CHANDLER (AZ) — It was late in 2003 when I met Jim Jabir for the first time. We spent over an hour together as I peppered him with questions about his life and what he expected to accomplish at UD. He had been a head coach before and had met with both success and failure. He was operating under the belief that UD was a great place and a school that he could spend the rest of his coaching days. He knew there were issues, but he had no idea just how deep some of those issues were.

I went to several practices and games that year and watched the man suffer through a 3-25 season. They finished the year by losing 20 of 21 games. I’m sure when he put his signature on the contract, he had no idea what he had signed up for. However, the following year they improved to 12-16, one of the largest improvements in the country.

Year three featured Jabir’s first winning season at 17-12 but when they faced #4 Ohio State they lost by 73-31 in a game that wasn’t even that close. The other regular season game against a top 25 team saw them losing 70-36 to #23 Temple. Progress was being made, but the program was still a long way from competing with the best.

“I knew that rebuilding the program would be difficult and now when you look back it really hits you as to how much work it really was. And how many people were involved in getting it done. When you are in the middle of it, you really don’t give it a lot of thought because you are just thinking about getting to the next place, the next level,” Jabir related.

“I have been in situations before when there was a good deal of adversity and you just want to win, it’s hard to lose and I’m a very competitive guy. I wouldn’t say we are ahead or behind schedule from when we took over the program, but with my competitiveness, every single loss hurt. It’s kind of funny because with every win, you immediately start worrying about getting the next one. There seems to be little time to enjoy the positives. It seemed to be going slow for me but I never felt we were behind schedule.”

Finally, in year five, the team reached new highs by winning 25 games and being invited to the WNIT. Jabir’s first recruiting class had taken the program to new heights.

“A great deal of the success that we are seeing today comes from that first recruiting class. We talk a lot about character and when I think of that class that is the first thing that comes to mind. They weren’t highly recruited but they were tough kinds that cared a lot and wanted to be great. They were really important in teaching this group and the ones after to understand what the culture at Dayton was going to be. We were going to work hard. They were the first group to buy into what I was selling and they bought in hard. That was critical to all of the success that we will see in the future.”

Through all of this, the man never changed. He was still hard working and expected a lot from his players, but he was the same guy after year five as he was after year one. He was determined to win and was going to work his hardest to get there. But more importantly, he was the same caring, thoughtful person. Success was not going to change Jim Jabir.

Year six brought new challenges. His huge first class had graduated and he was left with a large group of untested freshmen. I’m sure those outside the program feared the worst. Another losing season was likely and with the aggressive schedule that had been put together, ten wins might be a hopeful number.

The schedule was obviously created by a masochist. Nine consecutive games away from UD Arena to start the season playing the likes of perennial powers Texas, Old Dominion and Ohio State. But the results were better than anyone could have logically expected with three freshmen, one sophomore and one junior starting. That three week road trip found the Flyers back at home with a 6-3 record.

They continued to improve throughout the year, finally beating #15 Xavier in the A-10 quarter finals. They lost a heartbreaker to Richmond the next day after losing a 14 point halftime lead. Ten days later they bounded back with the program’s first post season tournament win by downing Oakland in the WNIT. The season ended with a controversial loss to Indiana, but the die had been caste. This was not the Flyer program of old. This was a program on the rise, one to be reckoned with.

“This sophomore class came in and was able to continue the success that my first class started. We have been very fortunate that those kids were able to play at the level that they did as freshmen. It was very critical for the program to continue the success. All of the recruits that are talking to us now might not have had the same level of interest if we hadn’t seen that success last year.”

2009-2010 was going to be different. For the first time in his stay at Dayton Jim Jabir felt that he had a team that could compete with the big boys. With that in mind, # 10 Michigan State and last year’s national runner-up, Louisville, were scheduled for the first weekend. Going back just four years, these were the types of games that your only hope was for a moral victory, because an actual win was out of the question.

Not so in 2009, these were now winnable games. Michigan State went down hard and #19 Louisville needed some last minute heroics to escape with a victory. Number 23 Purdue would lose on their own court the following week and Dayton had arrived. On November 30, 2009 the University of Dayton women’s basketball program found their name in the AP Top 25 for the first time in program history. A new era had started.

Part II tomorrow.