WEST BLOOMFIELD (MI) --
“FTS” had the distinct pleasure of participating in David Jablonski’s 2nd Annual UD Twitter All-Star Pickup Extravaganza, held once again at the McAfee Sports Center in Beavercreek. 18 hardy souls showed up Sunday afternoon to play some hoops, break a sweat and match faces and games with Twitter handles.
We split up into four squads, captained by the quartet of different website representatives: Grant Kelly
https://twitter.com/GrantKelly07 of
www.A10Talk.com ; Matt Allaire
https://twitter.com/AllaireMatt of
www.FlyerFaithful.com ; David and yours truly.
I went for size, selecting Tom Hirt
https://twitter.com/FLYRFN at #1 and the biggest dudes available after that; Grant went for youth, which proved to be a good move, as his squad went 2-0 in the round robin. Our team handily defeated the Fighting Jablonskis in our opening tilt, but then got run over by Kelly’s squad, which featured tournament MVP Patrick Sharkey, who I had the misfortune of having to cover. Sharkey is already featuring his award on his Twitter profile at
https://twitter.com/TheSharkAttack
Youth was certainly served, as HS senior Kelly wasn’t even the youngest guy to lace them up -- that honor went to 15-year-old Chris King who flashed a nice all-around game:
https://twitter.com/ChrisKing2_
Noticeably absent: WHIO’s John Bedell
https://twitter.com/JBedellWHIO but Bedell had an excuse, as he and his wife are brand new parents of a bouncing baby boy.
Here is a link to David’s Facebook photo album of the proceedings:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...1&l=0f5f9258dc
And another to David’s Twitter feed – if you scroll down you’ll find pictures and videos of the evening’s festivities:
https://twitter.com/DavidPJablonski
Nobody died; nobody got hurt -- a good afternoon, indeed.
Elsewhere in the land of Flyer basketball:
-- Darrell Davis, Matej Svoboda and Coach Grant tell us what to expect in Friday night’s UD home opener vs. Ball State:
https://www.facebook.com/DaytonMBB/v...5919836172372/
--AG's comments on the signing of 2018 recruit Dwayne Cohill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=G85Gbvg2W-0
--
CBS Sports lists “Eight NCAA Tournament teams from last season that won't make it back in 2018” and I’ll give ya three guesses who is in #1 spot?
https://www.cbssports.com/college-ba...-back-in-2018/
-- On a more optimistic note, Jon Rothstein at
Fanrag Sports gives us a compendium of “20 under-the-radar breakout players for 17-18 CBB season” and Josh Cunningham is included:
https://www.fanragsports.com/20-unde...18-cbb-season/
Amazingly enuf, Rothstein penned this piece before Josh dominated in the UD/ODU exhibition game.
--
Sports Illustrated tries their hand at ranking all 351 Division 1 men’s basketball programs:
https://www.si.com/college-basketbal...jections-seeds
-- Sam Hickey of Ohio Dominican torched the Flyers from the land of plenty in their exhibition game last weekend. Here’s the backstory on Sam’s connection to UD basketball:
http://ohiodominicanpanthers.com/spo...20171031nvwvas
-- The Story 2017–18: Now What? Courtesy of Flyer basketball blogger Kevin Krucki at
UDaytonBasketballBlog:
https://medium.com/udaytonbasketball...t-791cee991114
-- Speaking of my fellow bloggers, there’s a new kid in town in Flyer Blogdom,
The Dayton Dish produced by Keith Raad who formerly covered the Red and Blue for both
Flyer News and Flyer Radio:
https://www.thedaytondish.com/
Welcome to the neighborhood, Keith!
-- This is a great piece on the “Unsung heroes of college sports” AKA the Sports Information Directors. Take a bow, Doug Hauschild!
http://www.rothreportonline.com/blog...zdct5thnl67l3e
That’s it “From the Swamp.”
You can email me at:
swampy@udpride.com