Experienced Cedarville team challenges UD
Cedarville University basketball fans have tried hard to find tickets beyond the handful given to them by the University of Dayton to the men’s basketball team’s exhibition game against the Dayton Flyers at 7 Monday at UD Arena.
“Everybody I’ve talked to says they can’t find them anywhere,” coach Pat Estepp said Tuesday. “I’m guessing with UD’s fan base, which couldn’t watch them last year, I would be shocked if this thing wasn’t sold out.”
Two years ago, the last time Dayton played an exhibition game, it also played Cedarville and put 13,207 fans in the stands. There were plenty of verified resale tickets available on Ticketmaster.com as of Tuesday, but there still should be a big crowd, easily the largest to see the Flyers or Yellow Jackets play since the pandemic began in 2020.
The fans will see a young Dayton team with seven newcomers among 13 scholarship players and an experienced Cedarville roster with four seniors and two graduate students.
“Our roster will look very similar to the team that played there two years ago,” Estepp said.
Dayton won that game 93-60, kicking off a season that would see the program rise to No. 3 in the Associated Press poll and finish the regular-season 29-2. Cedarville finished 21-8 that season and then 19-6 last season when it fell one victory short of making the NCAA Division II tournament, losing 77-59 to Malone in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference tournament championship game.
Five of Cedarville’s top six scorers in the game against Dayton are still with the team: Brandon Maughmer, Conner TenHove, Quinton Green, Kollin Van Horn and Isaiah Speelman. All averaged in double figures last season.
“We have five seniors on our team who — if everybody stays healthy — will score over 6,000 points combined in their careers,” Estepp said, “so this is a special group of seniors.”
The only player from the 2019-20 roster who played double-figure minutes that season and is no longer with the Yellow Jackets is Wayne High School graduate Demond Parker. He was an assistant coach on Estepp’s staff last season and now is a graduate assistant at Baylor.
Of the seniors this season, only TenHove, who’s from Valparaiso, Indiana, faced the decision of whether to return to take advantage of the extra year of eligibility the NCAA gave to every player because of the pandemic.
“He was going to redshirt because of all the uncertainty of what was going on the summer before COVID,” Estepp said. “He didn’t want that to be his senior year. Then when they gave everybody the extra year back, he went ahead and played. He was coming back this year almost regardless.”
One of Cedarville’s newcomers to watch is Brayden Sipple, a 6-foot-4 guard from Blanchester. He finished his high school career as Ohio’s 12th all-time leading scorer (2,485 points).
“He had a couple of Horizon League offers,” Estepp said. “We’re excited about him and a couple of other young guys.”
While preseason practices have continued back on campus, preparation for Dayton had not begun early this week. Estepp was still focused on his own team. He knows the Flyers are young, talented and athletic.
“That’ll be good for us to go up against,” he said. “There’s a lot of unknowns, too, and talking with them, they just want to get out there and see what they’ve got.”