‘The place you want to be in March’ — Flyers expect to hear name called on Selection Sunday

Here’s an account of that scene in 2017 from the Dayton Daily News:

All the Dayton Flyers not to mention the coaches, their kids, administrators, trainers, family members, a few of the biggest UD fans and media members gathered in Archie Miller’s basement Sunday in Kettering. Then the TV stopped working. Everyone hurried upstairs.

Then they got the basement TV working again. Everyone sprinted back to the basement just in time to see NCAA Tournament selection show on CBS begin. The next 25 minutes turned out to be as tense as any all season.

At one point, senior guard Kyle Davis looked at Miller, who was sitting in the middle of everyone, right in front of the big-screen TV on the wall, and said, “Coach, I’m not playing in the NIT.” Davis didn’t need to worry.

The Flyers earned a No. 7 seed that day and a game against No. 10 seed Wichita State in Indianapolis. Seven years later, with Miller now coaching at Rhode Island and Anthony Grant leading the Flyers, UD expects once again to hear its name called on the Selection Sunday. CBS airs the Selection Show at 6 p.m. The team will gather for a watch party that’s closed to the public.

This is a moment Grant and the 2019-20 Flyers would have experienced if not for a global pandemic. Grant will have Obi Toppin, Jalen Crutcher, Ryan Mikesell, Trey Landers and all the members of the team that was denied a chance to shine in March Madness on his mind as Dayton returns to the tournament.

“They’ll be a part of it,” Grant said Tuesday. “We all stand on the shoulders of the people that came before us that made it possible, and so those guys are a part of everything we get to experience now.”

Without the success of Toppin, the consensus national player of the year in 2020, Dayton may not have landed its current star, DaRon Holmes II, one of 10 semifinalists for the Naismith Award this year. Without Toppin, Scoochie Smith and — going back much further — Roosevelt Chapman, three New York natives, maybe UD wouldn’t have landed the Big Apple’s Koby Brea, the nation’s leading 3-point shooter this season.

Grant built this roster in a variety of ways. Brea arrived as part of the 2020-21 recruiting class. He took an official visit in September of 2019, about two months before UD began its historic 29-2 season. He committed to Dayton the following month and sat behind the bench on the opening night of the season as Dayton beat Indiana State.

Dayton recruited Holmes in June 2020 when the world was shut down by the pandemic. He committed that October without ever having visited campus because of pandemic-related restrictions.

Five of the players in the current eight-man rotation transferred to Dayton after starting their careers elsewhere. Javon Bennett (Merrimack), Enoch Cheeks (Robert Morris) and Isaac Jack (Buffalo) left their schools to play at a higher-profile program. Nate Santos (Pittsburgh) sought a bigger role in a lower-ranked conference. Kobe Elvis (DePaul) left a struggling program for a more stable one.

The 2023-24 Flyers had to peak early in the season to have any chance of playing in the NCAA tournament, and they delivered, beating LSU, St. John’s, Southern Methodist and Cincinnati and winning 12 of 14 non-conference games to put themselves in the conversation for a NCAA tournament at-large berth.

That success in November and December is why Dayton is feeling comfortable heading into Selection Sunday despite finishing third in the Atlantic 10 Conference with a 14-4 record and then losing 65-57 to Duquesne in the quarterfinals of the A-10 tournament on Thursday. Dayton’s strength of record ranks 25th in the country. It ranks 23rd in the NCAA Evaluation Tool. No team ranked in the top 30 has ever been left out of the tournament.

The experts expect Dayton to receive a seed somewhere between 7 and 10. That’s a disappointment considering it was in the conversation for a No. 4 seed in February. On the other hand, Dayton will play in the NCAA tournament in a year in which the other three major programs in Ohio — Ohio State, Xavier and Cincinnati — will be stuck at home or playing in the NIT.

Wherever Dayton heads for the NCAA tournament — Indianapolis and Pittsburgh are the closest first-round sites — it will fulfill the goal of many players.

“That’s always somebody’s dream,” Bennett said Thursday. “Playing college basketball, you want to play in March Madness. To be able to do that, it’s really a blessing.”

Dayton has made 18 appearances in the NCAA tournament. It has a record of 19-20 in the event. The tournament had third-place games in the regionals in the early years. That’s why Dayton has more losses than appearances. It won its first game and then lost two in the 1966 tournament.

Dayton reached the tournament four years in a row for the first time in the final four seasons of Miller’s tenure. An Elite Eight run in 2014, two tournament victories in 2015 and then first-round exits in 2016 and 2017 led to Miller getting the head coaching job at Indiana. He hasn’t been back to the NCAA tournament as a head coach. Dayton hasn’t been returned either since losing 64-58 Wichita State in 2017.

There’s a big asterisk next to Dayton’s recent NCAA tournament history because of the cancelled 2020 tournament, of course. The sports world came to a half three days before Selection Sunday that year.

Seven years later, the Flyers will wake up on Selection Sunday wondering who and where they will play this week. Nate Santos, who played at Pittsburgh last season, is the only Flyer who has experienced the NCAA tournament.

Pittsburgh beat Mississippi State in the First Four at UD Arena last season and then beat Iowa State before losing to Xavier.

“It was awesome,” Santos said. “I keep telling these dudes it’s the place where you want to be in March. There’s no other feeling. So I’m definitely looking forward to experiencing that with these guys.”