By Hal McCoy
Dayton, OH. — With Obi Toppin in the house, the University of Dayton basketball team paid homage to the UD legend with a Symphony of Dunks.
Toppin, who dunked 190 times during his two-year career, was in UD Arena Saturday night to be inducted into the Flyers Hall of Fame.
The Flyers dismantled North Florida (2-8), 84-61, with DeShayne Montgomery and Malcolm Thomas putting on a first half concert of jam jobs and windmill slams.
They combined for seven dunks in the first 20 minutes as Toppin, sitting on the sidelines, acknowledged the tribute.
For Thomas and Montgomery, it was elevate to celebrate.
It was particularly significant in the case of Thomas. He wears uniform No. 1, the same digit Toppin wore during his Dayton days.
Thomas thundered home four rim-rattling dunks and Montgomery dunked three times.
And it was a noteworthy night for Montgomery. He played only 21 minutes. but scoered 23 points on 9 of 10 shooting, 4 for 4 from three.
Flyer center Amael Le’tang used his 7-foot-1 stature to his best advantage against the much smaller North Florida front line with 14 points and a career-best 14 rebounds.
Le’Tang is as thin as a preying mantis but North Florida had no prayer against him.
North Florida is a team that believes life begins and ends beyond the three-point line. Three times in recent seasons they led the nation in made three-pointers — 409 last season, 396 the season before and 411 the season before that.
They came to Dayton averaging 34 attempts and 14 mades. So the Flyers protected the three-point line as if they were guarding the front door of their parents’ home when they are on vacation.
The Ospreys got off only 10 threes in the first half and made three as the Flyers constructed a 46-23 lead. They finished the night 8 for 29.
UD had a week off to take final exams and when the game began it looked as if they all flunked. The Flyers missed their first 11 shots in the first four minutes.
Then they all became Deadeye Dandies the rest of the half, making 19 of 22. Seven were the dunks by Montgomery and Thomas.
Both Montgomery and Thomas had 12 points at halftime.
“We showed a little rust to start the game,” said UD coach Anthony Grant. “But I thought the energy and effort picked up and overeall the guys did a real good job.”
The energy was provided by Thomas, a 6-foot-8 red-shirt freshman from Mitchelville, Maryland and a transfer from Villanova.
The two most-used words in his vocabulary are huslte and bustle. He never spends time in one spot more than a millisecond and usually he is attacking the rim as if there is a bag of gold on the flange.
It was all Flyers in the second half as they eventually built a 37-point lead, 78-41, with 7 1/2-minutes left.
Then in the final four minutes it wasn’t pretty as the Ospreys outscored the Flyers 20-6.
“The game didn’t end in the fashion I wanted it to,” said Grant. “But at the end of the day I was overall pleased with the result.”
When it was mentioned that the team seemed to play as if to honor Toppin, Grant said, “We owe so much to those guys, we stand on their shoulders in what we enjoy today because of the guys who came before them.
“You have to honor that, understand that, respect that,” he added. “Our guys tried to do a good job of that today.”
On a night when the area was buried in 4 to 6 inches of snow, UD Arena was nearly full. And North Florida trudged through the snow to take another beating, but took home a nice paycheck.
As expected, they were not much competition, as witness their big losses this season — 104-64 to Florida, 89-66 to Tennessee, 109-58 to Gonzaga, plus losses to lower lights like Wofford, Southern Mississippi, Praire View A&M, Southern Mississippi and Southern Illinoiis-Edwardsville.
Their two wins? They beat New College of Florida and Trinity College of Jacksonville.
In additon to Toppin’s presence, former Flyer star of the 1970s, Johnny Davis, was at the game after he came back to campus to accept his degree at UD’s graduation ceremonies Saturday afternoon.
“I can’t say enough about how grateful we are to the Flyer Faithful for showing up because the weather was not the best,” said Grant. “But true to form, the fans were here and we really appreciate the support.”
And of Davis, Grant said, “We had a special graduate, former Flyer Johnny Davis in the house, 50 years later getting his Dayton degree. He has several others (degrees), but this place was so important to him that we wanted to be able to say he is a Dayton grad.”
After a couple of days off, the Flyers get a visit Tuesday night from another Florida school, one with much thicker credentials. . .Florida State.