Flyers ‘pushing the needle every single day’ in summer practices

• Kobe Elvis on April 6.

• Petras Padegimas on April 9.

• Koby Brea on April 16.

• And finally Nate Santos on April 28.

Inside and outside the UD locker room, no one knew for sure when the parade of transfers would end. Santos, at least, would change his mind and decide to stay at UD six days after entering the portal.

“That was definitely a hard time for me and some of my teammates,” Cheeks said. “Just not knowing who else was going to leave. You build friendships and relationships with guys, and you go hard with them on the court and have those memories, and the next season they’re not here.”

Did Cheeks think of following his teammates into the portal?

“It was definitely a thought,” he said. “I talked to my mom, and I talked to my dad. Transferring is not an easy thing. It’s a hard process.”

Cheeks also talked to Dayton head coach Anthony Grant and associate head coach Ricardo Greer as he debated his options. They told him, “There’s an opportunity here to do good things.”

The coaches assured Cheeks even though they lost players to the portal, they would bring in new talent, just as they did a year earlier when they added four transfers who would play big parts in Dayton’s return to the NCAA tournament: Cheeks from Robert Morris; Javon Bennett from Merrimack; Isaac Jack from Buffalo; and Santos from Pittsburgh.

“We can do this again,” the coaches made it clear.

“That’s all I needed to hear, honestly,” Cheeks said. “And with the whole process of transferring, I never wanted to do that again.”

Cheeks told this story in an interview with the Dayton Daily News on Wednesday in the Skuns Room, just down the hall from the coaches’ offices at the Cronin Center. For years, UD players have sat down in the middle of the summer to revisit the previous season, talk about summer workouts and give their first thoughts on the upcoming season.

Cheeks, Bennett and Jaiun Simon took their turns last week, and the other stories will come out in the days ahead.

The coaches fulfilled their promise to Cheeks by adding five players in a two-month stretch: Ohio State transfer Zed Key; Butler transfer Posh Alexander; Marshall transfer Jacob Conner; and freshmen Hamad Mousa and Amaël L’Etang.

Mousa and L’Etang were the last of the five newcomers to arrive on campus earlier this month. With both now at practice, Dayton has 11 healthy scholarship players — Santos and Marvel Allen are recovering from injuries — working to build chemistry for the 2024-25 season.

“We’ve got to get the new guys up to speed with our system,” Cheeks said. “We’ve been pushing the needle every single day.”

Cheeks, a 6-foot-3 guard from Providence, R.I., ranked sixth on the team in scoring with 8.4 points per game as a fourth-year junior last season. He averaged 4.7 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 1.2 steals per game. He was one of four players to start all 33 games, along with DaRon Holmes II, Elvis and Santos.

Cheeks saw his scoring average drop by more than seven points from the career-high 15.4 points per game he averaged in his third season at Robert Morris, but he said had no reason to complain because of the team’s success. He played the role the team needed him to play.

“I learned to love it gradually,” Cheeks said.

Cheeks knew there wasn’t room for him to play a big scoring role.

“We had the best big in the country (Holmes),” he said. “We had the best shooter (Brea). We had Nate Santos, who’s a great shooter and driver. We had Kobe Elvis, who’s a shot creator. There was no room for me to be selfish, and I’ve always kind of been a selfless player. Since I was young, I’ve always been like, ‘Whatever coach needs.’”

Cheeks does have personal goals — playing in the NBA or playing overseas — and would like to score more and take more shots in his final season of eligibility, but he said winning is the most important thing and he’ll reach those individual goals if the team is winning.

Cheeks improved his 2-point percentage (49.4 to 52.6) from his final season at Robert Morris to his first season at Dayton but saw his 3-point percentage fall (35.8 to 30.4). He said he lost confidence in his scoring early in the season but gained confidence toward the end of the season. He scored in double figures in five of the last seven games and scored 18 points on 7-of-16 shooting in NCAA tournament games against Nevada and Arizona.

Cheeks has worked hard on his outside shot all summer. He knows he’s a good shooter and expects to return to the level he found at Robert Morris.

“We have a ton of shooting drills; we all do,” Cheeks said. “It’s probably one of the biggest things (Grant) wants. He wants players to feel comfortable taking that catch-and-shoot shot, like not even hesitating. That’s something we’ve been working on all summer.”

On the other side of the court, defense has always been a strength, Cheeks said. He knows fans view him as a glue guy, and he likes that role.

“I think that’s why everybody thinks that’s my strong suit because I take pride in it,” he said. “In my freshman year of high school, that was my ticket. My favorite players were Jrue Holiday and Victor Oladipo, guys that really get after it.”

For Cheeks and the returning players who helped carry Dayton to a 25-8 record, the second-best mark in Grant’s seven seasons, the goal now becomes helping the program find consistency. Dayton reached four straight NCAA tournaments from 2014-17 with some of the players who are on campus this week for The Basketball Tournament leading the way.

“As soon as we got that taste of March Madness, that experience, we’ve got to dedicate this season to going back,” Cheeks said. “Seeing the TBT guys, Scoochie Smith and the rest, and what type of legacy they had, it’s hard to be like those guys, but we’d like to leave something behind for people to remember us.”