INDIANAPOLIS – Despite Tay’ler Mingo scoring her career high 34 points Friday, poor shooting doomed the Wright State as the Raiders shot 22.7 percent from the field in a 57-49 loss at Butler.
After a 4-0 start, the Raiders have lost two in a row. Friday was Butler’s first win of the year versus a Division I opponent.
Bradbury said the plan was not to rely on Mingo as much. Combined with her 32-point effort Wednesday, Mingo has averaged 33 points a game this week.
“You play the way you prepare to play and that is exactly what we did today,” Wright State head coach Mike Bradbury said. “I don’t think we did anything correctly to win the game. I thought we were poorly coached, we were unprepared and we got exactly what we deserved.”
Minus Mingo’s 10-of-23 performance from the field, WSU shot 5-for-43 (11 percent) from the field against Butler.
“Today just wasn’t our day, we shot 22 percent, that is kind of hard to win a basketball game that way,” Mingo said. “We didn’t come ready to play so we were fighting the entire time. We fought back but it wasn’t enough.”
Despite the loss, WSU outrebounded Butler 43-41 and forced 17 turnovers compared to 12 for Butler. WSU's Tayler Stanton led the Raiders with 11 rebounds.
The Raiders had their worst first half in nearly a year as WSU shot below 20 percent and only put 22 points on the board. Butler always led and extended a 10-9 run with a 9-0 run to do up double digits midway through the first. WSU trailed by nine at halftime with Mingo contributing 13 of the Raiders’ first-half points.
The Raiders bounced back in the second half with a 10-3 run to start the half with Mingo scoring eight of the Raiders’ first 10 points in the second.
The Raiders stayed within a possession or two for much of the second half. Mingo made up layup with 5:38 remaining to cut the Bulldogs’ lead to two. Blaire Langlois made a few baskets in a row for Butler to put its lead out of reach.
Wright State has nine days to think about its loss as the Raiders return home Dec. 14 to host Lamar.
“We are going to go back and prepare for Wright State because our biggest problem is Wright State,” Bradbury said. “It is not our opponent.”
