After Wright State honored its five seniors Saturday afternoon, the Raiders put on one final offensive spectacle in the regular season for the Nutter Center crowd as WSU defeated Wisconsin-Milwaukee 91-73.
The Raiders finish the regular season at 23-7 and will be the No. 2 seed in next week’s Horizon League Championships. WSU hosts No. 7-seed Oakland Wednesday.
All five Wright State seniors scored in double figures. Leading the group was guard Tay’ler Mingo who had 24 points. Center Tayler Stanton had a double-double with 16 points and 10 boards. Abby Jump scored 13, Courtney Boyd had 12, and Breanna Stucke had 10.
After a tight first 25 minutes of the game, WSU pulled away midway through the second half.
“I thought they played well,” WSU head coach Mike Bradbury said. “The game meant a little to them. I thought we played with the right amount of energy in the second half.”
UW-Milwaukee was led by forward Ashley Green who had 16 points.
The Raiders put the pomp and circumstance of the pregame Senior Day ceremonies behind them to combine for 75 of WSU’s 91 points.
“I thought before the game I might feel something, but we’re not finished yet,” Stucke said. “It just felt like any other game in the past.”
WSU guard Kim Demmings would have participated in Saturday’s ceremony had she not gotten injured at the start of the season. Instead of being honored, she stood at center court to give her fellow seniors balloons and hugs.
Wright State led by as many as nine in the first half after trailing by as many as four. After WSU took a 37-28 lead, Milwaukee responded with a 9-2 run cutting WSU’s lead to two.
The Raiders held a 41-39 halftime advantage with Boyd leading the way with 10 points.
“You have to play 40 minutes,” Bradbury said. “Sometimes you are really good in the first 10 and sometimes it is the last 10. We were fine.”
Justin Boggs
Despite tying the game four times, Milwaukee was unable to take the lead in the second half. After tying the game at 49, Wright State went on a 21-6 run to gain its first double-digit lead of the game with 8:35 left. The Raiders remained ahead by double figures through the rest of the contest.
Milwaukee’s Sydney Howard broke the run with seven minutes left, but WSU continued to put the game away as Green fouled out for UWM.
The Raiders shot 56 percent from the field in the second half as UW-Milwaukee shot 34.3 percent in the second.
“I think it was the energy level we had in the second half,” Mingo said after scoring 16 of her game-high 24 points in the second half. “It just kind of rubs off on everyone so it only takes one person to get it going. Everybody found their shot.”
Wright State won its final four games of the regular season and has won seven in a row at the Nutter Center.
