Wright State center Michael Karena was graded with an A for his offensive performance by his head coach Billy Donlon after scoring a career-high 18 points in WSU’s 55-50 loss Wednesday night.
“I thought he was phenomenal offensively,” Donlon said.
His defensive performance was another story.
When asked about his defenseive play, Donlon said, “I’ll stick with the positives.”
Karena guarded CSU’s Anton Grady who scored a team-high 16 points in helping the Vikings to a win.
Karena had a slow start to the contest after taking an elbow midway through the first half. After spending a few minutes on the bench being looked at by trainers, he re-entered. The officials looked at the video monitor to see if he was flagrantly fouled.
“Incidental contact is what they said when they looked at it,” Donlon said. “He was pretty bloodied.”
Karena scored 12 of his 18 points in the second half. Once he started to catch fire, Cleveland State coach Gary Waters came up with a new strategy in guarding Karena.
“We knew the big fella struggled at the line,” Waters said. “At one point with five minutes to go, we said, ‘No more layups. If he beats us, make him beat us at the free throw line.’ And it worked.”
Karena missed his final four free throws allowing Cleveland State to rally late in the contest.
Arceneaux and Co. shuts down Lee
Last time Charlie Lee stepped foot on the Nutter Center, he scored 25 leading his squad to a win over Wright State. Tonight, Lee was held without a field goal in Cleveland State’s win.
Lee’s only point came off of a free throw in the closing seconds of the contest. Lee only attempted four shots, all from beyond the 3-point line, and missed all four. He played the entire contest.
Reggie Arceneaux guarded Lee for almost the entire game.
“I think those two guys really enjoy playing against each other,” Donlon said. “They played against each other a lot over their four-year career. Credit Charlie, he didn’t force anything. He had six assists and one turnover; that is a big number."
“I am always worried he will go on a five-minute spurt and just dominate a game, but I thought Reggie did a good job and we did a good job of trying to eliminate that.”
Impact on the Horizon League standings
Coming into Wednesday’s contest, both squads entered with a loss against a team near the top of the standings. Wright State lost nine days prior at Green Bay while Cleveland State came into the game with a loss at Valpo Saturday evening.
In a league that rewards top teams with byes in the postseason tournament, each win could be important at the end of the season.
“It is really big for us because we knew, in my estimation, this is the part of the season we have to take control of because we had three road games in a row,” Waters said. “If we would lose two or three of them, that gives Green Bay a big notch ahead. That is why we felt bad at Valpo because we had a chance to win that game.”
Wright State’s next game is Saturday against Valpo who has had the entire week off to prepare for the Raiders after the Crusaders’ win over the Vikings last week.
Women’s team pulls out a win
As the men’s team had its hands full in the Nutter Center, Wright State’s women’s team traveled to Milwaukee and defeated the Panthers 80-58 Wednesday evening. WSU guard Tay’ler Mingo led the Raiders with 25 points.
Backup guard Abby Jump scored 15 points off three made 3 pointers. The Raiders improve to 2-1 in conference play.
