New Dayton assistant, a Charlie Coles protege, works on his finding his niche on Grant’s staff

“I remember thinking if I get in I don’t want to mess up,” Henderson said Thursday. “I had one of the best lines against Arizona. I can almost tell you the play. You know how you get a team rebound. They knock it out, but you’re in the area. I got credit for the rebound. Arizona was in a zone. We get the ball inbounds. I swing it to a Dayton native, Chris McGuire, and he makes a 3. That was my one minute.”

In the second game, Henderson replaced McGuire, a Chaminade Julienne graduate, at the free-throw line when McGuire hit the ground hard after being fouled in the second half.

“Coming into make free throws in our loss to Virginia is probably one of my best memories,” Henderson said. “I hadn’t played the whole game. We had a great veteran team. When I got called in to shoot them, there was no warm-up. I think the string was hanging out of my shorts and I had to tuck my jersey into my shorts. And Bill Raftery (of CBS) says, ‘Every dog has its day.’”

Those stories and the many more memories Henderson has from other games as a player and coach at UD Arena are more relevant these days because Henderson will soon add to his UD Arena experiences. Dayton head coach Anthony Grant announced the hiring of Henderson as an assistant coach on April 24.

Henderson worked as an assistant coach last season on the staff of Daniyal Robinson at Cleveland State. Dayton had a position to fill because the NCAA increased the number of assistant coaches a Division I basketball program could have by two in January.

Henderson interviewed with Grant in 2017 when Grant was building his first staff at UD but didn’t get the job. He got a call this spring from Grant, who started telling him about the program.

“I had to stop him a couple of times and say, ‘Coach, I’m all too familiar with your team,’” Henderson said. “It was a no-brainer in terms of being familiar with the tradition and the fanfare and the pageantry and being familiar with their team presently.”

Henderson joins a program that finished 22-12 last season, Grant’s sixth as coach. The Flyers, hampered by injuries all season, lost 68-56 to Virginia Commonwealth in the Atlantic 10 Conference championship game as they fell short of the NCAA tournament berth that has eluded the program throughout Grant’s tenure.

“That’s not bad luck; that’s demonic luck they’ve had to endure on and off the floor,” Henderson said. “You just know that the program is right there to make not just a push to the tournament, but hopefully we can get in the tournament and advance.”

Henderson talked to his boss, Robinson, who led Cleveland State to a 21-14 record in his first season, about the Dayton job. Robinson told him, “Grant represents what we’re all trying to do. Great coach. Great program. Who he is. How he carries himself. You’ve gotta go.”

That’s why Henderson said there wasn’t a lot of hard thinking about taking the job. Now he joins associate head coach Ricardo Greer and assistants James Kane and Darren Hertz, as well as Grant, in the group of coaches who will be recruiting for Dayton on and off campus and coaching on the court.

When Henderson spoke to the Dayton Daily News on Thursday, he said it was his fifth day on the job. Everyone was new when Henderson joined the staff of Robinson a year ago. Now only Henderson is the new guy.

“It’s a lot of learning,” Henderson said. “Learning the expectations, learning our present players, learning what the staff likes, what coach Grant likes in recruits or potential guys. I’ve been around tremendous leadership in my career from Charlie Coles (Miami) to Gary Waters (Cleveland State) to Bruce Weber (Kansas State) to Daniyal Robinson, who I think is a star in the business. You just don’t come to a place like Dayton thinking you have all the answers. There’s been a ton of production here by players and coaches. It’s on me to try find my niche with the staff.”

Henderson said he got to know Kane when they both were in the Big 12. Henderson was at Kansas State from 2017-22 and Kane was at Iowa State from 2018-21. Henderson has also crossed paths with Greer and Grant over the years. That’s why he doesn’t expect the transition to be difficult at all. He and Kane were out Thursday scouting restaurants in the Dayton area for recruiting visits.

Of all the coaches Henderson has worked with, none had a bigger impact than Coles. Henderson played for Miami from 1993-97. Herb Sendek coached the team the first three seasons. Coles, who had been assistant under Sendek, took over the program when Henderson was a senior. Miami played in the NCAA tournament again that season. Henderson had six points and four rebounds in his final game, a 68-56 loss to No. 4 seed Clemson in Kansas City, Mo.

Henderson started his coaching career on the staff of Coles as a volunteer assistant coach in the 1998-99 season. He spent 15 years, the last seven as the associate head coach, at Miami until Coles retired after the 2011-12 season.

“Charlie means everything to me for a couple of reasons,” Henderson said. “First, he gave me my start. I think it’s really special when you can start a job at your alma mater and then you get to coach guys like Wally Szczerbiak or Damon Frierson or Rob Mestas and Michael Bramos and Tim Pollitz, Julian Mavunga, Nathan Peavy — on and on and on. There are guys that make you special. Then (Coles) was a jewel for coaching. Some people say, ‘Old guys can’t make it these days.’ Well, I don’t always agree with that because old guys sometimes have a good perspective for whatever generation. The game has changed. Recruiting with the portal and NIL, don’t get me wrong, we’ve never seen anything like it. But at the same time, the core values of the game are the same, and there are little nuggets I’ve taken with in my career from Charlie.”

Henderson’s Miami connections go deeper than his playing and coaching career there. His wife, Colleen Day Henderson, scored 1,269 points in her Miami career (2000-04). She spent 12 seasons as an assistant coach at Miami and coached at Akron the last five seasons. The Hendersons have a daughter, Jaye, who will turn one later this month.

While Jermaine has a relatively new recruit at home, he’s now part of the team building Dayton’s roster. The Flyers have three open scholarships on the 2023-24 roster and will have one more if DaRon Holmes II keeps his name in the NBA Draft.

Henderson said the coaches look at it as an “opportunistic” time in recruiting because of the many options in the transfer portal.

“I’m trying to find my lane as much as possible without pretending that I have all the answers,” he said, “but I don’t have any problem learning because there’s tremendous energy. The guys have taken me in and helped me. I’m still living out of the hotel. ... It’s an intense time trying to get guys, but I think you’ve still got to be strategic. You’ve still got to get guys that are good enough. You still got to get guys that want to play for you, that want to represent Dayton basketball.”