Grant may have been joking. He might have rested for another hour or two after the ride home from Nashville. The work, though, never ends for a college basketball coach, and the first days and weeks after the end of a season are as important as any all year because of the roster turnover that has become common for every program.
Dayton finished 24-11 in Grant’s fifth season. The Flyers won a November tournament (the ESPN Events Invitational) for the first time during his tenure but fell short of other goals, finishing second in the Atlantic 10 Conference, losing in the semifinals of the conference tournament and missing the NCAA tournament for the fourth straight year the tournament has been held.
In many ways, this season was always about building for next season because the Flyers had the youngest roster in the country. Now next season can’t come soon enough for this team.
“It’s all about growth,” Grant said, “and I thought from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, we grew. I’m not a fortune teller. I don’t know what the future holds. But I know this year we got better.”
Minutes after the end of the 2021-22 season, Grant wasn’t ready to talk too much about the 2022-23 season but said, “I’m excited about what we’re building. I’m excited about the guys we have.”
The players were more open to speculating about their potential.
“It’s going to be very exciting,” guard Kobe Elvis said. “It’s a really good group. Everybody loves each other. We love playing with each other.”
The hype machine is already creating hope for the Flyers and their fans. Former Flyer Brooks Hall, who was right on the money when he predicted Dayton would be a top-15 team in the 2019-20 season, thinks Dayton can crack the top 10 in the national polls next season, he wrote Sunday night on Twitter.
Before Dayton gets to that point, it has to navigate the offseason. Here are five questions facing the program:
1. How is Malachi Smith?
Smith’s ankle sprain may have prevented Dayton from beating Richmond in the A-10 tournament. That loss, coupled with Richmond’s victory against Davidson in the conference championship game a day later, kept Dayton out of the NCAA tournament.
Smith talked to the Dayton Daily News on Sunday after the loss to Vanderbilt for the first time since that injury. He knew the injury was bad as soon as it happened. He took three steps but then had to be helped to the locker room. Grant told him to take two days to deal with the injury and then to “lock back in” and help his teammates as best he could from the sideline.
Elvis praised the energy Smith brought from the sideline in the days leading up to the first-round NIT victory at Toledo. Smith said it was hard to sit and watch, but now he’s ready for the offseason and ready to get healthy.
Asked if he could have played if Dayton had won a quarterfinal game this week and advanced to the NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden, Smith said, “I feel like I would have been better, but I feel like I would have been forcing it if we had made it all the way there. It would have been a close call.”
Despite the disappointing ending, Smith stamped himself as the one of the best point guards in the A-10. He averaged 9.3 points per game and tallied 175 assists, the second-highest total by a freshman in school history. He has high hopes for his sophomore season.
“Stuff that I learned running the point guard, stuff that I learned as a leader, stuff that I learned from the first practice to now, it’s crazy,” Smith said. “I learned a lot. I know other people on the team learned a lot. We’re all going to get better and be scary next year.”
2. How much can DaRon Holmes II progress this spring and summer?
Holmes, the A-10 Rookie of the Year, averaged 12.8 points and 6.1 rebounds as a freshman. He was the first true freshman in school history to lead the team in scoring. He also set a school record with 81 blocks.
Holmes ranked sixth in the country in dunks (89). That’s the second-most dunks ever by a Dayton rookie. Obi Toppin dunked 83 times as a redshirt freshman in the 2018-19 season.
Holmes arrived on campus last spring and had a whole summer session of practice at Dayton. Now he’ll get his first full offseason with the program.
“We’re going to work hard over the summer,” Holmes said. “We’re going to keep going. We’re going to prepare for the future. I think we’re going to be a lot better next year.”
Grant expects Holmes to build on the experiences he had this season in starting every game.
“He saw really big talented guys from game one to game (35),” Grant said. “Tonight he had to go to war with two big physical guys. It was a very physical game. I think he’s shown himself to be more than capable of being one of the best players in the country.”
3. Will Dayton lose any players to the transfer portal?
Ten Dayton players have entered the transfer portal since the end of the 2017-18 season: John Crosby (Delaware State); Xeyrius Williams (Akron); Jordan Pierce (Tennessee-Martin); Frankie Policelli (Stony Brook); Jordan Davis (Middle Tennessee State/Jacksonville); Jhery Matos (Charlotte); Rodney Chatman (Vanderbilt); Dwayne Cohill (Youngstown State); Luke Frazier (Ohio); and Lynn Greer III (Saint Joseph’s).
Transfer season is a big part of the game, and Dayton has benefitted more from transfers over the years than it has lost, adding two starters, Toumani Camara and Elvis, last spring, for example. The players on Dayton’s roster who have already transferred — Camara, Elvis, Richard Amaefule and Elijah Weaver — would have to sit out a season if they transferred a second time unless they graduate and transfer.
4. How will the scholarship situation look next season?
The pandemic season of 2020-21 made it hard to keep track of eligibility. That season didn’t cost anyone a year of eligibility. That’s why the freshman on the roster this season now have the same number of years remaining as the freshmen on the 2020-21 roster.
Even two players who have been in the program three seasons — Moulaye Sissoko and Zimi Nwokeji — have three seasons of eligibility remaining because they redshirted in the 2019-20 season and then didn’t use a year of eligibility in the 2020-21 season.
Here’s where Dayton’s 12 scholarship players stand in terms of how many more years of college basketball they could play:
One more season: Weaver.
Two more seasons: Camara.
Three more seasons: Koby Elvis; Richard Amaefule; Koby Brea; R.J. Blakney; Mustapha Amzil; Kaleb Washington; Sissoko; Nwokeji; Smith; and Holmes.
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
5. How much can the lone member of the 2022 recruiting class contribute?
At the moment, Mike Sharavjamts, a 6-foot-7 forward from Mongolia, is the only newcomer joining the roster. He committed to Dayton in December. He played this season at the International Sports Academy, in Willoughby, Ohio.
After his commitment to Dayton, Sharavjamts rose in the national recruiting rankings. He’s No. 100 in the ESPN 100, No. 147 on Rivals.com and No. 150 in the 247Sports.com rankings.
The question is whether Sharavjamts can find playing time on a roster full of returning players. The experts believe he has the skill to succeed at Dayton.
“The size, the range/touch, the explosion, the reads in the pick & roll,” wrote Jamie Shaw, a national recruiting analyst with On3Sports.com. “High level talent.”
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