Maui Invitational: Dayton has storied history in tournament

Five years ago, three Dayton Flyers men’s basketball players — Obi Toppin, Ibi Watson and Ryan Mikesell — climbed to the cliffs above Black Rock Beach two days before the start of the Maui Invitational.

A cameraman filmed them flexing their muscles on the beach, swimming toward the cliffs and then pausing at the top.

“Are you guys ready?” they were asked.

Toppin and Watson shook their heads.

Mikesell jumped first. Then Toppin yelled, “YOLO! You only live once!” Meanwhile, Watson contemplated his jump before taking the 20-foot leap. Toppin followed. Another cameraman in the water filmed from that angle.

“We took on Black Rock, and we won,” Watson said as he swam back to the beach.

The Black Rock cliffs are located on Kaanapali Beach, not far from the Sheraton Maui Resort and Spa, where the team was staying. The 2019-20 Flyers have great memories of those cliffs, that beach, that resort and the Lahaina Civic Center, where they beat Georgia and Virginia Tech before losing to Kansas in the championship game. Those games set the tone in a historic season that would see the Flyers rise to No. 3 in the national rankings and finish 29-2.

The Flyers soared all season. They dropped only from those cliffs, where the real danger was not in the jump but in the climb up the volcanic rock.

“If I remember correctly,” Mikesell said in October in a text message from Germany, where he’s playing in his fifth season in professional basketball, “I don’t even think we asked the coaches or anything beforehand. I think we just went for it. I think it was one of those things like, ‘Instead of asking for permission, just ask for forgiveness,’ if they said something. But with that group of guys that we had, I think the coaches allowed us to all hang out and take advantage of being in Hawaii.

“Afterwards, I do briefly remember AG (Anthony Grant) and the staff saying something about staying off the rock on game days, but other than that I don’t remember them giving us too many guidelines. I think we tried to get AG to go out there with everyone, but I don’t remember him doing it.

“Most of the guys on the team went out in the ocean to go swimming around, and we did some snorkeling after the tournament. The team definitely took full advantage of being in Maui.”

Explore» PHOTOS: Dayton in November tournaments over the years

The same was said 16 years earlier when three Dayton players — Keith Waleskowski, Sean Finn and Jon Kingston — made the same leap.

The Flyers return to Maui later this week, flying west on Friday, and open play in the tournament against North Carolina on Nov. 25. The game starts at 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time. With the five-hour time difference, it will be a 6:30 p.m. start in Hawaii.

This will be the first tournament held at the Lahaina Civic Center since the wildfire that destroyed Lahaina and killed more than 100 people. The tournament moved to Honolulu last year.

Dayton is 9-3 (.750) in four appearances (2000, 2003, 2013 and 2019) in the tournament. Of the 37 teams to play in at least four Maui Invitationals, Dayton is one of 10 with a winning percentage above .700.

Here’s a look back at the best and worst of Dayton’s first four Maui Invitational appearances:

Best team performance: Dayton won the Maui Invitational in 2003, beating Central Michigan 82-63 in the first round, San Diego State 76-71 in the semifinals and Hawaii 82-72 in the championship game.

The championship game in coach Brian Gregory’s first season.

“This has to be a starting point for our program,” Gregory said. “As wonderful as this feeling is, I’ll be awfully disappointed if this were to be the highlight of the season. A win like this can potentially take you to another level, because your name goes up on that wall with all of the other great programs who have won this tournament. And it’s there forever. I told the team that. The great thing about winning a championship is that it is yours from now on. No one can take that away from you.”

The biggest name in the 2003 tournament was Ohio State, and it finished that season 14-16. It was the last season of the Jim O’Brien era.

Villanova was also there, but it lost 52-49 to Chaminade in the first round. Villanova finished 18-17 that season, which was Jay Wright’s third season.

Dayton did not play either of those teams. Ohio State lost 83-61 to San Diego State in the first round, or the Flyers and Buckeyes would have met for the first time since 1988.

The Flyers were 5-0 after the Maui Invitational and won four more games before losing three of their last four non-conference games. They still earned their second straight NCAA tournament berth.

“The tournament was big for the program because of the TV appearances,” Athletic Director Ted Kissell said after the tournament. “People got to see an old program working to get to a level it’s not been. Recruits got to see how hard Brian Gregory works on the sideline. Fans back in Dayton and alumni around the country got to see a team they can be proud of, one I believe is going to do a lot of good things this year.”

Dayton and Gonzaga, which won the tournament in 2009 and 2018, remain the only programs from outside the power conferences to win the Maui Invitational.

Credit: DaytonDailyNews

Best individual performance in the tournament: Toppin averaged 22.3 points and 7.0 rebounds in the 2019 tournament, setting the tone for a season that would end with him claiming all the top national player of the year awards.

Toppin scored 25 points in the first round against Georgia, 24 in the semifinals against Virginia Tech and 18 in the final game, a 90-84 loss in overtime to Kansas.

Toppin was at his best in the first four minutes of the first game. He scored 12 points as Dayton opened the game with a 14-2 run against Georgia, which featured freshman Anthony Edwards, a future NBA star.

“Oh, it was important,” Toppin said of that stretch. “Very important. The team was just finding me in the post. Before the game, we talked about throwing the ball in the post and working out of there because our offense is based off of that. When we got the ball in the post, a lot of things opened up, and I was able to get buckets.”

Credit: David Jablonski - Staff Writer

Credit: David Jablonski - Staff Writer

MVP performance: Keith Waleskowski averaged 16 points and 11 rebounds in three games in 2003 and was named MVP of the tournament. He scored 17 points against Central Michigan, 14 against San Diego State and 17 against Hawaii.

Waleskowski on a list of past MVPs that includes many famous basketball names: Dell Curry (1985, Michigan); Will Perdue (1986, Vanderbilt); Glen Rice (1988, Michigan); Bobby Hurley and Anfernee Hardaway (1992, Duke and Memphis); Travis Ford (1993, Kentucky); Mike Dunleavy (2001, Duke); Kemba Walker (2010, Connecticut); Zach Edey (2023, Purdue), etc.

Best victory: In Dayton’s first Maui Invitational appearance in 2000, it beat No. 6 Maryland 77-71 in the third-place game.

Maryland finished 25-11 that season and reached the Final Four as a No. 3 seed. A season later, it won the national championship with many of the same players the Flyers saw in Maui, including Juan Dixon, Lonny Baxton, Chris Wilcox, Byron Mouton and Steve Blake.

Dayton beat No. 12 Connecticut 80-66 in the first round that year and lost 76-59 to No. 1 Arizona in the semifinals. The Flyers rode the 2-1 finish in Maui to a No. 24 ranking in the AP poll the next week.

“I feel good,” Dayton coach Oliver Purnell said. “It was a good tournament for us. I’ve said all along this is a great tournament for our program. And then to come in and beat two ranked opponents and give our young guys a chance to play under this kind of pressure, I thought was great. It’s quite an accomplishment to come out of here 2-1.”

Most courageous performance: Dayton guard Tony Stanley scored 21 points in the victory against Maryland in 2000 less than 24 hours after learning his mom died in Philadelphia. He also made two clutch plays late in the game, making a 3-pointer to give Dayton a 71-64 lead with 1 minute, 6 seconds remaining and then getting a steal on the next possession.

“Tony played with a heavy heart,” Purnell said after the game. “I don’t know how he did it. I really don’t.”

Karen Stanley — who was known as Tina — died at 37. According to reports at the time, she died of pneumonia. Tony’s grandma, Louise Stanley, called Purnell in Hawaii to give him the news and told Purnell she wanted Tony to play the final game in Hawaii.

“I knew how his mother thought and she would have wanted him to play that last game out there,” Louise told Dayton Daily News columnist Tom Archdeacon in 2000. “There’s nothing that made her happier than when Tony was playing basketball. She wanted him to be somebody and she knew basketball would help him do that. She knew he had a gift.”

Stanley said, “It was important I play for my mom ... and for our team. If I showed up all down and moping, they would have fed off that. I wanted to be strong, so they could draw on that strength, that energy, too. And I really think our team had the tightest bond that game of any time I’ve seen at UD. For me, it took a little while to get started, but then I went to the free-throw line and something came over me. I felt my mom’s presence. That’s why I looked up. I felt her smiling down and the longer the game went, the more I felt it.”

Most lopsided loss: Dayton has suffered no bad losses in Maui. It has lost only to ranked teams: No. 1 Arizona in 2000; No. 18 Baylor in 2013; and No. 4 Kansas in 2019.

Based on the 76-59 score, the Arizona loss is the worst. That Arizona team, which featured future NBA players Gilbert Arenas and Richard Jefferson among others, finished 28-8 and lost to Duke in the national championship game.

Arenas and Jefferson combined for 31 points against Dayton, while an ill Tony Stanley led Dayton with 13 points on 4-of-13 shooting.

“They’re good,” Purnell said of Arizona. “They’re probably as good a team as we’ll play all year. They’re as good as anybody.”

Most lopsided victory: Dayton made 11 of 24 3-pointers and beat Virginia Tech 89-62 in the semifinals in 2019. The Hokies upset No. 3 Michigan State 71-66 a day earlier.

“We tip our cap to a really good Dayton team, an exceptionally well-coached Dayton team,” Virginia Tech coach Mike Young said. “They took us behind the shed and whipped our hind end. They’re going to have a really good year.”

Credit: DaytonDailyNews

Biggest heartbreak: Either of Dayton’s other two losses in Maui could fit in this category.

In 2013, Dayton lost 67-66 to Baylor in the semifinals. The Flyers blew a 10-point lead in the final seven minutes. Vee Sanford missed a shot in the final seconds, but Devin Oliver got a hand on the ball and tried to tip it in. The ball rolled off as time expired.

“I was right there at the rim,” said Oliver, who made the all-tournament team, averaging 15.7 points per game. “I don’t know how I missed it.”

In 2019 against Kansas, Dayton guard Jalen Crutcher made a game-tying 3-pointer with three seconds remaining to send the game to overtime. Kansas pulled away in overtime, winning 90-84.

“Right now, I’m very, very proud of our team,” Grant said after the game. “Our guys battled in three highly-competitive games in three days. These guys gave everything they had for each other. They battled it out all the way through the end. Obviously, it’s a tough loss. But like I told them in the locker room — whatever it was five, six days ago when we came here — we wanted to find out what we needed to do as a team to continue to move forward, and I think these guys did a great job of answering that. They fought obviously to the very end.”

Best shooting performance by a coach: In 2013, Dayton coach Archie Miller won the annual free-throw shooting contest involving the coaches of the eight teams. He teamed with a local student, Ashley Peralta, and earned a donation to her school.

The contest is held one day before the tournament and will take place Nov. 24 this year with Dayton’s Anthony Grant and others scheduled to participate.

Best dunk: Kyle Davis made countless memorable plays in his four seasons (2013-17) at Dayton, but his first one was a dunk in an 82-64 victory against California in the third-place game in 2013.

Davis was a freshman who scored a total of eight points in Dayton’s first six games and had played a total of two minutes in the first two games that season in Maui. Then he broke out for 12 points in 16 minutes against California.

Davis drove the lane and split two defenders for a two-handed dunk.

”Me and Scoochie (Smith) were talking about it the play before,” Davis said. “They left me wide open, and I didn’t take my chance. I told him on the bench, ‘The next time they leave me open, I’m going to dunk.’”

It was a pass from his fellow freshman, Smith, that led to the slam, and Davis publicly thanked Smith on Twitter. Later, Smith heard from friends and family members.

”Everyone was just calling me, excited,” he said. “I think my mother was the most excited. She always knew I could dunk, but she never saw it on national TV.”

Best viral moment: Toppin made a 3-pointer in front of the Kansas bench in 2019 and turned to stare at the Kansas players while the ball was still in the air.

“I don’t remember turning around,” Toppin said, “but when I shot, it just felt good and I just started running back on defense.”

2024 Maui Invitational schedule

(All times Eastern)

Monday, Nov. 25

Game 1: Memphis vs. UConn, 2:30 p.m. on ESPN2

Game 2: Colorado vs. Michigan State, 5 p.m. on ESPN2

Game 3: Auburn vs. Iowa State, 9 p.m. on ESPNU

Game 4: Dayton vs. North Carolina, 11:30 p.m. on ESPN2

Tuesday, Nov. 26

Game 5: Game 1 loser vs. Game 2 loser, 3:30 p.m. on ESPN2

Game 6: Game 1 winner vs. Game 2 winner, 6 p.m. on ESPN

Game 7: Game 3 loser vs. Game 4 loser, 8:30 p.m. on ESPNU