As the Dayton women’s basketball team walked off Blackburn Court after taking a 77-42 beatdown to a mediocre Rhode Island squad (18-13 / 10-8), fans could only wonder what former players of the program thought as year two of the Tamika Williams-Jeter (TMJ) era winds down with one final gasp to play itself out in the upcoming A10 Tournament.  Some of those alums were inside UD Arena to see the pasting, returning to campus and reuniting with one another to share tales of the good ol’ days when it was UD doling out the drubbings.  Saturday’s loss to URI was Dayton’s sixth consecutive defeat to D-I competition and the losing margins were by 22, 24, 26, 3, 25, and 35 points respectively. The Flyers have lost 12 games by 15 or more points in 2023-24 — nine of those by 24+ points.  In contrast, UD lost only five games by 15+ points a season ago and only two games by 24 or more.  Something happened on the way to year two and requires further examination.

Dayton returned a number of players from last year’s team that played significant minutes and were projected to take a step forward in TMJ’s second season at the helm.  Additionally, transfer Ivy Wolf (Miami-OH) was expected to provide instant scoring and leadership as an All-A10 player just as she was in the MAC.  The Flyers also brought in a few talented recruits including RS-frosh Saija Cleveland.  While the Flyers weren’t very good in 2022-23, they scrapped and clawed their way to a 7-21 (5-10) record and could have easily finished within spitting distance of .500 had a bunch of close games fell UD’s way.  Dayton often ran out of gas last year playing a shortened roster with an even shorter bench, losing games in the final six minutes once the tank ran dry.  Despite the challenges, UD never threw a pity party and played their best basketball at the end of the season.  What what little upside the team had on paper, they got a lot out of the tools they had and showcased strong character/habit development that good teams eventually stockpile.  As a result, optimism was legitimate for a significant step forward in 2023-24. After all, most of the key players returned and fresh newbies would help solve the short-bench issue, make practices far more competitive, and push the veterans to become the best versions of themselves.

Whatever was supposed to happen didn’t happen.

Dayton’s struggles in year two have been program-wide, pronounced, and largely shared across the entire roster.  Nearly every returning player got worse when another year of strength and experience should have produced steps in the other direction.  Even worse however, the regressions have been anything but benign.  Even blind squirrels find acorns on the forest floor now and again.  How did nearly every returning player simultaneously and with similar ways and means lose airspeed and nosedive into the soybeans?

To answer that question, we compared the stats from last year to this year and the numbers are alarming.  The follow table is the result of that data dive:

Green boxes indicate stats that got moderately to significantly better this year.  Grey boxes indicate stats that were largely the same or within the margin for statistical insignificance. This might be due to the stats being relatively similar or the stats themselves were too small in number to grade progress or regression.  The red boxes represent stats that were moderately to severely worse (or negatively impactful) compared to last season. Finally, white boxes indicate data that might have improved or declined (modestly or significantly) might represent too small a data set, or in some cases “indicate improvement but still inept”.

The most important stats are PPG, FG%, 3PT%, FT%, RPG, and APG, but it’s worth noting that all stats are often dependent on minutes played.  When minutes go down, overall stats go down too — though only raw numbers and not necessarily percentages and efficiencies.  Post players should see improvement in things like FG%, blocks, and rebounds, while perimeter players should see more improvement in FG%, 3PT%, A/TO, and Steals.  While the grading is ultimately subjective, those conditions and curves were taken into consideration when assigning color grades to specific players and positions.

RETURNEES

Of the returning players including transfer Ivy Wolf, nine stats saw significant improvement (green), 301 were neutral at best (grey), and 36 were moderately to significantly counter-productive compared to last season. Four were graded white – stats that may have represented solid improvement but still inept statistical expectations.  Most of these latter stats focused on A/10 ratio.  Of the 80 stat boxes, just 11% saw significant improvement from last year to this year.

How bad did things slide? All eight returnees/vets averaged fewer PPG than last season and four of the eight pulled a “Chip Hare”.  Nayo Lear’s PPG dropped from 8.3 to 3.9, Taisiya Kozlova’s from 5.5 to 1.9, Mariah Perez from 11.9 to 6.9, and Wolf from 17.0 to 12.6.  The foursome regressed from a combined 42.7 PPG to just 25.3 PPG — not quite half but close enough to be in the zip code.  These players were slated as the backbones of year two and counted upon to “take the next step”.  Lear and Perez’s stats are almost all pushes or failing grades compared to a year ago, while

Of the remaining returnees, Anyssa Jones and Destiny Bohanon shares Lear’s statistical strikeout with no green grades on the report card — perhaps the player with the most respect and hype coming into 2023-24. The staff needed her to be that First Team All-A10 type of player to help bridge the gap in the rebuilding process. It hasn’t happened. Shannon Wheeler’s scoring and rebounding are down too.  Only Arianna Smith sniffs a passing grade by nearly averaging a double-double — though once again numbers aren’t all that different from a season prior. No one has carried their own weight more than Smith however; Dayton’s struggles lie elsewhere. Returnee Eleanor Monyek was excluded from the stats (25 total minutes of court time).

NEWCOMERS

Four fresh faces showed up in the offseason.  On a squad with so many deficiencies, it’s hard to believe none of them were capable of earning more than 13 MPG — after all if you couldn’t earn endless minutes on this year’s team, when can ya’?  Grading frosh must be on a sliding scale because they are still learning on the job and need a year in the weight room.  Only two newbies offered much this year.  6-4 Riley Rismiller — gimped up for a chunk of the season — is an inside-out player recruited by the Big-10 and has excellent potential.  Eve Fiala was recruited by the same level of schools and is by far the most efficient Flyer around the basket.  There’s still much to improve in each of their games, but there’s at least signs of hope.  Some fans were hoping to see TMJ spare more minutes for the newbies at the expense of the veterans and played for the future. What’s the difference if you lose by 25 or 35? In a season when Dayton could have used a couple impact-frosh like Kelly Austria, Jenna Burdette, Celeste Edwards, or Jodie Cornelie-Sigmundova to cover the tracks of the under-performing veterans, there was no freshman phenom to save the day.

MOVING FORWARD

Now that we know what went wrong, how and why did it all unravel?  Even the law of averages would have predicted a few players taking moderate steps in the right direction, but it’s been a lock-step march by nearly all hands on deck.  This year’s team didn’t just lack the shooting, rebounding, ball security, passing, and defending of the 2022-23 squad, they lacked any sense of urgency, self-respect, or pride in upholding the winning tradition of Flyer women’s basketball.  The bar was set 20 years ago when Jim Jabir took over the program — excellence is expected but to get there no-one outhustles or out-scraps a Dayton team during that journey.  This year produced none of that.  Apathetic play, poor basketball IQ, lazy passes, usually second to the floor to grab a loose ball, soft, and largely one-dimensional 1 vs. 1 basketball.  Lack of team play resulted in anemic assist rates, shot selection often looked like an And-1 Rucker Park mix tape, and one of the few stats Dayton excelled in — rebounding — was largely a context created from so many missed Flyer field goal attempts; there were more rebounds to grab and someone had to grab them.

The product on the floor this year will require a deep offseason rethink by TMJ and her staff and part of that evaluation will be asking whether Dayton can compete in future seasons with the existing talent on the roster. The opinion of many fans that sat through the blowout losses is a firm no.  Only three or four players possess legitimate A10-level talent and everyone else is unfortunately being asked to compete at least one full pay grade above their ceiling.  The stats, the wins and losses, and the margins of defeat plainly spell this out. There’s nowhere to hide from these numbers and wholesale roster changes are needed to turn the ship around.  That will necessitate a major portal shopping spree to find some impact transfers that can play basketball just well enough to make Dayton competitive again — nevermind a contender. TMJ has a couple solid recruits already committed and we’d hold on to those kids.  Rismiller, Fiala, and Smith, have nothing to worry about.  In Ivy Wolf’s defense, she’s not a point guard but has been asked to step in and play the position anyway. Were she able to move off the ball and become a spot shooter, we like her ability to knock down shots and soften up defenses. Everyone else’s scholarship however should be under re-consideration this spring.  Dayton has not historically been a product that yanks such things for lack of production, but the portal has changed the framework of college sports and now allows for easy transition to other schools without penalty.  It would be in the best interest for all parties — Dayton’s to upgrade the product and the outgoing players finding a home that better fits their skill levels.