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/?set=a.781170082089780.1073741832.126992800840848&type=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/videos/10155919836172372/

–AG’s comments on the signing of 2018 recruit Dwayne Cohill:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=66&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-basketball/news/eight-ncaa-tournament-teams-from-last-season-that-wont-make-it-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-under-the-radar-breakout-players-for-17-18-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-basketball/2017/10/31/ncaa-351-team-preseason-rankings-projections-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/sports/mbkb/2017-18/releases/20171031nvwvas

— The Story 2017–18: Now What? Courtesy of Flyer basketball blogger Kevin Krucki at UDaytonBasketballBlog:

https://medium.com/udaytonbasketballblog/the-story-2017-18-now-what-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/bs9cmjj5jnlnm722zdct5thnl67l3e

That’s it “From the Swamp.”
You can email me at: [email protected]