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Feb. 27—She blacked out.
And then she lit up.
Jayda Johnson was having a six-minute span like few other players have had in UD women’s basketball history.
Like usual, of late, the 6-foot-1 redshirt freshman began Wednesday night’s game on the bench.
It was Senior Night — the last home game of regular season — and the Dayton Flyers were hosting mighty Saint Joseph’s, who came into UD Arena with a 21-6 record three of the top 12 scorers in the Atlantic-10 Conference, including likely Player of the Year, Laura Ziegler, a 6-foot-2 force from Denmark who led the A-10 in scoring and rebounding and was so comfortable beforehand that she laughed and danced along with the UD fans as she stood at midcourt in front UD Arianna Smith, her opening tip rival.
Thanks to Saint Joe’s swagger and talent and UD’s still swirling emotions from the Senior Night ceremony, the Flyers were instantly reeling.
In just over five minutes of play, they turned the ball over five times, the Hawks hit five straight three-point shots, and Dayton trailed, 20-2.
The Flyers finally righted themselves a bit — thanks to the moxie on offense and defense by senior Rikki Harris — and trailed 22-14 at the end of the first quarter.
That’s when coach Tamika Williams-Jeter sent Johnson into the game.
She was UD’s secret weapon.
She hadn’t scored in the Flyers’ last seven games, two of which she never even got off the bench. The last time she’d played was a week earlier at Saint Louis when she got in 33 seconds. She hadn’t hit a three-point shot in five weeks and was averaging just 1.9 ppg this season.
But the stats don’t tell her story.
She’d been an AAU and high school standout back home in Connecticut and that got her to Boston College last season, although she took a redshirt season because she was still recovering from an ACL tear in her right knee that occurred early in the first game of her senior season at Hamden Hall Country Day.
She entered the transfer portal at season’s end and Dayton signed her with the idea…
[ad_2]Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/tom-archdeacon-kind-blacked-little-193500023.html
Author : Dayton Daily News, Ohio
Publish date : 2025-02-27 19:35:00
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