“The overall improvements of the arena from a couple years ago, the graphics and everything — the place is just spectacular now,” said Donoher, UD’s coach from 1964-89. “It always was a great facility, but it’s so much better today than it was in 1970.”
One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the Flyers’ propensity for racking up home wins. They’re 499-181 at the arena and could reach victory No. 500 when they host Boston University on Tuesday, Dec. 29.
Some victories stand out more than others; UD has beaten visiting ranked teams 26 times in four decades. Past and present coaches, players and administrators weighed in on the victories they found most memorable.
1 First victory at arena didn’t come easy
The inaugural game at UD Arena was against Bowling Green on Dec. 6, 1969, and the hoopla leading up to that night made the tension palpable for the players.
“You talk about the definition of pressure, of having to win the game. That was the most pressure we had those four years,” said Jack Keehan, a backup on the 1969-70 team.
One of the problems for the Flyers was their lack of practice in the new facility. The arena had collapsed during construction, causing delays, and there were questions about whether it would be ready for the opener.
The Flyers had dropped their first game in the Fieldhouse 19 years earlier to Central Missouri State, and BG, another unheralded squad, almost played the spoiler role as well. UD, though, squeaked out a 72-70 victory before a sellout crowd of 13,450.
“Playing before 5,808 (at the Fieldhouse), that was one thing,” said Ken May, a junior star on the team. “But you came down the tunnel and there was like this, ‘Buzzzzzz.’ They started up the band, ‘Dah-dah-dah.’ We ran out there, and all of a sudden there’s just this energy. The place was throbbing. By the time the game started, I got the ball the first time, and my hands were shaking.
“There was a question, ‘Are they really going to be able to fill this up? Are they really going to be able to put an extra 8,000 in the arena?’ Then those first couple of years, hell, we had great attendance.”
34Grigsby leads charge versus Notre Dame
J.D. Grigsby, a Dayton native, was an undersized forward, but he made up for his lack of physical stature by out-leaping opponents.
He had 21 points and 21 rebounds to lead the Flyers to an 86-74 victory over Notre Dame on March 4, 1972, before another sellout crowd. While the rebound total was impressive, Grigsby always thought he should have had one more.
“I had a necklace on, and as I went to grab the rebound, it broke,” he said. “I held it in my hand and tried to grab the rebound, but I didn’t have enough grip on it because I was trying to hold the necklace and the basketball at the same time.”
Donoher pulled Grigsby from the game with just under four minutes to go, victory assured.
“As I look back on basketball, I never really patted myself on the back because I did what I knew I could do,” Grigsby said. “And if you really know you can do something, it doesn’t have much of an impact. But as you look back and become a fan, you say, ‘That was pretty good.’ ”
108 Giddings, Paxson soar against ND
The Flyers knocked off No. 7 Notre Dame, 66-59, on March 4, 1978. Erv Giddings tallied 23 points and 11 rebounds and All-American Jim Paxson had 22 points and eight assists. The Irish would go on to a Final Four appearance.
Starting center Terry Ross played his usual rugged defensive game against Bill Laimbeer and the other ND big men. The New Castle, Ind., native still has a memento from that game.
“I’ve got the net from one of the hoops upstairs in my house (in Indianapolis),” Ross said. “After that game, I remember the people exploded out of the stands. Somehow, I got up to the rim and took the net down.
“What I remember from that victory more than anything else is I took the net down and was shaking it and looking at the crowd, and people just went berserk.”
160 UD, Providence go five overtimes
In the longest game in UD history, Mike Kanieski and Kevin Conrad played 62 of 65 minutes in a 79-77 victory on Jan. 28, 1982. The game was tied at 54-all in regulation and then at 60, 62, 65 and 69 in the overtimes.
“That was Kanieski time,” Donoher said of the UD hall-of-famer, who had 25 points and nine rebounds. “He kept making plays to put it into another OT. Almost in every period, they had the upper hand, and we’d make a play. ... We just kept pulling rabbits out of the hat.”
While Kanieski carried the Flyers, Conrad made two free throws for the game-winning points.
190 Young shoots down No. 3 DePaul
The Flyers were drifting along at 7-7 during the 1983-84 season when Donoher made a radical change to a smaller lineup — and it worked wonders.
With Ed Young, Roosevelt Chapman and Damon Goodwin on the front line and Larry Schellenberg and Sedric Toney at the guards, UD began rattling off victories.
They overcome a late eight-point deficit against the heavily favored Blue Demons, on Feb. 9, 1984, winning 72-71 on Young’s bankshot at the buzzer — probably the most famous shot in UD Arena history.
The game also was notable for the outward display of emotion by the normally reserved Donoher. He ran off the floor toward the locker room but made a U-turn when he spotted son Brian (now the Fairmont High School athletic director) leaning over the rail. The two exchanged an exuberant high-five before the coach exited for good.
“I was praying to God afterward TV didn’t catch that,” the coach said. “No such luck.”
200 Flyers knock off No. 19 Maryland
After making an Elite Eight run the previous season, the Flyers had to replace Chapman, the program’s all-time leading scorer, in 1984-85. But they picked up a future hall-of-famer in Dave Colbert to fill the void.
The Terrapins, though, had forward Len Bias, the eventual No. 2 overall pick in the 1986 NBA draft who died from a cocaine overdose two days after being selected.
Bias had 22 points, but the Flyers put four players in double figures in the 67-63 win on Jan. 5, 1985.
“(Bias) was everything you could ask out of a player,” UD’s Damon Goodwin said. “He may have been the best player I played against in college.”
204 Controversy after DePaul victory
While there was no doubt over whether Young’s shot beat the buzzer against DePaul in 1984, Colbert’s put-back that gave UD a 65-64 win over the Blue Demons on Jan. 26, 1985, caused an outcry even among the Chicago media.
In the days before clocks registered fractions of a second — and referees could go to TV monitors before making final rulings — the UD star released the ball seemingly at the same time the horn blasted. DePaul protested, but the result stood.
Later, a UD student photographer found he had a picture of Colbert releasing the ball with :01 showing on the clock. UD distributed copies of that picture to the press when the team visited DePaul two weeks later.
“The Chicago media made it sound like the shot came sometime the next afternoon,” Donoher said. “It was close, and the picture captured the moment of how close it was.”
265 UD captures MCC tourney title
In their second year after leaving the dwindling ranks of the independents, the Flyers hosted the Midwestern Collegiate Conference tournament on their home floor under first-year coach Jim O’Brien. After beating Detroit and Loyola, they squared off against rival Xavier in the final on March 10, 1990. An NCAA tournament berth was on the line.
Star guard Negele Knight had a sublime game, tallying 32 points and 15 assists in the 98-89 victory. Tyrone Hill — like Knight, a future NBA player — had 25 points and 11 rebounds in a losing cause.
“The excitement in the arena was unbelievable,” said Bucky Bockhorn, UD’s longtime radio analyst. “I vaguely remember Negele jumped up on the table where we were broadcasting, waving his arms. That was coming off a really bad year, and that was special.”
So was the sellout crowd.
“This arena rocks,” Bockhorn said. “There’s not a better place in America when this crowd is into the game. I don’t care where you go. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
406 Flyers capture Atlantic 10 title
The Flyers hosted the Atlantic 10 tournament for the first time in 2003 and capped a glorious run to the NCAA tournament with a 79-72 win over Temple in the final on March 15.
Dan Curran had just been named school president that year and was in the stands for the A-10 championship, as he is for most Flyer home games.
“We beat Temple, and the students ran on the court. It’s one of the moments I can’t get out of my head,” he said.
“Initially, we weren’t going to let the students on the court, but I went to security and said, ‘Let them on the court.’ ”
465 Payback against Pittsburgh
After getting drilled by Pittsburgh by 30 points a season earlier, UD pummeled the sixth-ranked Panthers, 80-55, on Dec. 29, 2007, as Brian Roberts scored 31 points.
Pitt would go on to win the Big East tournament title. The Flyers climbed to No. 16 in the national polls before being derailed by an injury to star freshman Chris Wright.
“That was the one time I felt we were right there with everyone else, all those big schools,” said UD center Kurt Huelsman, who battled Pitt bruiser DeJuan Blair, causing him to get into foul trouble.
“It was a big game for me personally just because of him,” Huelsman said. “He was a very good player, and we were trying to figure out ways to limit him. One of those was just to be aggressive, and he got into foul trouble.
“I did my job. I did what I needed to do in order to get that win.”
490 Gregory relishes win over rival
UD coach Brian Gregory had been waiting for a chance to face Xavier when both teams were completely healthy — something that hadn’t happened in three years — and that clash occurred at UD Arena late last season, on Feb. 11,2009.
Wright had 19 points to lead the way in a 71-58 decision that ended a six-game losing streak to the Musketeers.
“It was good game for us as an evaluation of where we were as a program,” Gregory said. “They had all their players healthy, we had all our players healthy. ... I thought that was big.”
But Gregory, like the coaches before him, has learned to cherish every victory. No. 499 came Monday against Appalachian State, and the Flyers had to overcome injuries to three of their top four scorers to prevail, 65-49.
“As dumb as it sounds, I thought (that) was a big game for us,” Gregory said. “To have our backs to the wall like that and come out swinging like we did, that’s probably one of our best wins.”
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