounds.
Wednesday Williams-Jeter put her in late on the first quarter and she scored and played good defense.
Just as noticeable was what she did when she was out of the game. Rather than sit at the end of the bench, she was right in the middle of her team.
Maybe with a raised voice and a pointed barb, Williams-Jeter had found her clicker.
“Sometimes Eve plays better angry,” she said. “I didn’t know there would be tears – I didn’t want to do that to her – but I wanted to get her fired up and today she was.”
Fan favorite
Fiala is one of the most beloved players on the team, especially with the kids who watch the Flyers.
And Wednesday — for the annual School Day morning game — there was an Arena full of them. It was the biggest home crowd ever to watch a UD women’s game.
The students came from 62 area schools. There were close to 250 school buses in the parking lot.
Some students had signs wishing Fiala “Good Luck.” One had her photo on a big poster board and a red heart next to it.
Kids notice her because of her height. And her tattoos: On her neck, there’s an angel with a forefinger pressed to its lips as if saying “Ssssh” and there’s new butterfly ink flittering up her right arm.
Most noticeable this season are her long white and tan braids that hang below her waist.
“I think that’ll be my signature from now on,” she said.
But the reason the kid crowd really liked her could be seen after the game. She and junior walk-on Eleanor Monyek were the last Flyers to leave the court.
Monyek talked to students who had posed for a group photo at midcourt and Fiala headed to the stands behind the bench and chatted up an ever-growing group of kids who wanted an autograph, a selfie or just the chance to be next to one of their hoop heroes.
“We didn’t have anything like,” said Fiala, who is still a teenager herself. She turns 20 on Saturday. “I wish I could have seen something like this when I was growing up.”
‘She’s a great teammate’
Williams-Jeter has known Fiala since she was in eighth grade.
When she was an assistant at Penn State, she he had come to scout another girl at an AAU game, but spotted Eve.
“She was young, long, athletic, light on her feet,” Williams-Jeter once told me. “She played defense and blocked shots. I remember thinking, ‘She’s going to be something when she gets older.’”
When Williams-Jeter joined Kevin McGuff’s staff at Ohio State, she told him about Eve and the Buckeyes became the first school to offer her a scholarship.
Other schools followed suit — when they could get ahold of her.
She had an unconventional upbringing at times. She lived several places: with her grandparents, at friends’ houses and eventually she got a place of her own and took on two jobs — including working every day at the Subway in Homer, Pa. — to pay her bills.
For a good while she couldn’t afford a phone
She did have sneakers though and became a 1,000-point scorer at Indiana High School.
When Williams-Jeter took over the UD job three seasons ago, she made her a priority. And once he got her to campus, she said she had to acclimate her to all the aspects of being a student athlete.
When you’ve bounced around a lot in life and had to fend for yourself, you don’t always trust easily.
That’s all coming along now, and Williams-Jeter said the last piece is the basketball:
“She’s a great teammate. Her teammates love her. She’s extremely loyal and very protective of the people who give to her.”
There’s a real foundation there to build on.
The last piece, like Williams-Jeter said, is the hoops.
And maybe it won’t take many more “pep talks” from her coach to get her to channel Kilo on the court and become a little bit of a bully herself.
If that happens, she could be the next big thing on the UD campus, although she’s already pretty well known.
She shrugged off the hype talk, a bit embarrassed by the spotlight.
“I’m no DaRon Holmes, she said with a laugh. “But if I get a dunk ... Maybe!”
About the Author