As the only member of Archie Miller’s staff who has remained at Dayton through the seven years of coach Anthony Grant’s tenure, perhaps no one could appreciate the moment more than Mulcahey.
“It’s like none other,” Mulcahey said. “I don’t know how else to describe it. I’ve been very fortunate to be a part of a lot of different programs that have done this accomplishment here at UD, but to see the (reaction of the) kids, oh gosh, that’s the best. It’s like Christmas.”
Dayton players sat in front of the cameras throughout the Selection Show. Mulcahey, strength coach Casey Cathrall and the coaching staff sat in the back of the room, letting the players take center stage.
Moments after everyone saw Dayton’s matchup with No. 10 seed Nevada — the second-to-last of the 36 games announced on CBS — on the screen, the coaches started handing out hugs. Associate head coach Ricardo Greer hugged assistant coach Sean Damaska, who hugged Mulcahey. There was pure joy for the Flyers three days after the disappointment of a 65-57 loss to Duquesne in the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament quarterfinals.
Everyone in the room — from Athletic Director Neil Sullivan to star forward DaRon Holmes II to Grant — expected the Flyers to receive an-large berth. The wait was still brutal as the unthinkable started to seep into everyone’s brains.
“You’re just on pins and needles,” Mulcahey said.
“You go through a lot of emotions,” guard Kobe Elvis said. “Hearing your name called, there’s definitely a big sigh of relief.”
Holmes couldn’t help analyzing different bracket predictions over the past three days.
“We were really just trying to figure out what seed we were going to get,” Holmes said. “We didn’t know if it was going to be eight, nine or 10 or seven. It was a seven, which is perfect. That’s March Madness right there. That’s what it’s all about.”
With the 4:30 p.m. game in Salt Lake City, Utah, Holmes will get to play as close to home as he could have in the tournament. He’s from Goodyear, Ariz., which is in the Mountain Time Zone, like Salt Lake City. His family would have traveled anywhere to see him play in the tournament, but this will be an easier trip.
Salt Lake City is not the ideal location for the Flyer Faithful, who hoped their team would land close to home in Indianapolis or Pittsburgh. They did not have to travel far for first-round games the last four times Dayton played in the tournament: Buffalo, N.Y., in 2014; Dayton and Columbus in 2015; St. Louis in 2016; and Indianapolis in 2017. Still, the Flyers expect their fanbase to find a way.
“Without question,” Grant said. “That’s kind of what we do.”
The NCAA tournament selection committee ranked Dayton 28th on the 68-team seed list. The Flyers made the field with ease despite an 8-5 record down the stretch and a number of conference tournament upsets that left other deserving teams — Indiana State and St. John’s, for example — on the wrong side of the bubble.
“We felt like our body of work was going to speak for itself,” Grant said. “We felt we were going to be in.”
Dayton ranked 23rd in the NCAA Evaluation Tool. Victories against No. 32 St. John’s and No. 37 Cincinnati turned out to be its best victories. The Flyers did not have a high-profile victory as they did in the 2021-22 season when they beat eventual national champion Kansas, but their losses were all to teams ranked in the top 100 of the NET.
For Sullivan, Dayton’s inclusion in the tournament proves the scheduling formula worked.
“It’s coaching, recruiting and scheduling,” he said. “I think our schedule this year, it shaped up, if you think about not just about the the Cincinnatis, St. John’s and LSUs, but the Troys, the Longwoods, the Oaklands. We were perfect in Quad 3 and Quad 4 and played almost half our schedule against Quad 1 and Quad 2. That’s what we got to do. You have to play as many hard games as you can. That’s the strategy. We’ll study this as we’ve studied it every year. I think we’re as good as anyone in studying what that means. A lot of credit goes to Darren Hertz, who works with me every day on scheduling. All credit to the team, let me be clear about that. There are no there’s no administrative victories around here. But you can tell that scheduling matters. I felt really confident just looking at historical data that we did what we had to do.”
THURSDAY’S GAME
Dayton vs. Nevada, 4:30 p.m., TBS, 1290, 95.7
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