March 2009
Biodiesel? Wind? How about Snuggies?
How should UD get energy? How can we be more efficient? How can we pay for improvements?
Are Snuggies the answer?
Well, no, but it's a funny question at the heart of a YouTube video the organizers of a campus forum on energy are using to promote their event at this year's Stander Symposium.
The message: We need creative ideas. Nothing is off the table, even a campuswide Snuggie movement.
Mad for UD
Tell us something we don't know.
The New York Times raved about the University of Dayton Arena and how it is a "real gem of a basketball arena."
It was one of 15 times the Times wrote about UD during the first week of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. Media nationwide mentioned the "University of Dayton" or "Dayton Flyers" about 2,700 times, including countless hits on ESPN and CBS Sports.
Our arena and players shared the spotlight with our fans. Ohio News Network covered students gathering in Humanities Plaza under spring-blue skies to watch Dayton's first two men's NCAA tournament games on a big screen projection TV. Despite Sunday's loss, it was a wonderful weekend of basketball.
Tough Sunday
There were better days than Sunday to be a Flyer basketball player. Both the men's and women's teams were knocked out of their respective tournaments, the men by a long-armed Kansas Jayhawk in the middle and the women on a heartbreaking tip-in by Indiana with less than a second on the clock.
For both teams, there is much to be proud of this season. The men finished 27-8 with only one senior on the roster, advancing to the second round of the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1990. The women finished 21-14, completing their second consecutive season with 20-plus wins and winning their first post-season tournament game since moving to Division I.
Both squads have bright futures. The men's team, which played 12-deep all season, will next year add 6-9 center/forward Josh Benson out of Dayton Dunbar and 6-9 power forward Matt Kavanaugh from Centerville, Ohio. The women's team returns sophomore A-10 Third Team selection Kristin Daugherty and three freshman starters, including A-10 Rookie of the Year Justine Raterman.
The weekend's tournament games brought out serious cases of Flyer Fever. Several hundred students gathered on the lawn of Humanities Plaza to watch the men's first-round win over West Virginia Friday.
Our other man in Minneapolis: Thom Fladung ’82
Scenes, impressions and musings from the Metrodome in Minneapolis, site of the biggest upset — at least by seeding — of the 2009 NCAA men's basketball tournament (so far):
• The Flyer Faithful turned out in force, first for an alumni breakfast, featuring the UD Pep Band and cheerleaders and then at the game. Red shirts filled a good part of one section and "We are UD!" rang out for the first time ever at the Metrodome.
• College Basketball Nation, meet Chris Wright. Dayton's star sophomore scored 27, threw down a half-dozen monster dunks and — fittingly — grabbed the offensive rebound that clinched the game. Now, he takes his place in UD basketball tournament lore. Roosevelt Chapman. Johnny Davis. Mike Sylvester. Chris Wright.
• Hey, the guys with the colored wigs made the trip!
• The game was close to the end. The competition between the pep bands: no contest. West Virginia's stood at attention in tasteful outfits and played very nicely. Our guys? They played loud — and beautifully — they painted their faces, they changed headgear frequently — the little stuffed airplanes are a particularly nice touch — they made odd noises during West Virginia foul shots. And after the game was over, there was only one band still playing.
• Hey, the guys with the weird masks made the trip!
• Has anyone else noticed how much Bob Huggins looks like Alec Baldwin these days? And they not only look alike. Neither one has a game to coach this weekend.
• Charles Little was huge: 18 points, many of them on improbable, twisting lay-ups, down low, where the big boys play.
• Hey, President Curran made the trip!
• Dear Kansas: You're next.
St. Paul Pioneer PressFlyer News
Our man in Minneapolis
Mike Kurtz of UD's Media Production Group is chronicling the team's road to the NCAA Tournament from behind the scenes.
Here's his first installment:
We'll continue posting Kurtz's dispatches as they are available.
Tipoff is in two hours. Go Flyers.
Ready for round two: Bring on Indiana
The Flyer women took care of business in the Women's NIT last night, beating Oakland University on its home floor 70-55. The win is the first-ever post-season tournament victory for the team since moving to Division I.
The Flyers will face the University of Indiana in Bloomington 2 p.m. Sunday, March 22. If they can get past Indiana, they'll face either Syracuse or Bowling Green, possibly in a home game at UD Arena.
Kristin Daugherty led all scorers with 19 points. Freshman Justine Raterman, A-10 Rookie of the Year, picked up her ninth career double-double with 16 points and 10 rebounds.
Striking music
How long does it take to be considered a master in your field? For Javanese gamelan master Sumarsam, the journey began when he was 7 and one of the players at a performance fell asleep.
“The gamelan is played at celebrations which usually begin at 8 or 9 at night, then go for nine hours or so,” Sumarsam said. The conductor had noticed him at practices, watching and listening, and called on him to take the sleeping man’s place. When asked how he was able to pick up an instrument so quickly, he shrugged and smiled saying, “I just copied what the person next to me played.”
It was standing room only at yesterday’s workshop. Faculty and students leaned in to hear the quiet words of Sumarsam, who laughed and smiled as he spoke. The gamelan orchestra took up half of the floor: a collage of large drums, hanging gongs, and a series of xylophone-like instruments. Large gold dragons graced the top of the hanging gongs, and the UD emblem was visible on every piece.
He took off his shoes and moved from instrument to instrument, explaining that they were named for the sound they make, such as the higher plinking of the kenong, which looks like a series of pots that are struck with a padded stick. Then, under his conducting, the students brought the music to life — a rhythmic but peaceful mixture of plinking and tinkling accentuated by the booming gong. After several bars, he joined the musicians on the floor, hitting the large drum in the middle of the ensemble.
If you missed the workshop, Sumarsam will present Notes from a Gamelan Master at 8 p.m. in Kennedy Union ballroom. The event is free and open to the public.
Flyer women dancing, too
After their second consecutive 20-win season, the Flyer women's basketball team earned an at-large bid to the Women's National Invitation Tournament yesterday. They travel to Rochester, Mich., to play the Oakland Grizzlies (26-6) Thursday. The winner will face Indiana University (19-10) in Bloomington, Ind., Sunday, March 22. (Download a PDF bracket here.)
Returning only one starter from last year's 25-9 team, the Flyers are led by A-10 Rookie of the Year Justine Raterman and sophomore A-10 Third Team selection Kristin Daugherty. Raterman's double-double in the A-10 tournament quarterfinals helped notch that 20th win of the season — pulled out in overtime against a nationally ranked Xavier squad (#16/15). Clutch back-to-back three pointers from freshman De'Sarae Chambers kept the Flyers in the game late and helped send it to overtime.
The Flyers join eight other A-10 schools in post-season play. The league placed eight teams in the top 100 RPI, more than the Big Ten and PAC 10 and tied with the ACC. Dayton's RPI is 76, according to CollegeRPI.com.
The team's future is bright. This year's squad features six freshmen, three of whom are starters. Two other freshmen are the top options off the bench.
Frericks went wild for the Flyers
When Dayton’s name came up on the big board during the tournament seeding announcements last night, players jumped out of their chairs, fans hopped and hollered, and Flyer cheerleaders rained a shower of balls and T-shirts down on the Frericks Center crowd.
I've never seen people so excited to watch a TV show.
The Flyers are an 11-seed heading to Minneapolis to play the West Virginia Mountaineers.
But if those three facts — seed, location, opponent — were a game-show question, most of us at Frericks last night would’ve walked away penniless. A giddy coach Brian Gregory interrupted his “thank you, fans” remarks to ask where the team was headed. A moment later, guard London Warren did the same thing.
Warren is a fierce defender, but he was having a hard time defending himself from his own tears. Other players had damp eyes, high-fives, big hugs and smooth dance moves as they celebrated, hugged each other and fans, and posed for pictures.
Looking down from the upper bleachers of the old fieldhouse, it was hard not to think of the great Flyer teams of the ’50s and ’60s who called this court home. It was also hard not to wonder if today’s bunch heralds the beginning of another golden era.
Yes, we have ways to go before anyone off campus looks at the Flyers and sees a potential national champion. But it’s easy to feel like there’s something really special going on.
p.s. Some bonus attention from USA Today. No. 11 says what every UD graduate already knows.
A national champion this weekend?
Sophomore runner Ashley Cattran has broken six Flyer records in three months. On Saturday, she'll try to put UD in the record books as national champion. Cattran, already A-10 champion, will join an elite field of 17 runners in the 800 meter event at the Women's NCAA Championships this weekend. It is the first time a UD runner has ever competed for a national title.
My Old House: 428 Kiefaber
These five seniors have quite an influx of celebrity guests.
Handball, for lunch
A lot of UD folks tackle Brown Street restaurants during lunch hours. Ken Rosenzweig, professor emeritus in accounting, and Garry Shaughnessy, associate professor of mathematics, spend their lunch hours knocking a 1.5-inch rubber ball at a 20-foot wall.
They’re two members of a club that plays handball three days a week at RecPlex. It started in 1975 as a group of professors meeting for some competitive faculty time and has grown to include local businessmen, alumni and students.
“(Handball) is a good sport for anyone’s physical and mental health,” said Rosenzweig, who joined the club in 1981.
The rewards are a good workout and a break from the classroom, he said.
Shaughnessy, who’s been with the group since its founding, said the hardest part of the game is its demands on both sides of the body. Unlike sports like basketball or baseball, where players use a dominant hand to dribble or arm to catch with, handball requires ambidextrous play.
“It’s frustrating for beginners, and many go a long time without success,” Rosenzweig said. “The first time, players also get bruises on their hands, despite the required gloves.”
Those who feel up for the handball challenge are invited to bring their readiness to learn and patience to play during lunch, they said.
Hidden treasure
The Rosech Library has 10,000 titles in its rare book collection. At night, only one lives behind inches of steel: a 1498 printing of musings by Peter Schott of Strasbourg.
"Only one can I fit in the safe; the vault is small," said Nicoletta Hary, curator of special collections, as she reverently fingered the ragged book cover. It is an incunable, or "cradle book," created in the first 50 years of the moveable type printing press.
The book was featured in the inaugural issue of the University of Dayton Magazine, which is now making its way to alumni mailboxes across the globe.
Hary, who trained in library sciences at the Vatican Library, pulled from the shelves JFK memorabilia, Paul Laurence Dunbar poems and early 20th century titles with elegant gold-embossed, art deco-inspired covers.
She knows each title, yet each time she lightly lifts a tome it is a spiritual experience. She calls it "learning the treasure of a book."
So many more treasures than could fit into any safe.
Read more about the incunable in the University of Dayton Magazine or in the online PDF.
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