Bennett, a a 5-foot-11 point guard from Orlando, Fla., ranked second in the nation in steals per game (2.9) as a freshman at Merrimack College.
Bennett entered the transfer portal on March 22, committed to Dayton on Saturday and announced his commitment on Sunday night. He visited UD over the weekend.
“I was very lucky to be able to coach him,” Schneider said. “First and foremost, he’s just a great kid — one of the hardest working kids I’ve ever coached.”
If Bennett can match that steals average as a sophomore, he would challenge the UD record. Alex Robertson owns the three highest single-season averages in school history and set the record of 2.89 in 1993-94.
“He’s just special in terms of his quickness and ability to read the offense,” Schneider said.
Bennett produces on the other end of the court as well. He’s Trinity Prep’s all-time leading scorer with more than 2,000 points. He averaged 9.6 points and 3.4 assists as a freshman at Merrimack and averaged 10.5 points and 4.2 assists in 16 Northeastern Conference games.
Merrimack started the season 2-13 but won its final eight regular-season games to win the NEC championship and then won three games in the NEC tournament. That 11-game winning streak is the nation’s longest active streak.
Merrimack beat Farleigh Dickinson 67-66 in the NEC championship game. Bennett had 11 points and four assists and played all 40 minutes.
Despite the victory, Merrimack didn’t get the chance to play in the NCAA tournament because it was in the final year of a four-year transition process to Division I.
Schneider followed Bennett and Merrimack throughout the season.
“They did have a really rough start,” he said, “but the run that they had at the end of the season was special. You could tell that they were really gelling, and it was just disappointing that they didn’t get a chance to show what they could do in the (NCAA) tournament.”
Bennett shot 44.7% (67 of 150) from 2-point range, 27.9% from 3-point range (46 of 165) and 73.3% (55 of 75) from the free-throw line.
Schneider said Bennett shot close to 40% from 3-point range in high school and saw him improve as his freshman season at Merrimack progressed. He shot 33% (25 of 75) from 3-point range in conference play.
“I think there’s always going to be a transition period going from high school to college, especially at the Division I level,” Schneider said. “There’s always going to be a little bit of a growing period for any player that makes that jump. But he was playing great toward the end of the year, and even if he wasn’t shooting well, he was still making contributions on the defensive end to help the team win.”
Dayton has been active in recruiting in Florida throughout Anthony Grant’s tenure. He’s from Miami. Assistant coach Darren Hertz is also from south Florida. Bennett is the third transfer with Florida connections to commit to Dayton in the last three years, following Elijah Weaver, who’s from Cocoa, and Toumani Camara, who went to high school in Hollywood, Fla.
“When I saw that Dayton was one of the teams on the list,” Schneider said, “I’m like, ‘I’m a big fan of Anthony Grant’s.’ I guess they had a really good visit. I’m hoping it’s going to be a fun year.”
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