Dayton Flyers ‘taking steps forward’ during summer practices

DaRon Holmes II, Kobe Elvis, Koby Brea and R.J. Blakney all sat down with the Dayton Daily News in a two-hour stretch to talk about this past season, the offseason and the excitement of the season ahead. They followed Toumani Camara and Malachi Smith, who talked earlier this month. The 2022-23 Flyers have all the pieces to recreate the magic that Mikesell, Watson and their teammates generated three seasons ago.

To do that, the Flyers have to put in the work in the offseason, and that’s what’s happening right now. The summer is an important time even for a team that returns its entire starting lineup and seven of its top eight scorers.

“We’re doing pretty well,” said Holmes, the 6-foot-10 sophomore who won the Atlantic 10 Conference Rookie of the Year award. “We’re taking steps forward. We have a couple new faces. We’re just trying to make sure everybody’s on track.”

All 12 scholarship players have been together on campus since June 15 when freshman Mike Sharavjamts arrived on campus. Georgia transfer Tyrone Baker joined the group earlier in the month. Early workouts focused on individual skills. In recent weeks, Dayton has transitioned to team workouts.

“For the new guys,” said Elvis, a 6-2 guard entering his second season at Dayton, “we’re trying to get them acclimated to the system and playing with us and trying to figure them out a little bit and see what they like to do and what they’ve got to get better at. For the guys that have been here a while now, we’re just trying to rekindle that relationship and get used to playing together.”

The Flyers practice every other day, about three times a week, the players said. They also often play pickup basketball by themselves without the coaches. They play as many as six games to 11 points, Brea said, scoring by 1s and 2s. The team that gets to 11 points first has to make a free throw to clinch the victory.

The teams, for the most part, stay the same.

“It’ll probably be me, Malachi, R.J., Zimi (Nwokeji) and either DaRon or Tyrone (Baker),” said Brea, the A-10 Sixth Man of the Year in his second season, “against the other guys.”

They don’t keep track of who has won the most games, but it has been a fairly evenly matched series.

“We’re extremely competitive,” Brea said. “We go back and forth a lot. One day, one team will lose more than the other, and the next day, we’ll try to get them back. We change it up here and there, but we kind of stick with it because it is really competitive. We want to see Malachi go against Kobe and me go against Kaleb (Washington). Just getting to play against each other and compete, it’s always fun, especially because it’s loose and we’re just playing regular basketball.”

The pickup games add to what the team gains in the official practices.

“You get better and you work on things,” said Blakney, who started all 35 games in his second season, “and at the same time, you compete, and nothing beats competing.”

A year ago, Dayton had seven newcomers on the roster, including four freshmen. It was the most inexperienced team in the country, according to KenPom.com’s match. That hurt it in the opening weeks of the season. Three losses in the first four games put Dayton in a hole it was unable to escape, at least from a NCAA tournament at-large perspective, though it came close, being the first team left out of the tournament.

Now after a 24-11 season and a second-place finish in the A-10, the Flyers have a mature roster. The biggest challenge might be living up to the expectations. That’s another reason the offseason work is so important. The team’s experience means the coaches can approach the practices differently than they did a year ago.

The most recent practice, for example, focused on defense, Holmes said, and there weren’t any new concepts thrown at the players. It was just a refresher about things they learned last season.

“We are adding a little bit of I would say new stuff compared to what we did last year,” Holmes said, “but overall we’re just repping and repping and making sure we have our system down.”