Making its third road trip to the Carolinas this season, Wright State pulled off another impressive road win defeating Western Carolina 69-56 Thursday evening.
Wright State has won four in a row and has improved to 4-2 on the road. The Raiders won all three of their roads games in the Carolinas.
JT Yoho led the squad with 19 points and 12 rebounds. The contest marked his third career double-double after picking up a double-double Sunday versus Miami. Joe Thomasson had 14 points and Reggie Arceneaux added 15 The Raiders did most of their damage from beyond the arc shooting 8-for-16.
Chrishawn Hopkins added eight points and seven boards after struggling to recover from a knee injury suffered a few weeks ago.
“Reggie and Hop really responded and we needed them to,” Wright State head coach Billy Donlon said. “I am definitely proud of Reggie and Chrishawn and I told Chrishawn in the locker room, ‘I haven’t seen you in a while, I am glad you’re back.’”
Wright State struggled early on and as a response, Donlon pulled four of his five starters just 1:22 into the game. His motivation worked as the team went took a 31-24 lead into halftime powered by Thomasson and Yoho 3s at the end of the half.
Western Carolina lost the lead with 12:36 left in the first half and never regained the lead. WSU slowly pulled away from Western Carolina taking its biggest lead of the half just seconds before halftime on Yoho’s 3.
“To be honest, when we hockey subbed a minute into the game, I thought our guys weren’t here,” Donlon said.
Chasing an 11-point deficit in the second half, Western Carolina chiseled away at WSU’s lead. After WSU scored the first four points of the second half, the Catamounts went on a 9-0 run to cut WSU’s lead to two. WCU kept chipping away at WSU’s lead, eventually tying the Raiders at 49-49 with 6:23 left. From that point, WSU went on a 19-4 run.
Arceneaux played a key role during the run with a pair of 3s. He had come into Thursday’s struggling from beyond the arc shooting 5-of-23 on 3s in the previous six games. After shooting 0-for-2 from the perimeter in the first half, he made all three of his 3-point attempts in the second.
Wright State did a good job of shutting down Western Carolina’s perimeter as the Catamounts made 3-of-15 3-pointers.
“I thought that was really important,” Donlon said about preventing WCU from shooting the 3. “We did a great job of stopping their 3 and just making their post shots deep enough and contested enough."
Donlon plans to stay in North Carolina an extra day to do some recruiting. The team will spend the upcoming weekend getting prepared for the final home game of 2014 versus George Mason Tuesday in the Nutter Center.
