Charleston Classic diary: Day 1 covering the Dayton Flyers

CHARLESTON, S.C. — More than 500 fans of the Dayton Flyers flooded into The Alley, a sports bar, in Charleston early Thursday afternoon. One fan, Matty Toomb, of Cincinnati, held up a piece of paper that read, “1986-2023: My 700th UD game.”

Toomb had another sheet of paper listing how many games he has attended in every season. He’s just one of the many UD superfans in attendance at the Charleston Classic, which starts at 4 p.m. Thursday for the Flyers with a game against LSU at TD Arena,

I arrived at the arena around 11:30 a.m. Only Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy, who now writes about the Flyers for Press Pros Magazine, and his longtime friend and driver, Ray Snedegar, beat me to the media room. It will be good to have some company at the postgame press conferences. Matthew Schwade and Aaron Lewis, of Rivals.com, are also here.

The tournament started at 1:30 p.m. with defending NIT champion North Texas playing St. John’s, now led by the winningest active coach in college basketball, Rick Pitino. St. John’s built an early 8-0 lead and has led throughout the first half. There was a nearly six-minute stretch when neither team scored.

Dayton’s Darren Hertz is scouting one side of the court for Dayton, and another assistant, Sean Damaska, is on the other side. Dayton will play North Texas or St. John’s on Friday.

9 A.M.

I rolled out of bed around 4:30 a.m. today and tried to silently sneak out of the house without waking up the dogs, Fergus and Henry, or my wife Barbara and son Chase — easier said than done in a 1937 house with creaky stairs.

After a five-mile drive to the airport, a half-mile drive in the parking lot shuttle and one flight from Columbus to Charlotte, I’m nearing my final destination: Charleston, S.C. The Dayton Flyers play LSU in the first round of the Charleston Classic at 4 p.m. at TD Arena.

I love these November tournaments. The Flyer Faithful are with me. Hundreds of UD fans attend these events every year. It’s a great chance to see random teams from around the country. There are always famous coaches (Rick Pitino, of St. John’s, this year, for example) and at least one powerhouse team (Houston, at this tournament). Mostly, these tournaments are exciting because of what they mean for the chances of the Flyers.

Dayton played in the NCAA tournament in 2014 in a large part because of victories against Gonzaga and California in the Maui Invitational. Victories over Texas A&M and Boston College in Puerto Rico helped UD pad its 2015 NCAA tournament resume. Dayton made the NCAA tournament in 2016 in part because of victories over Iowa and Monmouth in Orlando.

The opportunities have been there for Dayton in the last six seasons, too. The 2019-20 Flyers beat Georgia and Virginia Tech to set the tone for a historic season that was only derailed by the pandemic. Two years ago, Dayton beat Miami, Kansas and Belmont in the ESPN Events Invitational, and that would have been plenty of fuel for a NCAA bid if not for three disastrous losses earlier that November.

I first attended one of these tournaments in December 1994 when I was a senior at Fayetteville High School. My dad took me to the Rainbow Classic in Honolulu to see our favorite team, the Cincinnati Bearcats. The field included: Arkansas, the defending national champion; Duke, which lost the national championship game to Arkansas the previous March; Georgia Tech; Iowa; Oklahoma; Boston University; and Hawaii.

Until looking it up a minute ago, I had forgotten UC lost its final game of that tournament to the host, Hawaii, though I do remember the free Rainbows T-shirts we got at the tournament, and I remember us almost losing our tickets, back in the day when there were still paper tickets. My love of college basketball grew during the glory years of the Bob Huggins era. It’s the best sport because it doesn’t have too many games like baseball or too few like football. There’s just the right amount of action to get you through the winter.

This is my third trip to the Charleston Classic. A quick search of my Twitter (or X) history showed I was at the tournament 11 years ago today covering Dayton’s 87-71 victory against Boston College in the second game of the tournament. Dayton lost to Colorado in the first game and beat Auburn in the third game. I was the Wright State beat writer that year but filled in for Doug Harris in Charleston. I took over the Dayton beat a year later when Harris retired.

I’ll be in Charleston for the next four days and posting diary entries every year, while also sharing many stories, photos and videos.