How did Wright State respond to its worst loss in over 25 years? With a dominating effort in the trenches as the Raiders beat Detroit 70-57 Friday evening to start Horizon League play 1-0.
Wright State, coming off a 100-55 loss at Ohio State last Saturday, took it to Detroit down low outscoring the Titans 38-18 in the paint. Friday’s league opener was a far cry from the contest the Raiders played in Columbus on Dec. 27.
The loss to Ohio State was a wake-up call for the Raiders.
“I hope no other coach at Wright State will get beat by 45,” Wright State head coach Billy Donlon said. “We were just completely embarrassed on national TV with our president, our vice president, our athletic director sitting right behind the bench along with our great fans. When you get embarrassed, you just move on from it.
“It doesn’t define you and I thought our guys and our coaching staff did a good job of that and increasing the intensity to practice because you’re entering a league game.”
Wright State (9-6, 1-0) snapped a two-game losing streak with the victory. Meanwhile, Detroit (6-9, 0-1) continues its six-game skid.
Winning the battle of the paint was not easy as the Raiders are missing forward Steven Davis. Davis’ injury left WSU with three healthy forwards for Friday’s contest. Starting forwards JT Yoho and Michael Karena combined for 14-of-22 shooting. Yoho led the Raiders with 18 points; Karena had 14.
“It is one of the first times in nine years that we have had bigger size at the center than they have,” Donlon said. “I think the one thing with the way they play, with their pressure, is you have to make plays from the middle of the floor. So our emphasis was the middle of the floor. So if they’re going to deny wings, there is no help from post ups on the middle of the floor.”
Wright State kept the Horizon League’s leading scorer Juwan Howard Jr. outside of the arc as he scored 12 of his 15 points from behind the 3-point line. Howard was just 1-of-7 from 2-point field goal attempts.
“He’s a good player, coach (Donlon) preached to us all week about him and that their team goes as he goes,” WSU guard Joe Thomasson said after guarding Howard for much of Friday’s contest. “He ended up with 15 but we made him work for those 15 so we can live with that.”
The Raiders got off to a slow start as the Titans took a 13-4 lead after Howard Jr. hit back-to-back 3s. Donlon called a timeout, which put an end to the bleeding. The Raiders responded by chipping away at Detroit’s lead and eventually took the lead by the end of the first half.
“They were going to go on a run at sometime, we just had to weather the storm,” Yoho said.
Yoho left shortly before halftime in a violent collision under the WSU basket. He came back in the second half to score 13 points.
WSU had the lead at halftime, 26-24, but Detroit started the second half on a 6-0 run to take a 30-26 advantage minutes into the half.
After Howard hit a 3 with 16:13 left in the game to give Detroit a 35-34 lead, the Raiders went on a 9-0 run to go ahead by eight. Howard would hit another 3 minutes later to cut WSU’s lead to 46-40 with 11:25 left. After that, WSU went on another 9-0 run to go up 55-40.
“After we went on that big run, I told the guys we can’t let what happened against Miami happen here where we got up 15 or 16 in the second half and they got within two or three,” Yoho said.
The Titans had another run left in them as an 8-0 run cut the WSU lead to 55-48 with 7:46 left. But WSU found a way to keep the lead around 10 for the rest of the contest holding Howard to just a free throw in the final minutes of the game.
The 13-point margin of victory was the largest win for WSU over UDM since Feb. 17, 2010.
The Raiders are back on the road Monday for a battle against the defending Horizon League regular season champs Green Bay.
