“The 1973-74 team would have held their own with the 1967-68 teams.”

That is how much Don Donoher thought of a team that had won a total of 26 games in the two previous years. This was a total that Tom Blackburn passed more than once in a single season. This team of mediocre, back-to-back 13-13 seasons was being compared favorably with a team that won the NIT and went to the Finals of the NCAA. What could he ever have been thinking to make such a statement?

There was one minor difference in the 1973-74 team when comparing it to the previous two. That difference was a freshman by the name of Johnny Davis. Smiling ear to ear, Donoher said, “What was remarkable was how good he was right away. That was the thing about him. He was such a cerebral player. He was so dedicated, so tough. He just came in and earned respect immediately. At the first practice the other players just stood around and said, ‘This kid’s a player.’”

When Donald Smith stepped foot on campus, most believed he would lead them back to the promised land of the NCAA. Armed with the talents of one of the top classes in UD history, Smith and good friend Mike Sylvester were two sharpshooters without equal. Yet, this was a team that battled itself as much as it battled its opponents. “The two previous years we looked like a team that never practiced. We were a program in disarray. It was an aimless team. We never established anything. We gave up running patterns because they would never execute. We tried to take a stab at motion. We seemed to be running around in circles, trying different things. We had too many guards; the chemistry just wasn’t there.”

When Davis came on board, all of that changed. He took a team that floundered and turned it into a smooth running machine. They went 9-2 over the last 11 games, including the complete destruction of No. 2 Notre Dame in the final game of the regular season. “We just locked into a system that year that we had never run before. We ran Wooden’s offense. We never deviated. The year before, we would run a different offense every night. We had execution and discipline.”

UD played its first game in the NCAA Tournament in Pocatello, Idaho, against Cal-State-Los Angeles. They won by eight and went back to the hotel to watch the regular season final in the PAC-10 between UCLA and Southern Cal. The winner would be the PAC 10 representative in the tournament and travel to Tucson to play the Flyers. Southern Cal had defeated UCLA, now No. 2, earlier in the season at Pauly Pavilion, UCLA’s home. UCLA was up 49-14 at the half and UD immediately started getting ready for the Bruins and Bill Walton.

There was a gas crunch in 1974 and UD was not allowed to come home so they went directly to Tucson for the second-round game. They were peaking at the right time and had near perfect practices. Confidence was oozing from their pores. That didn’t stop Donoher from worrying, however. “The night before the game we were at the press gathering and I was talking to the San Francisco head coach and he asked if we were going to play a zone against UCLA, and I said that we didn’t play a zone. He said, ‘You can’t play man to man against UCLA.’ I said that we had to because that’s all we had. He then asked if we were going to run the same offense that we ran against Cal-State, because that wasn’t going to work either. I told him we were because that was all we had. He said you just can’t do that against UCLA. I got up to my room and I thought that this was going to be ’67 all over again.”

Well, it wasn’t going to be ‘67 all over again, although at first look, most might have thought so. “The game started as I had feared,” recalls Donoher, “and we were down by nearly 20 points. Smith threw in some miracle to get it down to 12 at the half. We came out in the second half and played better than any Dayton team I had ever seen. I still watch that tape and marvel at how well we played. A friend of mine was sitting right next to Wooden and the Coach just kept saying over and over, ‘That shot couldn’t have gone in.’ It was a clinic.”

It came down to the final seconds and both teams had several opportunities to win the game in both regulation and overtime. One of the plays that was talked about for years and is still discussed by the Flyer Faithful is a timeout called by the bench as time was running out. Who could tell it better than the leader of the Flyers.

“At the time it was our strategy to call a timeout and set up a shot. Years later, I moved away from that strategy. I evolved as a coach to just play through, and we practiced that. The time was at 15 seconds and I stood up to call the timeout. At the same time, Donald has the ball on top, spun around and penetrated. In a situation like that, we are taught to protect the ball and not take a shot unless it is an out and out lay-up, lay-ups only. Walton is in the lane and he never moves. You can see on the tape two Dayton players were calling a timeout. People that have watched that tape have strongly speculated that Walton would have sent that shot back.

What really made it an issue was Dick Enberg. He was calling the game and said, ‘Dayton scores and there is a foul on the play.’ To cover his tracks, he said, ‘Dayton called time out. Dayton took the basket away from themselves.’ It made it look like I panicked and called a timeout when I saw Donald about to shoot. That’s the story.”

In a game like this one, it is easy to wonder, “What if?” Mickey is not immune from such speculation. When you play such a good team so well and for so long, you realize that if you hadn’t made a particular mistake you would have still been playing instead of packing your bags. “There were several plays down the stretch that I second-guessed myself greatly. The first was when we had a three-point lead with 1:25 to go. We called a timeout and I don’t know why. It gave them an opportunity to regroup. Out of the timeout, they hit Johnny Davis on the throw in. He missed the one and one or we could have had a five-point lead. Even if he would have hit those two shots, it was still a mistake. There was no need to take that timeout. The other was on the timeout play when I put Donald on the left wing to take the shot. I should have turned him loose at the top of the circle. Those are the two things that I really second-guessed myself.”

Donoher was to get two more years out of Davis, but his talent was too great to expect him to stay when there were severe economic problems at home. Although Donoher agreed with the decision to leave, he wishes he would have been a better friend to Davis. “I feel today and I have told Johnny this, that I did not give him as much counseling in that move as I should have. He felt so strongly about going and I told him that it was a decision that I thought he should make. I should have been more forceful with him in leading him in that direction. He did the right thing. I just should have been more forceful with him in reinforcing that it was the decision to make. It was a new experience for me, and now when I look back, I didn’t handle it as well as I should have. He wanted to go the year before. He went to the Pan-Am trials and he just kicked everybody’s can. He was dead ready. He really didn’t play his best basketball his last year until the end of the season. It really was a distraction for him.”

During the last two years of Davis’ stay, the team did not perform up to expectations. There was grumbling in the stands and they were not alone. “In 1976 and 1977, I started to doubt my abilities. In 1976, we finished 14-13. We had a fine team. I just didn’t get them together. We were running the wrong stuff. We were good defensively. That year shames me more than any other year. That year we had Paxson, Giddings, Davis and Wells. The next year (16-11) we had Giddings, Paxson and Zimmerman. We really underachieved those two years. It was a lot like 1972 and 1973. Nobody had to tell me I wasn’t doing a very good job; I knew it. The films told me all I needed to know.”

Continue on to Part VI.