• Isaac Jack and Zed Key dribbled two basketballs at once.
• Jacob Conner dribbled through the lane and passed to the wing.
• Brady Uhl scored on a layup.
There was also a clip of Malachi Smith shooting a jumper. It’s the first time anyone outside the program has seen him play since Nov. 6 when he suffered a season-ending knee injury in the first half of the first game of the 2023-24 season.
Smith enters his fourth season with the program after an injury-plagued first three seasons. In March, Smith said he was trying to stay positive and not rush his comeback.
“He’s clear,” Dayton coach Anthony Grant said last week. “He’s not under any restrictions. Now it’s just building that confidence, building his body back to where he can do the things that we all know he’s capable of doing.”
Smith did not participate in summer workouts a year ago. He underwent ankle reconstruction surgery after the 2022-23 season. He was healthy when preseason practices began and played well enough to return to his starting role. Smith threw an alley-oop pass to DaRon Holmes II for the first basket of the season. Then he suffered a torn lateral meniscus in his right knee and underwent surgery two days after the opener.
“When you get hit with the things he got hit with over the course of the last year and a half,” Grant said, “you begin to question what’s going on, especially as a young guy when you’ve been able to play and just kind of will yourself to do certain things. Now it’s like, ‘I have to approach this differently.’ I think he’s handled it well. We pray that he can just stay healthy and move forward and continue to progress.”
Smith earned a medical redshirt last season. He has two seasons of eligibility remaining. With Holmes heading to the NBA, he’s the only member of the 2021 recruiting class, which was the highest-ranked class in UD history, remaining with the program.
Smith sat on the bench last season next to two other players who redshirted for a different reason: forward Jaiun Simon and Marvel Allen. They didn’t play because they would have seen limited minutes. The coaches didn’t want them to waste a year of eligibility.
Simon started last season on the scout team but didn’t practice later in the season because of an ankle injury. He underwent surgery March 8. Grant said last week he hoped Simon would return to action in the next week or two.
“I think the biggest thing for Jaiun was understanding, ‘It’s a process for me,’” Grant said. “‘I have to learn what I need to do and can’t rush through that.’ For him, that redshirt year allowed him to kind of see what it would take. I think he immersed himself in it and said, ‘OK, I’ve got to work on my skills. I’ve got to know the system. I’ve got to figure it out. I can watch the games and prepare mentally for what’s going to be required.’”
The year on the bench also gave Simon, at least when he was healthy, time to work on his body, Grant said.
“I guess we’ll find out what that learning curve was for him once we get him back on the court,” Grant said, “when we get into the day-to-day stuff.”
Allen was injured when last season began and wasn’t healthy until December. That contributed to the decision to redshirt him.
“I think at the end of the day, for both of those guys, it was the best decision for them,” Grant said. “Now what did they do with that opportunity from a mental and physical standpoint to help them be able to be ready for this upcoming year? We’ll find out. That’s yet to be determined.”
Grant did not want to speculate on what either player might bring to the roster in the 2024-25 season. The team has 12 scholarship players at this moment. Three of them have never played in a college game: Simon; Allen; and incoming freshman Hamad Mousa.
Grant said he had a one-track mind in February and March last year. All his focus was on that team. He wasn’t thinking, “What are Simon and Allen going to look like next year?” He said that question will be answered over the next five months.
Grant also talked last week about the group of players who entered the transfer portal and committed to new schools: Koby Brea (Kentucky); Kobe Elvis (Oklahoma); Zimi Nwokeji (Jacksonville); and Petras Padegimas (Mercer). Those decisions came over a five-week stretch.
“The timing is obviously different for everybody,” Grant said. “Once the season ends, it’s ‘OK, let’s figure out where you are in this process. Where are we in this process?’ Some of that’s the nature of college sports now. You don’t necessarily know at the end of the season. Hopefully, you’re lost in what you’re trying to accomplish. Now you know in college athletics you have a lot of other conversations taking place on the periphery. Sometimes those conversations can get to guys and cause distractions. But then sometimes it’s stuff going on around you. Then when you’re done doing what you’re doing, it’s like, ‘I hadn’t thought about that.’ So you have to allow that to take place.”
Nwokeji, Brea and Elvis all graduated in the spring, Grant said, and would have all been moving on from Dayton anyway if not for the COVID season of 2020-21, which did not count against anyone’s eligibility.
“I know as each individual situation came up,” Grant said, “you’re bracing and trying to read the tea leaves and say, ‘What is this looking like? Where’s this going?’ For me, once a guy says, ‘Hey, this is what I want to do,’ you ask the typical questions, but from there you say, ‘If you feel like that’s the best thing for you, I’m going to support that.’”
For the first time this spring, Dayton saw a player, Nate Santos, enter the portal and then return to Dayton.
“With Nate, once the season ended, some of those voices that were at bay started to come,” Grant said. “Then you watch some of your peers, whether it’s your teammates or people that you know across the country saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this; this is what I got.’ So you’re like, ‘This is coming at me. This is what people are telling me. Here’s some things that are available. Maybe I should think about it.’ I don’t know how long he was in the portal. It wasn’t very long. He started to get some feedback and concluded, ‘Everything I want and everything I need (is at Dayton) and the reason this is all being talked about is because of what this place has done and what these people have done. I need to be right where I am.’”
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