Amaël L’Etang — the 7-foot-1 freshman center from France who is the tallest player ever to wear a UD uniform — steps onto the court first.
Next is 5-foot-10 guard Javon Bennett, who Tuesday night against Davidson, as is the case most games, was the smallest player on the court.
As the two Flyers stood there — Bennett barely coming up to L’Etang’s chest — it was an eye-catching sight.
Sort of like seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito together in the movie “Twins,” except L’Etang doesn’t t have muscles on top of muscles and his accent is French, not Austrian. And Bennett doesn’t have that balding, frizz-haired countenance or that wise-guy smirk.
I don’t know if the Flyers positioning of players is just happenstance or done on purpose, but if you didn’t know any better, you easily could get a wrong impression from that image.
On the basketball court, Bennett is not about anything that is less or limited. He’s not someone who comes up short.
And yet his whole life he’s continually had to prove that to others.
He’s talked about that to me a few times since he arrived here two years ago after playing his first college season at Merrimack.
He touched on the topic again Monday night when he was a guest on Larry’s Hansgen’s Flyer Insider show on WHIO radio.
Hansgen asked him about all the times in his life he’d been doubted and told: “You can’t!”
“That’s kind of the way it is with basketball,” he said. “If you don’t pass the look test, people aren’t going to believe in you.
“Obviously I’m not the tallest guy. I’m not the strongest guy. But at the end of the day that’s what fuels me — to prove the people wrong who said, ‘He can’t play D-I basketball; he can’t compete on that high of a level.’
“That’s where I get my determination and heart from — to play against those type guys and showcase I can play against them.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
Bennett has shown that several times in his two seasons as a Flyer, a span that includes 50 starts in his 54 games here.
Earlier this season he scored a team-best 23 points in a victory over No. 2 UConn. A month later he led the Flyers comeback from 13 down to Marquette, a team who came into UD Arena with a No. 6 ranking and a Big East swagger.
Bennett finished with 15 points and three steals and Marquette went home with a 71-63 loss.
Last Friday night he led the UD with 19 points, including 4-for-8 shooting from beyond the arc, in a crucial win at Saint Louis.
Clutch player
He did it again on Tuesday night and this time in dramatic and quite unexpected fashion.
Davidson, which had trailed almost the entire game and was down by 10 early in the second half, made a late-game surge and pushed past the Flyers 61-59 with a layup with just 51 seconds.
The UD crowd was stunned.
A time out was called and as the jubilant Wildcats players returned to their huddle, redshirt sophomore Hunter Adam from New Zealand said something to UD’s Nate Santos as he passed a few feet away.
Santos turned back to see if the ref had heard.
He had and he promptly went to the replay monitor at courtside to review the incident.
The officials concluded a technical foul was in order for taunting.
Adam came out on the court and apologized to the official who patted him on the back, but then made sure he went back to the other side of the court.
The damage was done.
Bennett stepped to the free throw line and with both teams and 13,407 people — most of them standing —all watching him, he promptly made both foul shots.
During the timeout, UD coach Anthony Grant had drawn up an inbounds play from the sideline. Then, as Enoch Cheeks headed over to pass the ball in, the four other Flyers lined up in totem pole fashion: L’Etang out front, then Santos, Posh Alexander behind him and Bennet at the tail end.
The Davidson defenders tried to muscle up close to them and as the jostling increased, referee Brian O’Connell stepped in to arbitrate.
Bennett said he told them had to alternate real estate between the red jersey players (Davidson) and the white (UD.)
As the ref left, the Wildcats’ 6-foot-5 Connor Kochera again pushed in hard on the smaller Bennett.
When Cheeks was handed the ball, the play went into motion. Bennet broke out from the pack like those hellbent women in old-time roller derby used to do.
Cochera tried to follow, but Alexander slid out and provided a screen to give Bennett a step.
When he started to loop past Santos and L’Etang, Cochera grabbed his arm but he shook free and headed to the hoop.
Cheeks dropped a perfect pass in ahead of him — a Burrow-to-Chase like connection — and Bennett grabbed the ball and finished the layup, just as the trailing Cochera fouled him.
Once again, Bennett stepped up and made the free throw.
He had scored five points in just two seconds.
And suddenly UD had a 64-61 lead that it would not relinquish.
The Flyers won 69-63 and after the game, Davidson’s coach, Matt McKillop, said on the team’s postgame radio show: “I’m absolutely freaking devastated. This is a really tough loss.”
Bennett, Santos and L’Etang shared top scoring honors with 13 points each.
Afterward, in private, Bennett admitted he felt bad for Adam: “You never want to lose a game that way. He probably feels terrible, sitting in the locker room, knowing that he did that.”
At game’s end, Bennett — unlike Adam — kept his composure and focus.
Like he said, he’s always trying to prove himself.
Credit: David Jablonski
‘Heck of a teammate’
Coming out of high school — after scoring 2,147 points at Trinity Prep Academy in Orlando — he said he had just four low-level Division I offers. Many schools thought he was too small to compete at their level.
He went to Merrimack, which had just moved up to Division I, and he ended up leading the nation in steals (99) and was named the Northeast Conference Rookie of the Year.
He was able to transfer to UD thanks, in part, to a long relationship with Flyers associate head coach Ricardo Greer whom he has known since fifth grade.
When Greer lived in Florida, his son RJ had Bennett’s dad, Corey, as an AAU coach.
Once he got to UD, he promptly was forced to move from shooting guard to point guard when Malachi Smith was lost for the season after an injury seven minutes into the first game of the year.
He helped lead the team to the NCAA Tournament and won the Thomas M. Luppe Memorial Award as UD’s top newcomer.
This season he’s back at shooting guard and his marksmanship is better.
He made 27.9 percent of his three-point attempts (46 of 165) as a freshman, but going into Friday night’s game against always-physical rival VCU at UD Arena, he’s making 39.8 percent from beyond the arc (43 of 108.)
His field goal shooting and rebounding are also the best of his career, as is his scoring (10.2 ppg.)
After Tuesday’s game, when asked about the one thing he appreciates about Bennett, Grant said:
“He’s a heck of a competitor and a heck of a teammate. He works at it. It’s important to him.”
No one worked harder or was more competitive in that final minute Tuesday than Bennett.
And that put that pregame image into proper focus.
After this game, no one stood taller than Javon Bennett.
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