Next game
Who: Dayton (13-3, 1-0 Atlantic 10) at UMass (8-5, 0-0)
When: 2 p.m. Sunday
Where: Amherst, Mass.
TV: CBS College Sports
Radio: WHIO-AM (1290), WHIO-FM (95.7)
University of Dayton men’s basketball star Chris Wright has conditioned himself to go after every missed shot during a game, and he doesn’t care who he has to plow through to get there — even if it’s another Flyer standing in his path.
The 6-foot-8 senior posted his second straight 14-rebound game in the team’s Atlantic 10 opener against Saint Louis on Wednesday, after which UD coach Brian Gregory said: “Chris Wright showed again why he’s one of the premier players in this league.”
After averaging 5.7 rebounds as a freshman, 6.6 as a sophomore and 7.3 as a junior, Wright is pulling down 9.3 per game this season. Since 1998, only one UD player has averaged nine or more boards in a season: Keith Waleskowski, who finished with a 9.9 mark in 2003-04.
“It’s like that last meal in the kitchen. You’ve got to get every one,” said Wright, who also leads the Flyers in scoring at 13.8 per game. “You want to help the team out, and you can help the team out, obviously, by rebounding.
“You can be selfish on the boards. You can never rebound too much. You’ve got to have the mentality that every rebound is yours. You take them from your own teammates if you have to. They’re going to have to fight me for them.”
Wright, who is averaging 14.7 points and 10.0 rebounds in his last 10 games, has been a force on defense, too. He has a team-high 20 blocked shots this season and 131 for his career, eight behind the all-time record set by Sean Finn (UD began tracking blocks in 1973).
Wright, though, also is first among the Flyers in a statistical category no one wants to lead: turnovers. He’s coughed the ball up 45 times, three more than point guard Juwan Staten. No other UD player has more than 25 turnovers.
But Gregory won’t complain about Wright being error-prone as long as his intensity doesn’t wane.
“People expect the kid to be perfect, but he’s not going to be perfect,” Gregory said. “You can’t play that hard without having some mistakes due to playing hard and being aggressive. He’s got to see some of those (turnovers) and keep getting better. But I wouldn’t change him for the world.”
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