Hal McCoy is a former beat writer for the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio), covering the Cincinnati Reds baseball team. He was honored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002 as the winner of the J. G. Taylor Spink Award, which is awarded annually "for meritorious contributions to baseball writing." He has won 52 Ohio and national writing awards and was the first non-Cincinnati newsperson elected to the Cincinnati Journalists Hall of Fame. He also was inducted into the National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame and the Irish-American Baseball Hall of Fame. He has a stone on Dayton's Walk of Fame and the press box at Dayton's Howell Field is named the Hal McCoy Press Box. McCoy has been the Cincinnati BBWAA Chapter Chair 22 times and was the BBWAA national president in 1997. He is the third writer from the Dayton Daily News to win the J. G. Taylor Spink Award, joining Si Burick (1982) and Ritter Collett (1991). Residing in Englewood, Ohio, McCoy is an honors graduate in journalism from Kent State University.
For the second straight game, when DaRon Holmes II saw his team staggering, he took command. After scoring only four points in the first half as his Dayton Flyers fell behind by two points at halftime, Holmes scored 25 in the second half to scorch Saint Louis, 70-65, UD's 11th straight win that lifted its record to 14-2 with a perfect 4-0 in the Atlantic 10.
The UD Flyers were strangely underdogs for a game Friday night at Duquesne, but whomever decided that didn't take into consideration what DaRon Holmes II can do and he showed it with 33 points and scored 13 of 15 points during a late-game spree that pushed the Flyers from a 4-point lead to a 14-point lead for a 72-62 win.
In an emotional-packed day, childhood friends Anthony Grant and Frank Martin did battle on the UD Arena floor and Grant led the Flyers from a big first-half lead to holding off Frank Martin's UMass team. The Flyers won their ninth straight, improved to 12-2 (2-0 in the Atlantic 10), then Martin was in tears after the game talking about his relationship with Grant.
It was expected that the University of Dayton Flyers would have their hands full in their Atlantic 10 Conference opener at Davidson, a team that had won seven in a row and was 7-and-0 at home in Belk Arena. But the Flyers didn't have their hands full, they won hands-down over the Wildcats, 72-59, whipping Davidson in every facet of the game of basketball.
