Senior guards Scoochie Smith and Charles Cooke echoed that thought late Wednesday night after the Dayton Flyers won the program's first-ever outright Atlantic 10 regular season title by outslugging VCU, 79-72, in a raucous, sold-out UD Arena where it felt like you were ringside for a heavyweight title fight, not just courtside for a college basketball game.
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“It’s hard to stick a body on those dudes,” Cooke said of VCU’s muscular frontcourt players. “It’s not as easy as it looks. They are strong, but he added a ton of physicality for us.”
Smith agreed: “Their two guys, Mo Alie-Cox and (Justin) Tillman, are rebounding machines. To have him out there playing alongside Kendall (Pollard) tonight was amazing for us. We didn’t have him the first time we played these guys, but we did tonight…and we won.”
The Flyers players and coach all were talking about one guy:
Josh Cunningham.
At 6-foot-7 and 255 pounds, he is the beefiest presence on an undersized, but overreaching Flyers team that now is 24-5 and 15-2 in the A-10.
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Against the Rams, with Dayton’s starting front court of Pollard and Xeyrius Williams on the bench in foul trouble and accounting for 11 fewer points than usual, Cunningham came into the game, played 27 minutes, made four of five shots – including a difficult, pressurized jump shot in the game’s closing minutes as the shot clock was expiring – and finished with 10 points, four rebounds and a steal.
It was something of an exclamation point to what’s been – from the second game of the season until now – a determined effort to prove Coach Archie Miller wrong.
After sitting out last season to adhere to NCAA transfer rules after he came in from Bradley – and to recover from knee surgery and a torn labrum – Cunningham was counted on to give UD some much needed physicality inside, especially after the tragic death of 6-foot-11 Steve McElvene last May.
Cunningham, a redshirt sophomore, had 13 points in this year's opener against Austin Peay and 12 the next game against Alabama. But with just a few seconds left against the Crimson Tide, he was about to sign the victory off with a dunk when he was sideswiped by a defender and landed awkwardly on his left leg, destroying the tendon in his ankle.
“Lying there on the floor I didn’t know how bad it was, but I knew it was something serious,” Cunningham said Wednesday night. “I really couldn’t move and at first I really thought it could be a season-ending injury.”
Miller certainly thought it was.
Four days after the injury – following a loss to No. 17 St. Mary’s at home, the Flyers only loss at UD Arena this season – a solemn Miller said:
“Josh is done.”
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Miller recalled that moment after Wednesday’s game: “I never thought he’d play again this year.”
But three days after his injury Cunningham had surgery to repair the damage and he heard one prognosis that said he possibly could get back on the court in three months.
While that might have meant him just beginning to hobble back into shape, he took it to mean he’d play in three months.
“He told me he’d be back in February and he marked a game he would be back,” Smith said. “And he was relentless about hitting that mark.”
Cunningham's injury happened November 15th and he was determined, Smith said, to be back February 10th– a few days shy of three months – for a game at Rhode Island.
And sure enough he was — although he played just two minutes.
There was a chance he could have applied for a medical redshirt season and gotten a full year back, rather than sacrificing 21 games this season.
Did he think of that?
The question made him shake his head:
“I probably could have, but it never was on my mind. I wanted to get back out here this year. I wanted to be back with my teammates because these guys are like my brothers. I wanted to be part of something special.
“And that’s what tonight was. To celebrate something this big – to be with these seniors and share a moment like this – is amazing. As of now, these seniors are the winningest class ever here (102 victories in four years) and I got to be a part of it. That’s why I worked so hard to get back”.
And as Cooke noted: “He worked his tail off.”
As Cunningham put it: “I worked as much as possible. As much as Mike (Flyers trainer Mike Mulcahey) would allow me.”
As he thought about it, he started to smile: “Sometimes Mike would say, ‘Let’s take a break. That’s enough for today. Go home and ice it and relax.’”
His comeback was further aided by the use of the new AlterG anti-gravity treadmill the program got in December. Mulcahey has described it as NASA technology and said it takes 80 percent of the body weight off a person and allows them to work without overtaxing the joints.
Miller saw the efforts pay off:
“At that 10-week mark we started to look and, just talking to Mike, he was like, ‘We’re gonna have to amp him up and get him going.’ And we just fired him into practice and he worked his way out and he’s here now.”
After Rhode Island, Cunningham played 23 minutes and scored 12 points against a completely overmatched Saint Louis team and then, in the three games leading up to VCU, he averaged about 12 minutes and four points an outing.
Just to take the court requires him to go through a bunch of pregame stretching exercises— “I don’t want my Achilles to tighten up,” he said – and then he gets a special tape job on his ankle from Mulcahey, whose efforts through this he praises highly.
Compared to the other five outings he’d had in his return, the game against VCU – now 23-7 — was a step up in intensity and physicality.
And with Pollard and Williams in foul trouble, he was needed.
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“We needed a physical approach with Kendall out and Josh gave it to us,” Miller said. “I thought he did an excellent job in his minutes.”
His shining moment came on an inbounds play when there were just four seconds left on the shot clock and the momentum had turned as VCU had cut the deficit to three.
With UD’s primary options covered, Cunningham caught the inbounds pass near the foul line and, though he was defended and didn’t have time to really set up, he instantly lofted a high-arching, touch shot that was perfect.
“I was probably the third option, but when I got the ball I could see the rim and I knew I had to get it up and over their defender,” he said. “It was a very, very tough shot, but the man upstairs was watching over me and that’s when incredible things can happen.”
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He figured it was the best shot he’s ever made a college player and that counts his year at Bradley, when he averaged 7.9 points per game (and a team-high 7.5 rebounds) and was named to the Missouri Valley Conference All-Freshmen Team.
That he’s now working back toward that form — and doing so at the most crucial part of the season — has Miller savoring some scenarios come tournament time, when, he said, you face more physical teams:
“Envisioning him and Kendall playing a lot of minutes together is something we talked about at the beginning and now it’s a reality again. Them together out there tonight was probably our most productive lineup. And it’s something moving forward we are going to be able to continue to use. Having Josh back really helps us.”
Everybody can use a savior.
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