The ESPN cameras no longer broadcasted the game, and many were getting packed into their cases for the drive back to Bristol, CT. Xavier fans fled to the parking lot for the drive back to Cincinnati. And a lawnmower or two cut the early spring sod along Edwin C. Moses Boulevard. On any other day the post-game protocol could be predicted but it was now a full hour since the Flyers whipped the Musketeers 98-89 in the MCC Championship and the noise was still deafening. Dayton Arena PA Announcer Charlie Robinson did his best to present the trophies and mention the all-tourny team, but no one gave a damn. A group of elderly men near the mezzanine danced like they were twentysomething while students caked the floor until a nary of hardwood could be seen. Many in the crowd of 13,000+ sobbed, others looked on in disbelief, and a few longtime season ticket holders hugged their courtside neighbor after years of bitter debate and UD basketball skepticism. It was a day for the ages, and those lucky enough to be there and take home a small bottle of its history know what its like to show the world people in Dayton are people too.

To truly appreciate the size and scope of the events that afternoon, one must go back 10 games to a road contest against Marquette at the Bradley Center. With under a minute remaining, a mediocre Flyer team with mediocre players came together like a jigsaw puzzle after PG Negele Knight buried a jumper near the top of the key to win the game. With the victory, Dayton climbed to an unspectacular 12-9 on the season. In the weeks ahead, UD would rip off nine more wins on their way to the MCC Championship showdown with rival Xavier. Between the Marquette and Xavier showdowns however, the Flyers blew apart a strong Notre Dame club 97-79 – an Irish squad that would earn an NCAA at-large big themselves. A few weeks earlier, the Irish whipped Dayton by the same score in South Bend. How quickly things can change.

UD finished up the regular season schedule riding a six game winning streak and a showdown with the 22-3 Muskies. Pete Gillen’s club was his best as a Muskie coach. Future NBA standouts Derek Strong, Tyrone Hill, and diminutive playmaker Jamal Walker littered the roster with other skilled players who were talented enough to beat nearly anyone in the country. Xavier ran into Flyer Fever and a 111-108 loss that made for one of the most entertaining games in UD Arena history. Just days later, Dayton duplicated the feat in the MCC title game, pinning two of the five losses on Gillen’s club. Xavier would make the NCAA Sweet 16 and beat Big East power Georgetown after licking their wounds in Dayton.

By virtue of the MCC tournament title, Dayton earned the MCC automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. As the #12 seed, the Flyers faced #5 Illinois at Univ. of Texas Frank Erwin Center, an Illini club that reached the Final Four just a year earlier. Illinois skipper Lou Henson had what many consider his best club with Stephen Bardo, Marcus Liberty, and All-American Kendell Gill sprinkled across the lineup. UD managed to pull the 84-82 upset before bowing out to #4 Arkansas 86-84 in a similar nailbiter just two days later – a Hog team that pressed on to the Final Four. Throughout the Flyer run in the NCAA tournament, couches burned in the Ghetto, cars overturned, and beer bottles littered the yards of the student housing community.

Still, reaching the NCAA for the first time since 1985 was the anticlimax. Though a case can be made that Dayton’s NCAA tournament fortunes earned the Flyers more notoriety, true, died-in-the-wool Flyer fans knew the business at hand was already accomplished. The MCC Championship title was personal. NCAA games are about over-hyped hotdog players and television ratings. Flyer fans could feel and touch the MCC title win but could only see and hear the rest of the postseason from their outdated Magnavox.

From 1985-86 to 1989-90, Dayton basketball was at its worst in the program’s illustrious history. UD began losing games to teams it used to beat, recruiting weakened, and opponents started penciling in W’s wherever Dayton appeared on the schedule. The same university that produced an Elite-8 team in 1984 and a 2-point loss to National Champion Villanova in 1985 faced hard times and harsher critics. Most rebuilding programs pour like molasses, taking lump after lump at the hands of the ruling class.

I and the rest of the Dayton bandwagon had a serious chip on our shoulders throughout the last half of the 1989-90 season. After years of timidness, we found the courage to hit back and not feel guilty. No longer were we the choir boys who couldn’t shoot straight but could fix a nice casserole. We whipped ass, and for the first time in years, didn’t apologize. We were good, real good, and we knew it. We could beat anyone in the country on any court for the first time in 25 years with a style of play that brought us out of our seat on every possession.

In the years since, Jim O’Brien’s success fell like the Dow Jones, the basketball program hit bankruptcy, and we ended up further behind than when we started. Only now are we beginning to retake what is rightfully ours, which is why those few days in March eight years ago mean so much to all of us. Only now can we fully appreciate the struggle, sacrifice, and accomplishment of Knight’s army. It was us against the world, showing the finger-pointers that we were the team to beat. As fans, it was our day to recapture the hill that former Flyer players and fans struggled so hard to build. We cried because we cared. We cared because we knew how long it had been since we had been first in anything. It was a day to celebrate the partnership between player and fan. Hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, we took an oath that on this day the pain and heartache of years gone by would finally cease and all of those forgettable moments would be buried and forgotten under the current happiness of divine resurrection.

After an hour or two in the Arena Associates Lounge, it was my time to leave. I wished it to go on forever but I knew we had already climbed the mountain and rang the bell. As I walked to my car in the Arena parking lot, I thought about how I would remember the events of that day. Several yards to my left , a middle-aged man in a red Flyer sweatshirt kneeled down, rested his forehead on the back fender of his automobile, and started sobbing. He had no one but himself and attended the game alone, but the moment was all his and he need not share it with anyone. A few moments later he opened his car door and drove away, taking with him a small piece of us, all of us, at a time when no one walked away empty-handed.