Former Dayton walk-on entering second season as assistant at North Dakota State

Camron Greer played a total of 25 minutes in his Dayton Flyers career, and he wouldn’t trade a single one of them — or the many more minutes he spent watching his teammates from the end of the bench — for anything more than three years after graduating from the University of Dayton.

“I cherished every moment,” Greer said. “It was always a blessing. I’m from Chicago. I wasn’t an All-American in high school. People like me usually don’t get those opportunities. Just being who I am and excelling academically and being a great teammate for the rest of the team, that’s what propelled me. I hope I’m able to inspire others to know, ‘Hey, you can do that, too. There’s nothing you can do.’”

Greer played in his final season in a mostly empty UD Arena during the pandemic in 2020-21. He had not returned to the arena until The Basketball Tournament in July when he teamed with fellow former UD walk-ons Joey Gruden and Jeremiah Bonsu as well as UD student manager Jordan Harbeck to coach the Red Scare, the Dayton alumni team.

Greer is now an assistant coach at North Dakota State University on the staff of David Richman. Greer arrived at NDSU in 2022 as a graduate manager and was elevated to assistant coach in 2023.

“Coach Greer has exceeded our expectations and continued to move our championship standards forward,” Richman said last year in a press release. “His passion for the game of basketball and unique talent for building relationships and establishing trust make him an ideal fit in our Bison Family, elevating our expectations of excellence in everything we do.”

It was during his time as a walk-on guard at Dayton from 2017-21 that Greer started to think about getting into coaching.

“Growing up playing the game of basketball,” Greer said, “being under so many great coaches while I was here and learning so much about the game that I didn’t know before I got here, I think that’s where my passion for teaching grew.”

Camron Greer Elevated to Assistant Coach for Bison Hoops https://t.co/FNeA4Hhba8
— NDSU Men's Basketball (@NDSUmbb) July 10, 2023

Greer didn’t jump straight into coaching after graduation. He had an engineering job that first year out of school with Christopher B. Burke Engineering in Rosemont, Ill. At the same time, he worked as a volunteer assistant at Rich Township High School in his hometown.

Still, Greer had that itch to return to college basketball. He started reaching out to college coaches, looking for opportunities. He found one at North Dakota State, a Summit League program located in Fargo, N.D.

Greer benefitted when the NCAA increased the number of assistant coaches Division I programs can have. With two more positions, he earned a promotion earlier than he might have otherwise.

“My role didn’t allow me to be on the floor in the past,” Greer said. “Now I’m able to be on the floor. I can work guys out. That’s a tremendous blessing. That’s a tremendous opportunity for me, and all six coaches — four at a time — can get on the road and recruit.”

Greer first joined Dayton’s program in 2017 in coach Anthony Grant’s first season.

“I didn’t have much basketball knowledge before I got there,” Greer said. “I learned a lot about the game. They taught life through the game of basketball, and they were examples of that, too. They walked the walk.”

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Greer experienced the 14-17 season of 2017-18. He saw the rise of Obi Toppin from unranked recruit in 2017 to national player of the year in 2020. He was there for all four seasons of Jalen Crutcher’s career.

Greer scored his first points in his sophomore season, putting the finishing touches on a victory at Rhode Island with a 3-pointer in the final minute. He finished his career with 10 points.

Greer received his most playing time — 16 minutes in 13 games — in his junior season when Dayton won 29 games and rose to No. 3 in the national rankings before the pandemic brought everything to an abrupt halt.

That season will live forever in the memory of Dayton fans. Greer kept the season alive in July by wearing a 2019 Maui Invitational T-shirt on a visit to the Cronin Center.

“It was a dream come true,” Greer said of that season. “I can go on and on about that year. You can start with Maui, through A-10 play, the road trips, bigger and bigger private jets throughout the course of the season. Just the buzz that we were able to create here in the city, there was nothing like it. We had College GameDay here. It was a special year.”