Grant likes experience three transfers will bring to Dayton in 2024-25 season

There’s another for his 100th victory.

Grant doesn’t often look back on those moments. He’s too busy working on the present during the season and looking forward to the next season in the offseason. However, he did reflect on the program’s most recent accomplishment when he sat down with the Dayton Daily News on Thursday in his office for his first interview since a 78-68 loss to Arizona in the second round of the NCAA tournament on March 23.

The conversation started with a question about another milestone victory: the 63-60 win against Nevada two days before that loss to Arizona. No. 7 seed Dayton erased a 17-point deficit in the final seven minutes to beat No. 10 Nevada. It was Grant’s first NCAA tournament victory since 2007 when he was at Virginia Commonwealth and UD’s first since a second-round victory against Providence in 2015.

“I haven’t thought about it a lot,” Grant said, “but I guess, for me, I really wanted our guys to get that experience of playing in the NCAA Tournament — we’d been close with that group, a couple of times being one game away — and for them to able to taste that and feel it, for them individually and just for the program, for what we’re trying to build. Unless you go through that experience of the NCAA tournament, it’s hard to really explain to somebody what it feels like. So to me, it was rewarding to see their faces at the open practice, right before you play, for them to walk into that environment and feel, ‘Oh, this is different; this is what the coaches have been talking about.’”

Two players who started that game return for the 2024-25 season: senior forward Nate Santos, who scored the last four points; and fifth-year guard Enoch Cheeks, who matched Santos with eight points in the game.

Two players who came off the bench in that game also return: junior guard Javon Bennett, who started most of the season; and junior forward Isaac Jack.

Santos, Cheeks, Bennett and Jack were all newcomers entering last season. They were transfers who gave the program a boost after six players entered the transfer portal during and after the 2022-23 season.

This spring, Dayton once again had to rebuild its roster through the portal, and it found Ohio State forward Zed Key, Marshall forward Jacob Conner, an Alter graduate, and Butler guard Posh Alexander. All three are now on campus and working out with the returning players. All have been featured in practice photos shown on the various official UD social media accounts.

Grant talked about the new class, which could still grow because Dayton has one open scholarship, for the first time Thursday.

“There’ll be some discovery from now until November,” Grant said. “They’re learning us, but we’re also learning them. I think it would be foolish as a coach to say now, ‘I know exactly what you do and what your role is going to be,’ until I get a chance to work with them and figure out how they learn and figure out, ‘What’s your skill set? I know what you did over there, but I don’t know why. I don’t know how.’ So I’ve got to figure it out. I’ve got to learn that stuff. We have to learn that stuff. To say this is what I expect out of a guy, it’d be a guess. Obviously, we feel good about each one of them being able to fit into how we play and fit into our system.”

The new class of transfers brings 10 combined seasons of college basketball to Dayton. All three played major minutes throughout those 10 seasons. That’s a big change from the previous class of four transfers, who had seven seasons and many fewer minutes on their resumes.

“I think that’ll be huge,” Grant said. “The thing we’ve seen probably since COVID that’s heightened (in importance) is having experienced, older guys. It’s much harder for freshmen to have major impacts. Three years ago, we brought in Malachi (Smith) and (DaRon) Holmes and (Kobe) Elvis (and others), and they went through their growing pains early. I don’t know that you’ll see that again, outside of maybe what (John Calipari) tried to do at Kentucky, where he got guys that are pros when they walked in the door. For the most part, I think those days are done in terms of seeing a group of freshmen come in and say, ‘OK, we’re going to grow as freshmen and sophomores, and then by the time we’re juniors, we can compete with anybody in the country because we got all this experience.’ I don’t know that you’ll ever see that again.’”

There was a theme with the three transfers who committed to Dayton. The coaches recruited each of them in high school. Dayton had leaned on past connections before in recruiting Toumani Camara and Santos, for example. Both received offers from UD but started their careers elsewhere before transferring to Dayton.

Grant said it was hard to anticipate the team’s needs this spring because various players from the 2023-24 roster entered the portal at different times during the 45-day window the portal was open.

“You say, ‘OK, if I’m losing this, what’s the need?’ and sometimes you don’t know what you’re losing until you lose it, right?” Grant said. “It’s like, ‘How do we try to anticipate what could happen and what our needs are?’ Then you try to fill those needs as different guys come available. We’ve had a relationship with Posh since he was in 10th grade. When he became available, I think the timing was right for him and for us, Zed, we were familiar with, coming out of high school, and then he’s right up the road and you watch his career and what he’s been able to do. Jacob’s a local guy. So some of that is just familiarity. You say, ‘We know what these guys do and who they are. They fit who we are at Dayton in terms of this community, this campus, what our program’s about. You kind of go off of that, and you try to stay true to who you are.”

Dayton has landed one other recruit this spring: Hamad Mousa, a 6-foot-7 guard/forward from Qatar who has spent the last three seasons at the NBA Global Academy in Canberra, Australia.

Grant said Mousa did not visit campus during the recruiting process. The coaches learned of him after his breakout performance at a Basketball Without Borders event in Indiana in February.

“He’s part of the NBA Global Academy and we have relationships with people there,” Grant said. “Our staff — from Ricardo (Greer) to James (Kane) to Jermaine (Henderson) — has relationships with different people here in the states and overseas. I think it was the combination of what we’ve been able to build and guys seeing the character of the program and the fan base and the way we do it at Dayton. (Mousa) said, ‘This could be something that could be good.’”

Grant said Dayton’s recent track record of sending players to the NBA helped with the recruitment of Mousa. Kostas Antetokounmpo was the 60th and last pick in the 2018 draft. Obi Toppin was the eighth overall pick in the 2020 draft and has now played four seasons in the league. Toumani Camara outplayed his draft position, No. 52 overall in 2023, in his first season with the Portland Trail Blazers. Now it appears DaRon Holmes II, Dayton’s MVP last season, could be a first-round pick later this month.

“You’re able to say, ‘You can achieve your highest goals and dreams at Dayton,’” Grant said.