Dayton has new coach, new players, updated arena

As Josh Cunningham and his teammates sang and danced their way down the ramp from their locker room to the University of Dayton Arena floor last Saturday for an exhibition game, it hit him.

“I was like, ‘Man, this is different!’” Cunningham said.

The Flyers’ 6-foot-7 junior captain wasn’t referring to the renovated arena with a new, bright scoreboard. Nor was he focused on new coach Anthony Grant or even the new-look Flyers, who played five newcomers against Ohio Dominican.

The big difference for Cunningham was that he finally was healthy, wasn’t sitting out because of NCAA rules and wasn’t with a team that he wanted to leave. The past three seasons, he couldn’t say all that.

“It felt like I was in high school again,” he said.

As a high school senior in Chicago, he averaged 22 points and 15 rebounds and was a top-100 recruit. He went to Bradley, had a superb freshman season, but didn’t like it there and transferred to Dayton. The following season — which he was had to sit out because of NCAA rules — he also underwent surgeries to repair a torn meniscus and a torn labrum.

Finally cleared to play last season, Cunningham suffered torn ankle ligaments in the second game of the season. That required yet another surgery, and he missed 21 games before hobbling through the last five.

“This is the first time I’ve been healthy coming into the season in a long time. It was great to be able to go out there and help my brothers,” he said after a 79-61 win.

The game also marked a successful return for Grant, who as a player started three seasons for the Flyers in the mid-1980s. His coaching career has included 13 seasons as a college assistant, nine as a head coach at Virginia Commonwealth and Alabama, and the past two seasons in the NBA as an Oklahoma City Thunder assistant.

“It was awesome to be back in the Arena,” said Grant, who took the Dayton job when Archie Miller jumped to Indiana last spring. “Thirty years ago, I was a player here, and now I see it come full circle.”

Miller often growled his way through a game, but Grant waved to the crowd as he entered the arena for Saturday's game and was more stoic and understated than his predecessor.

“He made the transition real easy,” Cunningham said of Grant. “He’s a nice person, a down-toearth person. He really cares about us.”