Dick Weiss on College Basketball
PHILADELPHIA– Daron Holmes II is having the type of season that is attracting first round looks from NBA scouts.
The 6-10, 235-pound junior is rapidly turning into an unstoppable force in the Atlantic 10 for a 16-2 team that jumped from 22 to 16 in this
week’s AP Top 25 poll.
Holmes was too much for La Salle here last night, scoring 22 points and grabbing eight rebounds as the Flyers won, 66-54, at Gola Arena to remain unbeaten in
conference play with a 6-0 record. The Flyers have won 13 straight games.
And Holmes who won or shared the conference Player of the Week for a third time this month., had his fourth consecutive game of 20 or more points.
Unlike Obi Toppin, Dayton’s last big star who was a relative unknown entering college but blossomed into the eighth pick in the 2020 draft after declaring following his sophomore season, Holmes had an impressive resume. He was the Arizona Gatorade Player of the Year after averaging 23.7 points, 10.6 rebounds, 3.8 blocks and 3.2 assists per game as a junior for Millennium High in Goodyear and split time between Montverde Academy and Compass Prep in Chandler, Arizona as a senior. He was the No. 38 ranked player in the classof 2021 and the highest ranked recruit ever to sign with Dayton.
He surprised some when he chose the Flyers over Arizona, Marquette and Cal but he liked coach Anthony Grant and felt a connection with the small private Catholic school.
He is the classic example of a player whose game has grown every year in college under Grant, where he has been a three-year starter. and the A-10 Rookie of the Year as a freshman.
“As a freshman, he was playing against 23, 24-year-old men,” Grant said. “As a sophomore, he was our top option, but he had to learn how to play against double teams. This year, I think he’s done what we expected him to do. He’s put in the work. He’s doing what we all know he’s capable of doing.”
Holmes thought about declaring for the draft after his sophomore year after he averaged 18.4 points and 8.1 rebounds and was an A-10 first team selection Bit he later withdrew from the draft on the day of the deadline and announced he would return to campus.
Holmes has been the biggest difference in a fluid league where no team gets a free pass.
He is proof positive there is still a place for upperclassmen in the first round if you are athletic, experienced and have fundamental skills like 6-5 junior guard Wooga Poplar of Miami, 6-4 junior guard Hunter Sallis of Wake Forest, 6-7 junior guard Adama Bal of Santa Clara, 6-4 senior guard Trey Alexander of Creighton, 6[-7 senior forward Jaxson Robinson of BYU, 6-6 senior guard Dalton Knecht of Tennessee, 6-6 senior guard Terrence Shannon of Illinois, 6=7 senior Kevin McCullar of Kansas, 6-11 senior center Oso Ighodaro of Marquette and Holmes, who are all getting mention as potential first round drafts in the latest mocks.
The idea of constantly selecting one and dones and hoping they can develop at a young age in the NBA is no longer gospel.
If Dayton can make a run in the tournament, Holmes’ stock will only trend higher.
Holmes threw down a thunderous dunk to give Dayton a 34-19 lead before half. But the Explorers went on a 9-0 run in two minutes and cut the lead from 45-33 to 45-42 before the Flyers got two timely threes from guard Javon Bennett and back-to-back layups from Holmes to push the lead back to 55-45. with 6:33 to play
La Salle may no longer be who they were during the Tom Gola era or 1969, when the 25-1 Explorers with Ken Durrett, Larry Cannon and Bernie Williams, who were on probation and ineligible to play in the NCAA tournament, were ranked No. 3 in the country. and considered the best the best team ever to play in the Big 5 prior to 2018 Villanova, which rolled through the NCAA tournament, winning every game by double figures with a team that produced seven future NBA players like Jalen Brunson and Mikel Bridges, who are both future All Stars. But the 75-year-old Dunphy, who has won 600 career games, can still coach at the highest level and the 10-9 Explorers have enough three-point shooters, like internationals Andres Marrero Tunde Vanhberg Fasasi to keep La Salle in most games.
“I thought we did some good things, actually a lot of good things,” Dunphy said. “But we fell down a couple times. Against this team, you can’t.”
