After sinking two game-clinching free throws, Darren Rubin ’25 lingered at the foul line for a split second to savor what his team had accomplished.
Ten seconds remained. The Big Red led host Ohio Wesleyan University by five points on Feb. 22, 2025, inside Branch Rickey Arena.
Rubin heard the cheers from the jubilant away section where his parents, Daniel and Maria, stood. He saw the elated faces of Denison teammates and coaches as he ran back down the court — a celebration 57 years in the making about to erupt like a cork from a champagne bottle.
Darren Rubin was a co-leader in team scoring with a 12.9 point average. He also led the Big Red with 50 assists. (Photo/James Schuller)
Denison had just won its first NCAC men’s basketball regular-season title and the first regular-season conference championship since 1968, when it shared the Ohio Athletic Conference crown.
“It was the culmination of so much work we put in to make this a reality,” Rubin said. “This clicked off a big box for us.”
It also added another level of validation to Rubin’s decision to return for one more season. Instead of trying to play through pain in the 2023-24 campaign, he underwent knee surgery and promised the coach he’d come back for a fifth year rather than graduate in the spring of 2024.
“Knowing what we had, and the potential of what we could be drew me back,” Rubin said.
The Big Red, led by eight seniors, set a regular-season school record with 22 wins. Their 12-game win streak from Dec. 7, 2024, to Jan. 29, 2025, eclipsed the previous mark of 11 games set during the 1913-14 season.
As the final horn sounded on a 67-62 win over OWU, players hugged each other and their parents. They posed for pictures with a blue NCAC championship banner and blasted music in the visitor’s locker room and on the bus ride back to Granville, Ohio.
Coach Chris Sullivan led the Big Red to a school record 22 regular-season wins. (Photo/Zoie Fisher)
“The two things that come to my mind are just being really proud and really grateful that these guys stuck together and stuck with the process and stuck to their vision and their goals,” coach Chris Sullivan said. “They continually put in the work to get there.”
How the Big Red would “get there” is a story that began several years ago.
Core values
Sullivan arrived at Denison as an assistant coach in 2011, after an All-American career at Wittenberg University, where teams expect to compete for titles every season. Denison had not won an outright conference regular-season championship since the months before Allied forces stormed beaches in Normandy, France, in 1944.
When Sullivan became head coach in 2020, he spoke to his players about elevating the Big Red standard. By then, Denison had captured an NCAC tournament title in 2016, but he wanted his group to win consistently.
In 2022, he asked players to establish four core values. They chose authenticity, love, competitiveness, and legacy. The word legacy has become almost trite in the era of ESPN sports talk shows, where pundits use it ad nauseam.
But for a Denison program eager to establish itself among the NCAC elite, it was on point.
“It became our goal to leave the jersey in a better place than we found it,” Rubin said.
A big key to the team’s success was contributions throughout the roster. Coach Chris Sullivan employed a 10-man rotation. (Photo/Abby Cooch)
The Big Red went 5-5 in Sullivan’s first year, one limited to due Covid restrictions. They won 13 games the following season and 15 games in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons.
Last year’s team overachieved, given the rash of injuries and illness that plagued it. Sullivan started nine different players and was without his all-conference point guard, Rubin, for the entire season.
“We all had the same mindset coming into this season,” forward Tyler Miller ’25 said. “We knew we had the talent. Last season, we dealt with a lot of adversity, and this year we saw the path, and we executed our plan. We put the pieces together.”
Trip of a lifetime
The 2024-25 season began with a trans-Atlantic bonding experience in August. Players’ families raised money to send the Big Red on a 10-day trip to Italy, where the team played and won three exhibition games. They toured Milan, Rome, Florence, and Venice.
“Spending 10 days across the world with your best friends — you can’t beat that,” Miller said.
Beyond their commitment to each other, the Big Red committed to playing defense at a championship level. Opponents averaged just 63.6 points per game — second best in the NCAC — a year after yielding 71.7 points.
It was fitting that Denison forced a turnover in the final 15 seconds of the game at OWU, while clinging to a three-point lead.
“By every statistical measure, this is the best defensive team we’ve ever had,” Sullivan said.
The regular-season title was so gratifying because many players had a hand in winning it.
Kellon Smith was fourth on the team in scoring (9.8 points) and third in assists (43). (Photo/Abby Cooch)
Sullivan relied on a 10-man rotation with nine players averaging 15-plus minutes a game. The Big Red’s top three scorers, Rubin (12.8), Trevor Reed ’27 (12.8), and Ricky Radtke ’25 (12.7) were separated by one-tenth of a point.
In the clinching game, forward Aidan King ’26, who averaged 5.5 points, scored a season-high 16 points. The Big Red finished the regular season with a 22-3 record overall and 14-2 in the conference.
“We were able to deal with adversity this season because of our depth, experience, and balance,” Sullivan said.
Two years after his group chose legacy as one of its core values, Sullivan was asked about the wisdom of that decision.
“They identified legacy because they wanted to be the team that rose above the previous standards,” he said. “They have done that.”
Speaking of legacies, Rubin’s sister, Emma ’27, is a Denison sophomore. And Rubin expects the next player to wear his No. 4 jersey to uphold the lofty standards established by his teammates.
“My brother, Luke, will be a first-year on next year’s team,” Rubin said. “He will get my jersey.”