If you’ve been a fan of the Flyers during the last decade of “more downs than ups,” I’m sure you remember the run of 1990. UD started off slowly and caught fire when we stood 11-9. The thing that I remember as much as anything was one of the cheerleaders getting in the middle of the floor and putting on moves that Negele Knight would have been proud to make. The PA system blasted a song that featured the lines, “Back to Life. Back to Reality.”

Rudy and all the less-talented cheerleaders also gave it a shot — it would bring the house down. In that particular situation, the “Back to Life” was the part that was fitting, because it appeared that the program was coming back and we were ready to ride the wave. That ride, however, was short lived. Right now its time to move on to the second portion of that song. The “Back to Reality” seems appropriate.Yes, it was fun talking about the top 25 and demanding that we be part of it. Yes, it was fun to read about the Flyers in every publication under the sun. Yes, it was even more fun to believe that we would be seeing a 13-0 flashed on the screen when we tipped off with Xavier on national TV. Well, that’s all gone now. We need to deal with a bit of reality. Let’s all remember that we are but nine months removed from a team that won 11 games in an entire season. Yes, we thought we had exorcised all of those demons, but apparently some of them still exist.

A number of things came to light on Saturday that need to be taken care of in one way or another. Mark Ashman is averaging less than 10 shots a game. When you have only one true big man in the line-up, he has to be utilized more than that. We have had a height advantage in a number of those games and the shots are just not there. If we want to reach the 20 win plateau during the regular season, Ashman will have to average closer to 15 shots. He had 24 “touches” on Saturday. That means he touched the ball offensively 24 times during the game. I’m sure half of those were 15-20 feet away from the basket.

The tallest player on the court should have 24 “touches” near the paint to be successful. Although rebounding has not been a glaring problem this year, it did raise its ugly head on Saturday. Whenever you give up more offensive rebounds than you get defensive rebounds, you are going to lose. There are techniques that can be taught with respect to rebounding and I’m sure that these have been covered with our boys. Ninety percent of rebounding is not technique however — it’s good ol’ desire. Ryan Perryman was a great rebounder because he simply said, “I want the damn ball.” We didn’t want it bad enough on Saturday.

Although it’s been mentioned several times that we have a lot of depth, I would have to take exception to that. We have no depth at center. When the backup comes in, we get very little and that simply won’t change. When it comes to the wing positions, we have some depth, but that depth was in street clothes on Saturday and Tuesday. If Doliboa remains in street clothes, we’ll have a problem for the rest of the year. Saying that Edwin Young gives us a backup at shooting guard is saying we have no depth. Young hit a few shots on Tuesday, but overall it’s been very sporadic. If Doliboa is a wash for this season, our NCAA hopes might diminish.

Tony Stanley, David Morris, and Yuanta Holland cannot disappear — at least they certainly can’t disappear all at the same time. This was by far Morris’ worst game of the season and might be a simple aberration. He looked much better on Tuesday. We can only hope that is the case. Tony Stanley is a junior and, as such, should not disappear. We don’t have enough weapons to have our star player vanish and if he does, we will continue to lose ballgames. He has shown a huge improvement in his overall game this season, but he cannot afford to backslide as he did when conference play started last year. Brooks Hall needs to shoot more. He took six shots in 30 minutes on Saturday. The fact is, he made 4 of them and they were all three-pointers. Keep shooting! He also needs to take the ball to the hoop more. If there is a problem with his game, it is the fact that he is too content to stay outside. This is Tony Stanley all over again as we need them both moving to the basket and hitting free throws.It’s my philosophy that there are no upsets on the road. The best teams in the country lose on the road. Xavier was blown out at Miami and turned around and beat the number one team in the country at home — it happens.

The disturbing thing about Cleveland State is the fact that it was a blowout. We didn’t just lose, we were slaughtered. Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong. That shouldn’t happen too many times.It’s not time to hit the panic button. We are 9-1 with a good chance to stand at 12-1 when Xavier comes calling, but we learned a tough lesson that we simply can’t phone it in. We have to show up and play like we want every loose ball. When we give it our all, we’re pretty good. When we don’t, we’re pretty average. I know which team I would rather see. I bet I know which team they would rather be.