Flyers add Czech forward to roster

Forward Svoboda has played as an amateur in country’s pro league.

Matej Svoboda, a 20-year-old, 6-foot-7 forward, is the first recruit to sign with UD since the hiring of coach Anthony Grant.

The Dayton Flyers still need a point guard, but their roster looked a little more fuller Monday after they announced the signing of Matej Svoboda, a 6-foot-7 forward from the Czech Republic.

Svoboda, 20, is the first recruit to sign a national letter of intent since the hiring of new coach Anthony Grant.

“I like the style he wants to play,” Svoboda wrote in an email to the Dayton Daily News. “He is a really good coach with NBA experience, and I’m sure he can make me a better player and also do big things with Dayton.”

Asked about getting through the NCAA clearinghouse, which forced freshman Kostas Antetokounmpo to sit out last season, Svoboda said he has to take one

last high-school exit exam.

“If I make it, everything will be fine,” he said.

Svoboda expects to enroll at UD for the second summer session in June. He and Antetokounmpo, who was born in Greece, will be the ninth and 10th foreign-born players to suit up for the Flyers.

Svoboda is the third recruit in the class of 2017. Guard Jordan Davis and center Jordan Pierce told Grant in April they were sticking with the Flyers. McKinley Wright reopened his recruitment

DAVID JABLONSKI / STAFF Matej Svoboda (gray shirt, left) watches Dayton play Duquesne on Feb. 4. He committed to UD the next day. “I like the campus,” he says. “I like the attitude of all people around the team.”