City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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New Delaware head coach Martin Ingelsby didn’t waste any time getting to work.

The same night the former Notre Dame assistant was formerly introduced at a press conference, he landed his first recruit.

All it took was a single phone call, to Archbishop Carroll senior Ryan Daly. And when Ingelsby offered a scholarship at the end of their talk, it didn’t talk the 2016 Catholic League MVP long to say yes.

“Since like freshman year if you asked me if there was a school I wanted to go to in the area that I could maybe, hopefully, one day be that good, Delaware would be no doubt my first one,” Daly said. “It’s always been my dream school, so when they offered, it was like I had to do it.”

So after making calls to several other schools that had been involved since his March decommitment from Hartford, Daly called Ingelsby back and accepted the offer.

It was a quick recruitment to say the least, but Daly didn’t need to go far to get feedback on his potential coach-to-be. Ingelsby is an Archbishop Carroll product himself, winning the Catholic League MVP in 1997 before heading off to a four-year career at Notre Dame. The Berwyn, Pa. native already had strong relationships with Daly’s father, former Bonner star/Penn State assistant Brian Daly; his high school coach, Paul Romanczuk, who was teammates with Ingelsby at Carroll; and his AAU coach, Tony Sagona of the Jersey Shore Warriors.

“My parents had talked with coach Tony yesterday and said (Ingelsby) had interested me, and said ‘what do you think’ and I said ‘yeah I’d definitely want to go there,’ I’ve been there multiple times, I’ve seen campus enough, I’ve been in the arena, I’ve watched games there,” Daly said. “Everyone was just saying he’s a great guy, and when I talked to him I could just tell that he had a great vision for Delaware and he’s going to rebuild this place back up to a hopeful powerhouse.”

A 6-foot-4, 200-pound guard, Daly finished his Carroll career with 992 points in three seasons after transferring in from State College (Pa.) for his sophomore year. Known initially as a strong 3-point shooter, he proved by his senior career that he was one of the more versatile guards around, with the court IQ befitting the son of a former Catholic League and Division I coach; his 21.7 ppg average as a senior led the PCL.

Yet despite the resume, the last two months had been something of a limbo for Daly after he made public his decision to re-open his recruitment. After playing well in the first live period of April with the Warriors, picking up scholarships from Mt. St. Mary’s and UMBC, among others, an ill-timed illness cost him the second weekend and the potential for more schools to catch on.

Before the Delaware opportunity offered itself, his options were those two schools or a prep year, which he hadn’t yet ruled out.

“When you decommit, it’s risky, especially if you do it after your season--that means nobody got to see you during your season, so there’s two weekends in April, you have to believe in yourself, basically,” he said. “Because you’re essentially jumping off a cliff with no offers, nothing.

“It’s stressful, definitely put me through a lot of patience, but at the end it turned out perfectly, I couldn’t imagine a better scenario.”

Daly is actually the third roster “addition” Ingelsby has made since taking over a roster that had four scholarship players earlier this week. Forwards Eric Carter and Skye Johnson, who had earlier this spring received releases after the firing of Monté Ross following a 7-23 season, both have decided to come back to the program, giving the Blue Hens seven scholarship players at the moment.

As of right now, Daly is one of just three projected guards on the roster, along with senior point guard Anthony Mosley and redshirt sophomore Darian Bryant, who sat out last year after transferring in from George Washington.

Expect Ingelsby to add as many more capable bodies as he can over the next few months to fill out the roster, but it’s going to be a long road back to the top of the CAA, a place the Blue Hens were in as recently as 2015. Daly said he was “excited” to get to campus and start that journey.

“I’m his first recruit so that’s always good, really nice to be his first recruit because he told me that he wanted to offer me his first scholarship and I wanted to be the first guy to play for him to try to change the culture, to try to make it a winning tradition,” he continued. “I know they have had a crazy offseason but I have complete faith that Coach Ingelsby is going to turn it around.”