History of the Former Dayton-Xavier Rivalry

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

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Dayton. We know how much Xavier hates them, which makes for a terrific rivalry game right off the bat, even if X normally wins the game. They'll also bring plenty of people to the BET, and while it's not a big market they're in, they do dominate it.

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The UD/X contingencies certainly don't seem to like each other much, that's for sure.

It wasn’t always like that.

Before 1950, neither Xavier nor Dayton attracted any national attention, and interest in their basketball games was very limited. Their games were not televised. The rivalry between Dayton and Xavier up until the end of the 1948-49 season might best be described as "a congenial collegiate comradery between two small Catholic schools in Southwest Ohio". Think striped blazers, straw boaters, and gin & tonic. Xavier dominated Dayton before the 1950’s, but few people cared. Taking in a Dayton-Xavier game was a fun day out, but not much more.

A lot changed during the 1950’s. The striped blazers and straw boaters were replaced by white T-shirts, blue jeans, black leather jackets, and sun glasses. The gin & tonic was replaced by Wiedemann, Burger Brau, Schoenling, and Hudepohl. In the 1950, the Dayton Flyers made their mark on the national scene, and the Dayton-Xavier rivalry became intense for the first time, which I’ll get to shortly. But first, I’ll review some apparently unrelated information and connect the dots as my story progresses.

March, 1950 • City College NY accomplished perhaps the greatest feat in basketball history, winning the National Invitation and the NCAA tournaments. One year later there was devastation as New York District Attorney Frank Hogan indicted players from four New York schools, including City College. The other New York schools were Manhattan College, New York University and Long Island University. The earth-shaking scandals of 1951, which eventually reached to seven schools and 32 players around the country, actually erupted on Jan. 17, 1951 when Henry Poppe and Jack Byrnes of the previous year's Manhattan team plus three fixers: Cornelius Kelleher and brothers Benjamin and Irving Schwartzberg, who were bookmakers and convicted felons, were booked on bribery and conspiracy charges.

November 29, 1950 • Dayton Flyers basketball moved to the new UD Fieldhouse with a 5,808-seat capacity. My late father, another UD alumnus, became a big UD basketball fan during the 1948-49 season when Tom Blackburn led the Flyers to a 24-8 record, and the future looked bright. In the spring of 1950, dad bought 2 season tickets for the 1950-51 season, and kept the same two seats until the Flyers moved to UD Arena in November, 1969. I was quite fortunate that my mother had little interest in basketball, so dad would take me to most of the Flyers games at the Fieldhouse when I was young (and thus my handle ‘Fieldhouse Flyer’). It should come as no surprise that I became a big Dayton Flyers fan well before I started kindergarten.

March 17, 1951 • The Brigham Young Cougars win the National Championship by stomping Dayton 62-49 in the 1951 NIT. (MSG Attendance: 18,379).

October 20, 1951 • New York District Attorney Frank Hogan arrested Kentucky basketball players Ralph Beard, Alex Groza, and Dale Barnstable for accepting $500 bribes to shave points in an NIT game against Loyola of Chicgo in Madison Square Garden in 1949. Groza and Beard had been on two NCAA championship teams. Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp had claimed his team was untouchable: "They couldn't reach my boys with a ten-foot pole." He was wrong. The NCAA suspended the Kentucky basketball program for the 1952-53 season. Judge Streit awarded suspended sentences to Groza, Beard and Barnstable and placed them on indefinite probation and barred them from all sports for three years. The NBA commissioner Maurice Podoloff also suspended the trio. Alex Groza was a native of Martins Ferry, Ohio and graduated from Martins Ferry High School in June, 1945.

February 24, 1952 • Dayton beats Xavier 82-80 in a game at the Cincinnati Gardens attended by 12,020 fans - the first game in the rivalry to draw a crowd of more than 10,000. Attendance of 10,000+ for rivalry games would become the norm after the two schools built bigger basketball arenas.

March 15, 1952 • The La Salle Explorers win the National Championship by beating Dayton 75-64 in the 1951 NIT (MSG Attendance: 18,485).

March, 1955 • The NCAA Tournament becomes more prestigious than the NIT when the (Jesuit) San Francisco Dons choose the NCAA over the NIT, and win the Championship game, finishing the season with a 28-1 record.

February 19, 1956 • Dayton was ranked #2 in the AP Poll (behind # 1 San Francisco) and a convoy of Dayton fans packed the new Interstate 75 en route to the 7-year-old Cincinnati Gardens, where the Flyers beat the Musketeers 85-75 in front of a record crowd of 14,284.

March 20-24, 1956 • 1956 National Invitation Tournament at Madison Square Garden.

… March 20, 1956 • #1 seed Dayton beats unseeded Xavier 72-68 in the NIT Quarterfinals. Attendance: 11,231
… March 22, 1956 • #1 seed Dayton beats unseeded St. Francis(NY) 89-58 in the NIT Semifinals. Attendance: 16,125
… March 24, 1956 • #2 seed Louisville upsets #1 seed Dayton 93-80 in the NIT Championship game. Attendance: 15,763. The legendary 1955-56 Dayton Flyers finish the season with a 25-4 record. Members of that storied 1955-56 team included sophomore Bucky Bockhorn, who later played for the Cincinnati Royals from 1958 to 1965. From 1970 until 2019, Bucky Bockhorn provided the color commentary for WHIO radio broadcasts of UD’s basketball games. The 1955-56 team also included reserve junior Bill Almashy, who later bought the house next door to my parents in Trotwood. Bill Almashy was a native of Martins Ferry, Ohio (on the West bank of the of the Ohio River, across from Wheeling) - the oldest European settlement in the state of Ohio (1779). Bill graduated from Martins Ferry High School in June, 1953, was recruited by Tom Blackburn, and played varsity for the Dayton Flyers from 1954 to 1957. During the 1960’s, I spent many summer evenings in the back yard, listening to dad and Bill Almashy talk about the great Dayton Flyers’ teams of the 1950’s while drinking their Wiedemanns out of brown glass bottles with the Cincinnati Reds game on the radio in the background. Bill was very keen to hear my dad’s stories about the Flyers prior to 1954, and dad was fascinated by Bill’s stories from his days as a varsity player from 1954 to 1957. I listened intently to every story they told, and each of them stuck to me like glue. Bill became the phys. ed. teacher at local Trotwood-Madison Junior High, and coached the 9th-grade basketball team – quite well, I might add.

March 24, 1956 • The San Francisco Dons win the 1956 NCAA Tournament, finishing the season with a perfect 29-0 record. By the time the Dons were putting together back-to-back national titles in 1955–56, the NCAA tournament had overtaken the NIT as the true playoff for the National Championship.

May 28, 1956 • My parents attend the first Elvis Presley at UD Fieldhouse. I later found out that Bill Almashy was a big Elvis fan, and he was at the concert with his girlfriend.

April, 1957 • Jim McCafferty is named head basketball coach at Xavier.

May, 1957 • Bill Almashy graduated from UD.

July 26, 1957 • I attended my first professional sporting event: Cincinnati Reds 6, Brooklyn Dodgers 5. Life is good.

January 29, 1958 • UD Fieldhouse • Dayton 74, Xavier 59. Attendance: 5,808
February 16, 1958 • Cincinnati Gardens • Dayton 64, Xavier 58. Attendance: 5,291
March, 1958 • The NIT asked Xavier (15-11) to give back its NIT bid after losing 10 of its final 15 regular-season games, but Xavier refused.
March 22, 1958 • NIT Championship game • Madison Square Garden • Xavier 78, Dayton 74, OT. Attendance: 12,020

March 22, 1958 • Adolph Rupp's Kentucky Wildcats (23-6) won the 1958 NCAA Tournament and were acclaimed college basketball's national champions. By the time San Francisco, with Bill Russell and K.C. Jones, put together back-to-back national titles in 1955–56, the NCAA tournament had overtaken the NIT as the true playoff for the national championship.

1958 NIT Champions to be Honored February 10th – Xavier University - January 17, 2008

The 1957-58 Musketeers became the first school from Ohio to win a national championship in basketball by winning the 1958 National Invitation Tournament. Led by first-year head coach Jim McCafferty, the Musketeers defeated Niagara, Bradley, and St. Bonaventure to reach the NIT championship game at Madison Square Garden in New York. In the final, Xavier (19-11) defeated rival #11 Dayton 78-74 in overtime. Sport magazine called Xavier's Cinderella run "one of the greatest upsets in basketball history"

March 22, 1958 • This became the infamous date when the Dayton-Xavier rivalry descended into genuine animosity and bitterness. Dayton Flyers fans (and the entire population of the city of Dayton) were outraged at Xavier’s faux claim of ‘national champions’ and the relentless ‘in-your- face’ antagonism which ensued and has endured for generations. Fast-forward 32 years …

February 17, 1990 • Dayton 81, Evansville 58 (at UD Arena) • Back Story: Chris Mack, Wes Coffee, and Jim Crews

So begins a story that has followed Chris Mack since February of 1990, on the night he popped a ball in a defender’s face while taking it out of bounds under Dayton’s basket. That defender was Wes Coffee, and he was twice hit in the face by different Purple Aces within the game’s first 13 minutes. Only the second hit came from Mack. But it launched a sequence of events that led to a near melee between teams, a contrite Mack, a dazed Coffee, an apology letter, and a reputation – for Mack – as a perpetual villain to some in Dayton.

Time doesn’t always sway those who hold grudges. Chris Mack probably won’t get a warm reception the first time he leads XU at UD Arena. To that end, two things are certain: The Xavier-Dayton animosity will live on, and Mack – a Musketeer through-and-through – doesn’t expect to make any new Dayton friends. The Coffee incident ensured as much. “I became the villain at Dayton,” Mack said. “And I’ve got no problem with that.”

Louisville welcomes Chris Mack as its new men's basketball coach Jeff Greer, Louisville Courier Journal – March 28, 2018

March 28, 2018 • Sixty years and six days after the Flyer faithful first began hating Xavier, that hatred and animosity abruptly ended. The University of Louisville and their basketball coach is now the object of the former hatred of Xavier, but the penny still hasn’t dropped for Xavier fans, who continue to hate the University of Dayton, UD’s basketball team, and the Flyer Faithful. But the Flyer Faithful may yet get the last laugh.

AP Top 25 Poll - Week 10 - January 6, 2020

15. Dayton

William A. "Bill" Almashy | 1935 - 2020 | Obituary – Heslop Funeral Home – January 7, 2020

William A. "Bill" Almashy - November 3, 1935 - January 6, 2020

William A. “Bill” Almashy, 84, of Dayton, Ohio, formerly of Martins Ferry, Ohio, died Monday, January 6, 2020, at Oak Creek Terrace, Kettering, Ohio. He was born November 3, 1935 in Martins Ferry, son of the late William and Dorothy L. (Williams) Almashy. Bill retired from teaching as a physical, health, and special education instructor and then retired as a foreman from General Motors.

Bill was captain of his Martins Ferry High School Basketball Team after which he received a scholarship to the University of Dayton to play for the U. D. Flyers 1954-1957. Family and friends will be received at Heslop Funeral Home, 415 Walnut St., Martins Ferry, OH, Wednesday, January 8, 2020 from 11 a.m. until time of the funeral service at 1:00 p.m. with Rev. Tom Marut officiating. Burial follows in Riverview Cemetery, Martins Ferry.

Coronavirus Outbreak Timeline - CNN

January 7, 2020 - Chinese authorities confirm that they have identified the virus as a novel coronavirus, initially named 2019-nCoV by the WHO.

Simulation Sunday: How Dayton won the 2020 NCAA Tournament in SportsLine's projections - CBS Sports – March 15, 2020

The Flyers are national champions in our SportsLine simulations. Here's the story of how they won it.

The Dayton Flyers are the winners of the 2020 NCAA Tournament ... if the NCAA Tournament had been played.

Final 1956 AP Top 20 Poll - March 12, 1956

3. Dayton (23-3)

Final 2020 AP Top 25 Poll - March 18, 2020

3. Dayton (29-2)

My former next-door neighbour Bill Almashy never heard of the coronavirus, and he never dreamed that the 2019-20 Dayton Flyers would equal the No. 3 AP final ranking of his legendary 1955-56 team. But he loved the Cincinnati Reds, Wiedemann beer, Elvis, college basketball, and most of all, his family, friends, the Dayton Flyers, and former teammates. He was a vivacious, intelligent gentleman with great charisma who earned the respect and affection of everyone fortunate to know him. I will miss him and his fascinating stories about the good old days - Martins Ferry, Alex Groza, the City College NY scandal, Adolph Rupp, Tom Blackburn, Don Donoher, and so much more. R.I.P. Bill - you made the world a better and more interesting place with your presence.