Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Scott Nagy finally doesn’t have to squint quite so hard to see this year’s Wright State men’s basketball team resemble the program he’s built the past five seasons.
On Saturday, the Raiders outscored Tennessee Tech 25-8 over the final nine-plus minutes to earn a 72-63 victory at the Nutter Center. But it wasn’t the scoring that the Raiders were talking about after the game. The talk was about Nagy’s favorite thing: defense.
“Honestly it wasn’t even offense for us,” junior guard Trey Calvin said. “It was defense. We were playing team defense, staying in front of guys, helping guys. And on offense we were just moving the ball and taking good shots.”
The Raiders are an uncharacteristic 3-7. Tanner Holden had a good offensive game, making 7 of 9 shots and 8 of 8 free throws for 22 points, including 16 in the second half. Calvin had 17 points and Grant Basile had 14 and 12 rebounds. Nagy said his players were too focused on scoring averages until this week, but he gets why that’s usually what gets talked about.
“These kids get there kudos, their pats on the back from their friends and their family from how many points they scored,” he said. “But our program just has not been built on that.”
The defense began to turn around in Wednesday’s 66-48 loss to Akron. That effort didn’t carry over to start Saturday’s game, but in the second half, and especially the final nine minutes, Nagy liked what he saw against Tech (3-9).
