And yet, like anyone familiar with what’s sweeping across the campus these days, he knows the real controls for both turning up the heat in Millett and making it really cool to be a Miami RedHawk again, is being decided on the gleaming 94-by-50 feet basketball court just beyond his door and not that massive wellfield out front.
With its No. 21 men’s team now 28-0, the only unbeaten Division I team in the nation; and the women’s team which is 23-5, Miami University has the winningest one-two punch in college basketball next to UConn’s.
And its rise from mid-major shadows to national stage makes it the best story in college hoops right now.
“I think it was the Bowling Green announcer who said the atmosphere for a game here is like spending two hours at a rock concert,” Sayler said.
As the winning record has grown so too have the Millett crowds, which have set and then reset new attendance records.
Students, hard to entice to Millett during a decade and a half of losing prior to last season, are flooding to the arena and having a blast once inside.
No group has gotten into the act more than the guys on the RedHawks swim team, who commandeer prime seats behind the opposing team’s basket in the second half, and every so often they strip down to their red Speedos as they muscle pose, chant and cheer, all to rattle rival free throw shooters.
Meanwhile alums — including former hoops legends like Ron Harper, Wally Szczerbiak and Wayne Embry — all have returned, fully-dressed but stripped of past doubts about the program’s ability to recruit and compete like it once did.
On the road the RedHawks are like the carnival come to town.
Sayler recounted going to the Mid-American Conference athletic directors meeting last week in Cleveland:
“All of them thanked me for the crowds they’re getting, the exposure they’re getting, the money they’re making when we come to their gym.
“Although it’s different than when we play at home — they all want to be the team that gives us our first loss — the games still have a vibe to them.
“The schools are pulling out every promotion possible to get big crowds. Some places have given away free beer to students. Others have $1 tickets, some have free food. It’s been everything anyone can think of.”
And through it all, Sayler marveled, the players are unflappable.
“We’re built for this” is Coach Travis Steele’s go-to phrase.
Sayler became a believer when the 13-0 RedHawks played at 10-3 Bowling Green on December 30. It was the first MAC game after starting point guard Evan Ipsaro had suffered a torn ACL in the league opener at Ball State 10 days earlier.
A mismatch with Milligan, an NAIA school, had followed and then came Christmas break.
“Evan had been playing at an all-conference level and now he was out and you wondered what would happen,” Sayler said. “We got to Bowling Green, and it was High School Night, Boy Scouts Night, Girl Scouts Night. They did everything to fill the arena.
“And our guys came out and put up 54 points in the first half.
“It was 54-28 at the break and that’s when I knew: ‘We have something real special here.’”
Much of the credit goes to Steele, who took over a program four seasons ago that hadn’t had a winning record in 13 years. Last season his RedHawks finished 25-9 and lost the MAC title game — and its NCAA Tournament invite — on a last-second shot.
This year the RedHawks are the talk of college basketball, and he is a strong candidate for the Naismith College Coach of the Year,
The thing that makes buzz doubly sweet at Miami is that the women’s team – with head coach Glenn Box making similar magic happen – is having a record season as well. It is 23-5 and leads the MAC with a 14-1 record. With a victory Saturday at home against Akron, it will set a program record for wins in a season.
That makes Box the front runner for MAC Coach of the Year.
Both programs managed to keep core players on their rosters for this season. The women returned Amber Tretter, the leading scorer and rebounder and 6-foot-3 Ilse de Vries, the No. 2 rebounder and No. 3 scorer.
The men’s returnees included All-MAC first teamer Peter Suder and standouts Eion Elmer and Antwone Woolfolk. All had NIL offers from other schools before this season.
Their decisions to return highlight the belief Sayler is trying to make the bedrock of Miami athletics in these grab-the-money-and-move times in college basketball:
“Everything today feels very transactional, but where we can be really successful is if we make the experience transformational at Miami. You still need to have some financial part to it, but the experience here should transcend that.”
Credit: Scott Kissell
Credit: Scott Kissell
He said it should be about making each athlete better at his or her sport and giving them the ultimate campus experience, which is easier to do at Miami than many other schools.
As pie in the sky as that might sound to outsiders, it is working with many of Miami’s best athletes — from MAC homerun king Evan Applewick in baseball to Tamar Singer in women’s basketball and the aforementioned trio in men’s hoops.
After last season Suder told Steele he wasn’t going anywhere, that he loved Miami and didn’t need anything.
Elmer offered similar sentiment when he stood on the edge of the court after a game last month and told me:
“First off, the grass isn’t always greener. For all the guys who came back, probably the simplest thing to understand is that we love it here.
“Getting to play for Miami and with the coaches who are here and now that we’re having the success that we are, it’s a feeling money can’t get you.”
Earlier this month, Steele — who has been offered a contract extension through the 2033-34 season — talked about how the place is transformational for everybody:
“To me, the campus is the best campus in all of America. It really is. It’s like Disney World. There are no bad days.”
With thoughts like that keeping players and coaches in the fold, and crowds flocking to the aging Millett Hall, one thing has become clear Sayler said:
“We need to do something from a facility standpoint: The status quo isn’t OK. We need to massively renovate this building or start over.”
Sayler, who said he definitely leans to the build new camp, is part of the group that is meeting with the Board of Trustees today as it did Thursday to discuss the arena issue.
A group that explored 10 sites around Oxford settled on the open expanse of Cook Field which is closer to the center of campus at the intersection of highways 27 and 73.
With debate on the location of a new arena, Sayler said discussions also have arisen on the size of a new facility.
He believes a more intimate experience would come with an arena that seats in the 7000s and makes a ticket a treasured commodity:
“I want a very festive game day atmosphere that brings in the energy of a vibrant campus and has people sitting right on top of the court.”
‘We lost our edge a little bit’
When we spoke in his office the other afternoon, Sayler suddenly reached under his desk and came up with an old red and white Baden basketball which had a treasured autograph scrawled on one side:
“Ron Harper.”
He got that when he was a young high school basketball player at Miami Valley School in Dayton and came to Miami’s camp where he met the program’s all-time scorer and rebounder who’d become a five-time NBA champion.
Sayler’s father — an attorney who joined a Dayton firm whose prime client was the Mead family — moved his own family from Connecticut before David’s sophomore year of high school.
“We had season tickets to the Flyers games,” he said. “And I first remember seeing Ron Harper at UD Arena when Miami played there in the NCAA Tournament. He was amazing.”
A three-sport athlete himself, Sayler went to Division III Ohio Wesleyan so he could play college basketball, though that never materialized.
After graduation, he was working at Bowling Green when he met his wife who grew up there. Eight months after they married, they moved to Oregon State University and he began to climb the college athletic administration ladder.
He went on to Rice University where he was the senior executive athletic director – No. 2 in command – and then became the athletics director at South Dakota which was transitioning to a Division I program and building a new arena for which he would need to raise funds.
He handled both tasks well and that caught the eye of Joel Maturi, the former athletics director at Miami, who recommended him for the job in Oxford.
He took over as AD 13 years ago.
The department experienced steady success with most sports under his leadership and was on a record roll in the 2018-2019 school year with nine teams winning MAC championships and eight coaches named conference coaches of the year.
The following season COVID hit, and everything changed, Sayler said.
He admitted through an abundance of caution about health and safety: “We lost our edge a little bit.”
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
After the pandemic, he said many athletes sought coaches who were cognizant of their feelings and valued their feedback.
“I felt you needed coaches who were adaptable and able to change if necessary,” Sayler said. “I believed you needed more of a CEO type coach.”
When he was coaching at Xavier, Steele would come to Millett when his brother, John Groce, brought his Akron team in to play the RedHawks.
After four winning seasons, Steele was let go by Xavier, while at Miami, Jack Owens was out after five seasons and a 70-86 record.
Sayler set his sights on Steele, who — like Box with the women — now has more than lived up to what he promised the program would become.
New arena dreams
When the Dayton Flyers made it to the national title game of the 1967 NCAA Tournament, Coach Don Donoher said athletics director Tom Frericks came to him in his hotel room and told him:
“You and the team just built us our new basketball arena.”
The success of Flyers’ hoops that year had the Dayton area spellbound and with that it became clear a new facility was needed to replace the cramped confines of the old Fieldhouse on campus.
And within two years, UD Arena was built and open.
Now some of that same scenario is playing out at Miami.
Renovating Millett would be costly and the team would need to find somewhere else to play in the interim.
While there is a group that wants to keep Cook Field as the green space that it is, there is a valid argument that it’s the prime location for a new arena and all the opportunities it would open for the campus and the town.
Sayler said a new hotel with a restaurant, conference center and adjoining retail shops would emerge there as well.
He said while buildings can’t sit atop the geothermal site at Millett, turf is ready to be laid there and make it the perfect site for the intramural fields moved from Cook.
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
While the new direction for Miami basketball could be decided this week at the trustees’ meetings — with hopes of a new arena opening in the fall of 2028, Sayler said — the new reality already is in place as the regular season winds down with three remaining games.
And with three victories in the MAC Tournament, Miami — regardless of record — would be in the NCAA Tournament.
Miami hasn’t played in the tournament in 20 years. However it makes the field — automatic bid or unrivaled record — one more unexpected thing could happen, Sayler said with a grin:
“I’ve heard talk that on Selection Sunday Travis Steele might be the one in a Speedo!”
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