Wright State is hosting another public watch party Friday night to watch the Raiders take on No. 1 seed Arizona, after beating Bryant at UD Arena on Wednesday night.
Friday’s game in San Diego starts at 7:27 p.m. EDT and will stream on TruTV. One official watch party is at the WSU Student Union and the other is at Milano’s in Beavercreek. Both parties are from 7 to 9:30 p.m.
The Raiders beat Bryant 93-82 Wednesday amid a roaring hometown crowd, as part of the First Four kickoff to the tournament.
Ciero said Wednesday’s game made him excited to be a Raider, and he’s excited to watch Friday’s game from the Student Union again.
Michael Brush, a lawyer who graduated from Wright State in 2002, went to Wednesday’s game with several friends.
“Seeing a sea of green cheering, ‘Let’s go Raiders,’ in UD Arena was as good as it gets,” Brush said.
In the past seven years, Wright State’s men’s basketball team has won more than two-thirds of their games, posting a record of 153-73 (.677). But WSU has never advanced beyond the round of 64 in the NCAA tournament, having lost first-round games in 1993, 2007 and 2018.
Wright State’s women’s team did make the round of 32 last year, upsetting Arkansas in their opening game.
Brush said he was proud of the current Wright State basketball team. The team faced so much adversity, he said, and he made a point to tell each player how proud he was after the team won the Horizon League championship.
Head coach Scott Nagy’s father, along with fathers and grandfathers of several of the players, died during the last season.
Wright state grad Elizabeth Ball, who got her undergrad degree in 2008 and her master’s in 2010, said the experience of watching the game on Wednesday was “a roller coaster.”
“When you look at the team, the way we play ... and how most newscasters and reporters talk about all the adversity that the team individually and collectively had to overcome to get to this space,” Ball said.
Angelo Biondo, a freshman at Wright State, said he plans to watch the WSU-Arizona game on Friday with his family. He said he was “just ecstatic” when the team won as he watched the game in his apartment.
“I didn’t go to a school where I thought, they’ll have a team go to the March Madness tournament,” he said.
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