It’s been six years and seven days, 2,199 days in total to be exact, since Wright State stunned the Butler Bulldogs at the Nutter Center sending them to the NCAA Tournament.
WSU hopes that streak ends tonight in Valparaiso.
Tonight at 9:00 the Wright State men’s basketball team takes on the Valparaiso Crusaders in the Horizon League championship game with the winner clinching an automatic birth to the NCAA Tournament.
Both teams are coming off of last second shots catapulting each team into the finals on both waves of confidence and emotion. But both teams know the job is still 40 minutes away from being completed.
WSU earned their spot in the title game winning on back to back nights against Youngstown State (66-59) and then Detroit (56-54) thanks to junior Miles Dixon’s fade away baseline jumper which will go down as one of the biggest shots in WSU history if the Raiders pull out another win tonight.
Valpo only needed to win one game to get to the finals as the top seed in the tournament and looked like they were headed for an early exit down two with just seconds remaining until senior Ryan Broekhoff hit a three-pointer falling away as the buzzer sounded sending the Athletics-Recreation Center into a frenzy.
The Raiders can credit a total team effort for their success so far as the Raiders have no one real star on this team. The only Raider honored with a season ending award was junior Cole Darling who was named to the all Horizon League second team. Darling is out for the year with an injury.
Defense has led the Raiders all year who are first in the conference in scoring defense and 18th nationally. Wright State head coach Billy Donlon says his team’s defense will help instill confidence in what is expected to be a tightly contested game this evening.
“We’ve been in a lot of close games and so by that point in the game you settle down and you’re just trying to execute. And the one thing when you’re built on defense - you’ve got great belief you can stop the other team from scoring and we’ll need that tomorrow because Valpo is as good as there is,” Donlon said Monday during practice.
Donlon was an associate head coach for Wright State those 2,199 days ago when WSU captured their last Horizon League title and while he said he’s not sure if that experience will help him or not his young team filled with no seniors have never played in a championship game before and will have 40 minutes tonight to prove they’re champions.
Tonight’s game can be seen live on ESPN tonight at 9:00. You can listen to the WSU radio broadcast at www.myclassiccountry.com (100.3 FM) and follow our live tweets of the game at @Guardian_Sports.
