It was great to be back in the Nutter Center Saturday afternoon. When I arrived around 3 p.m. yesterday, the Wright State men's basketball team was packing up from its secret scrimmage in McLin Gyn as the ladies from the women's basketball team took the main floor to pregame warmups. The smell of roundball was distinctly in the air and it was a good odor.
While few details came out of yesterday's men's basketball scrimmage against Toledo, the defensive struggles of the WSU women's team took center stage before a crowd (albeit small) in the Nutter Center. And WSU head coach Mike Bradbury was not happy about what he saw defensively. We'll have more of his thoughts in Wednesday's print edition in addition to Greg Felder's recap that we posted yesterday.
The one thing that stood out to me was WSU was not dominant with its regular starting rotation in the lineup. WSU started the contest with its five healthy seniors, which Bradbury said would be at the top of his rotation.
Wright State employed a half-court trap defense that Ashland exposed. The thing to remember is that when a team doubles someone on offensive, there is bound to be someone left open. Ashland did a good job of finding the open player offensively. I am not going to discredit Ashland's offense. But compared to what Wright State will see versus the likes of Green Bay, Cleveland State and Youngstown State, there will be a need to clean things up defensively.
Center Richelle van der Keijl was supposed to play between 15-20 minutes but only ended up with 11 in her first collegiate game. She fouled out in Saturday's game. She has a ways to go with her footwork. Something that probably shouldn't be too unexpected coming off an Achilles injury.
As for the positives, I thought WSU's freshmen played well. Kendyl Hinton recovered from a rough first half to play well offensively in the second half distributing the ball to her teammates. She scored 12 points and had three assists. Ciara Patterson led all of the newcomers with 13 points but missed a number of wide-open looks.
WSU got off to a slow start rebounding but had a strong second half on the boards. WSU outrebounded Ashland 29-18 in the second half after the Eagles outrebounded the Raiders in the first half.
The Raiders will play in a secret scrimmage of their own this coming week before starting the season at Austin Peay.
