WSU coach Billy Donlon has some headaches to deal with now (Tim Shaffer photo)
Archie Miller is looking for another guard. Julius Mays is looking for another school.
Could the answer to UD’s problems be sitting right across town at Wright State?
I don’t know if the UD coach and the WSU guard will be sharing a future, but they do have a bit of a mutual past. Both played at North Carolina State.
Miller was a standout point guard - and three-point shooter — for the Wolfpack from 1998-2002. Mays was a solid bench player for N.C. State from 2008-2010. He played in 58 games for the Pack, averaging just under 5.0 points per game and 1.2 rebounds. After sitting out a year per NCAA transfer rules, he put the WSU team on his back last season, averaged 14.1 points per game and was named the Horizon League’s Newcomer of the Year.
Because he’s scheduled to graduate in June, he won’t have to sit out another season because of the NCAA transfer rules and will be able to play right away for another school.
Word is Purdue is especially interested in him - he’s from Marion, Indiana and led his prep team to the state championship game - but he would fit at UD, too. One Flyers’ fan sent me an email yesterday and said Mays would go back to being “nothing but a bench player” if he came to UD.
I wouldn’t count on that.
I know Georgetown transfer Vee Sanford is penciled in as the shooting guard for next season, but Mays could compete for that job. Here’s Brad Stevens assessment of Mays after his Butler team managed to squeak by WSU, 63-62, this season even though the Raiders 6-foot-1 guard put on a one may show - 24 points, 7 rebounds - and neatly carried his talent-depleted team to the victory.
“24 and 7 - it seemed like he made ever play at the end,” the Butler coach said “He’s definitely on my short list for (Horizon League) Player of the Year. He’s good. He’s real good.”
Mays - who battled injuries during the season - ended up as a second team All Horizon League pick though he deserved First Team honors. WSU’s 13-19 record didn’t help him in that matter.
A hoops talent making a crosstown switch of schools has happened here before. A decade ago it went in the opposite direction. After playing three seasons at UD, Cain Doliboa came to Wright State for a standout final season.
And a few years before that Chris McGuire went from Miami University to Wright State.
I know some WSU folks are voicing concerns that WSU now has had three players announce they are transferring off last season’s Raiders team. Besides Mays, Vance Hall, who started 17 games as a sophomore, and 6-foot-8 Alex Pritchett are headed to Bellarmine.
Certainly it’s not what any program wants, but this mini-turnover from Billy Donlon’s first two teams is nothing compared to the six seasons (1997-2003) when Ed Schilling was the head coach and 25 players left the program.
New coach John Cooper knows how Donlon is feeling. No sooner had he taken over from retiring RedHawks coach Charlie Coles when he said top returning scorer Brian Sullivan told him he was transferring. Sullivan - who was voted to the Mid-American Conference’s All-Freshman team last season - led the conference in three-point shooting accuracy and was eighth in the nation.
“Welcome to the world of college basketball as we know it, today” said Cooper, who said he had a list of over 400 Division I transfers since this past season ended.
That point is best made by Walter Offutt. A couple of years ago he transferred out of Ohio State after a season and a half to Wright State. He had to sit out the rest of the season and when Brad Brownell left WSU for the Clemson job, Offutt - before Donlon took over - split as well.
He ended up at Ohio University and this year led the team in the NCAA Tournament. He made a late steal and the game-clinching free throws in the Bobcats tournament opening victory over Michigan and then scored 21 in OU’s defeat of South Florida—a victory that put the Bobcats in the Sweet 16.
As for another transfer, UD’s Ralph Hill - who is leaving the Flyers program voluntarily or not so voluntarily depending on whom you listen to (or, at least, which set of Hill comments you take) - was initially recruited by WSU.
So it ‘s like Cooper said. That’s college basketball today.
And finally, that picture at the top is Tim Shaffer’s superb photo of unbeaten Lavarn Harvell knocking out Tony Pietrantonio on the undercard of Chad Dawson’s light-heayweight title fight decision over Bernard Hopkins last Saturday night in Atlantic City.
The fight took place at Boardwalk Hall (an arena where the Dayton Flyers have suffered a few KO punches as well in the A-10 Tournament).
Ali standing over Liston (Neil Leifer photo)
My favorite boxing KO photo though is Neil Leifer’s Sports Illustrated shot of Muhammad Ali standing over the downed Sonny LIston in the first round of their title rematch in Lewiston Maine.
Ali is yelling ‘Get up and fight, sucker!!!”
Unlike Liston, I’m sure Billy Donlon and Wright State will do just that.
The Raiders lost their top player AND their top rival, Wednesday.
Julius Mays - who transferred to WSU from NC State and then, after sitting out a season had a break-out year this past year season - is leaving the program. He is set to graduate in June, but had one season of eligibility left. He said he may try to catch on at a BCS school or will pursue a pro career in Europe.
If he does get his his diploma this spring, NCAA rules will permit him to play immediately for another school.
The only Raider to average double figures this past season - 14.1 p.p.g. - Mays carried a WSU team woefully-short on talent and experience. He was voted the Horizon League’s “Newcomer of the Year” and won second-team All-League honors. He deserved a first team nod, but the Raiders’ 13-19 record didn’t help that bid.
Meanwhile Wednesday, Butler University - the Raiders most intense rival and the one opponent that always draws the biggest crowds to the Nutter Center each season - made it official. It’s leaving the Horizon League after next season to join the Atlantic 10 Conference. That means the Bulldogs will now be playing across town at UD Arena each year.
The Flyers will be getting a great rival in the Bulldogs, second only to Xavier. Best of all, Flyers fans who go on the road will get to experience Hinkle Fieldhouse, a hoops temple like no other around here.
Now if the Flyers wanted to add insult to injury, they could go after Mays as an immediate stop gap for their think ranks at guard. He’s seasoned, having played two years at NC State —Archie Miller’s alma mater — and this past year at WSU.
There is precedent in the opposite direction.
Ten seasons ago Cain Doliboa starred at Wright State in his final college season after playing three years at UD.
My column in Saturday’s newspaper will be about Mr. Irrelevant, the last player chosen in the NFL Draft each year.
Late Saturday, that pick - No. 253 in the draft - will be made by the Indianapolis Colts.
UD’s Kelvin Kirk at Disneyland during Mr. Irrelevant festivities in 1976
Since 1976 -when the University of Dayton wide receiver Kelvin Kirk out of Dunbar was chosen by the Pittsburgh Steelers — that pick has been turned into a celebrity thanks to Paul Salata, the former NFL player with a sense of humor and heart who came up with the idea of the Mr. Irrelevant festivities on the beaches of Southern California.
The Lowsman Trophy
The pick and his family are brought to California for a week and showered with gifts, a parade, parties, all kinds of events held in his honor and, of course, the Lowsman Trophy. It’s similar to the Heisman - get it? high and low - except that the football figure on it is fumbling the ball.
I talked to Salata, who was at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, and will announce the final pick on stage Saturday.
Paul Salata
Of all the Mr. Irrelevants, none has quite the story to match Kirk’s.
As for the offer up above, that is part of Salata’s package - that’s a free lance gal from New York - but come Saturday night, Mr. Irrelevant’s life may start to find life is not so bad on the bottom.
WILBERFORCE - Monday on the basketball court at Central State’s Beacom/Lewis Gymnasium, Earvin “Magic” Johnson put on one of the most impressive performances I’ve ever seen by an athlete. But the Hall of Fame hoopster’s player’s hands never touched a basketball in the hour of so he was on the court.
Johnson was the featured attraction at the Leadership Speaker Series breakfast put on by the school’s athletic department and the crowd of Miami Valley business leaders, area college representatives and Central State students who filled the tables that covered the CSU basketball floor were held spellbound by what he had to say…and how he said it.
Magic was delightful.
He couldn’t have been more accommodating, more warm, geniune and downright funny and, most of all, more caring about the students there.
Most of his talk was about his life after basketball - he’s become a successful, businessman entrepreneur and philanthropist - and that was the subject of a big story of mine in Tuesday’s Dayton Daily News.
Please give it a read if you’re able. It contains some interesting stories and insights he relayed both to the audience during his presentation and in a separate session with a few media types beforehand.
Johnson was part of the business group that bought the Los Angeles Dodgers last month for a record $2.1 billion - and he has myriad other real estate holdings, has parts of several other businesses for a dozen years has owned a piece of the Dayton Dragons, as well - but one of my favorite stories was about the first-ever business dealing he had and a lesson he got from his blue-collar dad.
This story and a couple others here didn’t make it into my column today.
“I was 19 years old,” Magic said”. Our Michigan State team had just won the (NCAA) championship and (the Lakers) had flown me and my dad out to L.A. We were in with the owners - negotiating - and they said they were gonna offer me $400,000.
“I said, ‘But (Larry) Bird just got $450,000, so I want $460,00.’ We had just beaten Bird in the championship so I was trying to get a little more than him. And then I said., ‘If it’s ONLY $400,000, I’m gonna say no and go back to school.’
And that’s when my dad said - and this is a true story - ‘Uuuh, hold one.’ Then he drags me outside in the hallway and says ‘Boy, I’ve worked for General Motors for 30 years and I haven’t made $400,000. You’re gonna go back in there and…matter of fact, you just be quiet.’
“So we go back in and my dad says, ‘He’ll accept $400,000.’”
Johnson was laughing as he relived the story Monday: “My dad had to get my head right.”
And later, when the Lakers did draft him, his head was certainly in the right place.
“There I was drafted and I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I flew to L.A. again and when Jerry West showed me my locker, I started crying.
“I remembered all those days of shirts and skins out there on the pavement (in his hometown of Lansing) when it was so hot. And I remember all those days shoveling snow off the court so I could still play basketball. Mom and Dad would have to come get me from the basketball court to eat or they’d just bring my food out there and say, ‘Go ahead, Boy. We know you’re gonna be here all day.’”
The few basketball stories Magic did tell were about Dr. J, Michael Jordan and especially Bird, his longtime rival who eventually became his lifelong friend. Two weeks ago a play on the two of them ‘’ “Magic/Bird” opened on Broadway.
“This is my all-time favorite story,” Magic said with a grin. “Bird walks into the locker rom at (NBA) three-point contest and the other nine contestants are sitting down already. He looks around the room and the first thing he says is ‘Who’s comin’ in second?’ Is that great or what? How crazy is that?
” He already knew he was coming in first. And guess what happened? He went out and got first just like he said.”
Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.
2012 senior class photos
2012 West Carrollton graduation
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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.
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Mays couldn’t make it at UD. Archie, like Billy like players who are willing to give all they