Grant, players like versatility of Dayton’s 2025-26 roster

There are also no opportunities at this time of the year for college basketball programs to add to their souvenir collection, though any chance Dayton has in the 2025-26 season will depend on what the coaches did this spring in recruiting and what they are still doing as the start of the summer practice season nears.

Dayton added five transfers in April and May. Guards Jordan Derkack (Rutgers), De’Shayne Montgomery (Georgia), Adam Njie (Iona) and Bryce Heard (North Carolina State) have all arrived on campus in recent days. Forward Malcolm Thomas (Villanova) is scheduled to arrive Friday.

The two freshmen Dayton signed in November, Damon Friery and Jaron McKie, have also reported to campus.

Dayton could still add one or two more players to the 11 scholarship players on the roster, Grant said Thursday at UD’s Cronin Center in his first offseason interview. Everyone will soon start practicing together, except returning forward Amaël L’Etang, who is in France playing for the country’s U-20 team.

“We haven’t done anything yet on the court,” Grant said, “but we feel it’s a group that has a versatile skill set in terms of what they bring offensively and then the ability physically to help us on the defensive end. If you look back, just having a chance to go through last season, we struggled on the defensive side of the ball. I thought that hurt us at times, prevented us from maybe accomplishing some of the things that we wanted to accomplish. So you try to address some of those things as best you can. Once we get this group together, I think we’ll figure out how we can be the best version of ourselves.”

The players did play one game of 5-on-5 on Monday, said guard Javon Bennett, who will be a senior next season and the player on the roster with the most appearances in a Dayton uniform.

Bennett and Njie, a 6-foot-3 point guard, picked the teams.

“We’re very versatile,” Bennett said. “On the offensive side, we’ve got a lot of guys that can score the ball in different ways. That could be a beneficial thing for us. Defensively, I feel we’ve got guys that can guard multiple positions.”

Derkack, a 6-5 guard who played two seasons at Merrimack and then one season at Rutgers, said those first pickup games with new teammates are always interesting and a little awkward.

“The first couple of plays, no one knows whether to shoot or pass,” Derkack said, “but we’ve got a good group. Like Javon said, offensively, we’re going to be talented. We have the length. We have the size. We’re going to be alright defensively if we have the buy-in. And I think that coach Grant and his staff, over the last bunch of years, they’ve done a great job of that. I don’t think that’s going to stop. He’s going to instill that, even though it’s a different landscape today, with a bunch of new guys, I’m pretty confident in his ability to coach.”