“They haven’t been a particularly good 3-point shooting team all year, but they shot it great tonight,” WSU coach Scott Nagy said. “And right now we can’t even make layups.”
The Raiders missed 17 of their first 20 shots from 3-point range and shot 38 percent from the floor as they dropped their second game in a row to fall to 11-7 overall and 2-3 in the Horizon League.
Green Bay, which shoots 30 percent from 3-point range and averages five treys per game, finished with a season-high 14 3-pointers on 27 attempts to score its seventh consecutive win. The Phoenix (11-6, 5-0) took over sole possession of first place in the conference.
Green Bay senior guard Warren Jones came off the bench and hit 5 of 6 3-pointers for a career-high 19 points, while senior guard Charles Cooper, the team’s leading scorer, also came off the bench to add 16.
In addition to out-shooting the Raiders, the Phoenix also dominated them on the glass with a 47-33 edge in rebounds, led by Cooper’s game-high nine.
“We’ve not been beat like that all year, and that usually tells the story,” Nagy said. “When you get beat 14 on the glass, you just have one team that’s playing a lot harder. That’s not the team that I’ve seen play all year.”
Junior guard Grant Benzinger led WSU with 14 points, while junior guard Justin Mitchell added 10. But leading scorer Mark Alstork, who didn’t start for the first time this season, made one of 13 shots to finish with two points. Alstork is 6 of 38 in the last three games.
“We’re just not helping ourselves offensively at all,” Nagy said. “We’re not really giving ourselves a chance. There’s only so much you can do defensively. At some point you do have to put the ball in the basket.”
WSU got a career-high nine points from junior guard Tye Wilburn, while senior forward Steven Davis and senior guard Mike La Tulip also added nine.
The Raiders will try to get things turned around Saturday at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which snapped a seven-game losing streak Thursday with a 68-58 triumph over Northern Kentucky.
“It will be a big game for me to see how we respond to this, because this was so bad,” Nagy said. “Life requires toughness. You have two options. You can either lay down and curl up in a ball and act like a baby, or you can fight. We didn’t fight tonight at all. It was frustrating to watch. The question is how are we going to respond to this on Saturday.”
About the Author