Dayton Flyers

May 5, 2009

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University of Dayton men's basketball assistant coach Billy Schmidt has been named a recipient of the "Rising Star" Award, which is part of BasketballScoop Coach Of the Year powered by Critical Reload program. The program honors basketball assistant coaches who are regarded as the best in the business by their peers.

A unique feature of the program is that only coaches who are nominated by another active coach, and then a panel made up exclusively of current head coaches and assistant coaches select the winners.

Schmidt is in his seventh season at UD, and has been an integral part of every one of head coach Brian Gregory's 125 wins on the Hilltop. In fact, the first move Gregory made when he was named UD's head coach was to hire Schmidt, who had been on Tommy Amaker's staff at Michigan.

Schmidt is involved with all aspects of the Flyer men's basketball program, assisting with scouting, recruiting and player development. Schmidt came to Dayton after nine seasons coaching in the SEC, The Big East, and the Big Ten.

Gregory is thrilled that Schmidt has been honored. "Billy Schmidt is truly one of the elite assistant coaches in the country. He has a great basketball mind. He knows the right way to run a program on and off the court and he represents our program very well. Billy's work ethic is second to none."

Gregory added, "Billy's going to do great things in this game for a long, long time."

Coaches were evaluated in the following areas: Recruiting, Player Development, Team Development / Scouting, Leadership and Administration. Other coaches named were Charlie Ernst, associate head coach at the University of Findlay; Chris Mack, head coach at Xavier University (who was nominated while he was associate head coach at Xavier); Leon Rice, associate head coach at Gonzaga University, and Dedrique Taylor, associate head coach at Arizona State University.

Dayton returns four starters and 10 of its top 11 scorers from last year's 27-8 team that reached the NCAA second round. The Flyer returnees include all four players who earned Atlantic 10 post season honors in 2008-09: Chris Wright, Marcus Johnson, London Warren and Chris Johnson. Wright, who was also First Team NABC All-District, led UD in scoring (13.3) and rebounding (6.6), and set a school single-season record for dunks (54).