UD great impressed by Flyers’ performance in France

“They’re really exciting to watch,” said Zimmerman, who has lived in Paris for 30 years. “They’re in good shape physically, and they play as a unit. They play together. They seem to be having a lot of fun. They play with really great pace on both the offensive and defensive ends. I was pretty impressed by the team, and it seems like they have quite a bit of depth.”

Zimmerman said Dayton won the game Friday by 27 points and also said he heard they won the two previous games on the trip Monday and Thursday.

“The game I saw, they were playing against a French select team,” he said. “There were players from, I imagine, different French pro leagues. One of the kids played two years with the Bulls. He was pretty tough. He was really athletic. I just know that from talking to one of the guys there, but I don’t know many of the other players that were on the French team.”

Zimmerman said the French team was older and the players probably hadn’t played much together.

“I don’t know how fast that team was put together and how many practices they had, but (Dayton) put pressure on them the whole game offensively and defensively,” he said. ”What was really impressive is that they played literally every second really hard. There was no lapse. Nobody’s out of shape. It was intense the whole game, for both sides actually, so it was nice to watch.”

Zimmerman looked into visiting the team as soon as he heard about the trip when it was announced in May. He still travels home to Dayton every two months to see his family, including his mom, and last visited UD in the summer of 2022, stopping at a practice with former teammate Tim Pohlman, his fellow captain on the 1979-80 team, and fellow Alter grad Paul Donoher, coach Don Donoher’s son. Zimmerman also attended Donoher’s 90th birthday celebration in Dayton in 2021.

Zimmerman said Dayton coach Anthony Grant made him feel like part of the family. Grant introduced Zimmerman to the players, and Zimmerman said a few words about living in France as an ex-pat. He posed with the players, coaches and trainers for a photo on the court after the game.

Zimmerman also took a selfie with fellow Alter graduate Brady Uhl, who’s entering his third season with the Flyers. They are both third-generation Flyers whose dads played for the program.

Dayton left Dayton on Aug. 4 and arrived in Barcelona on Aug. 5. It spent four days there before flying to Paris on Wednesday. The group toured Sagrada Família, the famous church in Barcelona, and the Louvre, the famous art museum in Paris. The Flyers took a cruise on the River Seine in Paris and posed for photos in front of the Eiffel Tower. They flew home Sunday.

“What Anthony and the program are doing for the Flyers on this trip, I think it’s great,” Zimmerman said. “I really believe in this kind of team building and this kind of experience sharing. I actually had that same type of experience going into my senior year in college.”

Prior to the 1979-80 season, Zimmerman played for a U.S. all-star team in Europe. After college, he played professional basketball in Tel Aviv, Israel, for four years. When his playing career ended, he was working in Boston when his company was acquired by a French company. He volunteered to work in France on a two-year contract but has been there ever since.

“I’m in high tech, and I basically manage a set of our largest customers that are European based,” he said. “They are telecom or IT companies, and I provide our solutions to those companies. I’ve been doing that quite some time. It’s good for me, and I enjoy it.

Zimmerman lives on the southwest side of Paris in the 16th arrondissement. He said UD’s last day in the city was a “spectacular Paris day.” Now he’s excited to see what the team can do this season.

“What I took away was they seemed to play as a unit, no matter what the rotation was,” he said. “A lot of good passes. Lots of strong picks where people helped each other get open. There wasn’t really any selfishness that I saw, which was really nice to see, and everybody was contributing in one way or another.”