The power outage that hit an area around the Arena – including a nearby hotel and a fast-food restaurant – left UD personnel and an AES crew scrambling to change over to a second feeder system and get most of the lights back on, including the scoreboards
With the game briefly halted, the Raiders returned to their huddle and that’s when the sold-out crowd plugged them into their own power source.
Soon UD Arena reverberated with some of the most wondrous chants you could ever imagine hearing there:
“Let’s go Raiders!”
“Let’s go Raiders!”
“Let’s go Raiders!”
The full-throated chorus came not only from a WSU following far bigger than anything that ever turned out at the Nutter Center during the season, but it was joined by UD fans and even some from Rutgers and Notre Dame (their teams were playing in the second game) who had been drawn in by WSU’s stirring effort on this night.
“It was great,” Raiders coach Scott Nagy would all but gush afterward. “I mean, I don’t think since I’ve been here that we’ve played in front of an atmosphere like that with that my people cheering us. It was a tremendous experience for all of us and I know it’s something our players will never forget.”
Before the game WSU athletics director Bob Grant called it “the biggest game in Wright State history.”
He was right.
In front of a national TV audience and the largest crowd they have played in front of this area in 25 years, the Raiders put the finishing touches on Bryant down the stretch for a 93-82 victory and their first ever win in the NCAA Tournament at the Division I level.
They did win the NCAA Division II national title in 1983, but that didn’t come with the big hoopla that this one did.
The Raiders now face No. 1 seed Arizona, Friday night, in San Diego
“It was pretty neat to get this first (tournament win) for our school in our backyard,” said Grant Basile, the Raiders 6-9 forward. “That makes it pretty special.”
Nagy said he stressed that to his team in the postgame dressing room:
“It’s the first thing I said to the players: ‘It’s not happened in the Division I era. This is the first one and it’s always going to be the first one. It’s going to be something where we did it!’
“It’s lifetime moment for these guys. And it is for me, too.”
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
Holden takes center stage
Wright State had been to the NCAA Tournament three time previous – in 1993 under Ralph Underhill, 2007 with coach Brad Brownell and 2018 with Nagy, who was in his second year at WSU after 21 years as the head coach South Dakota State, a tenure that included three NCAA Tournament trips and multiple ones at the D-II level.
But in their early forays into the tournament, the Raiders always faced some of the top seeded teams – No.1 Indiana, No. 3 Pitt and No 3 Tennessee – and they were routed.
This matchup was different.
WSU was a 16 seed, but so was Bryant, which was led by Peter Kiss, who came into the game as the nation’s leading scorer (25.1 points per game) and also with a reputation as one of the most polarizing figures in college basketball because of his often over-the-top antics on the court.
While Kiss eventually did get 28 points, it took him 25 shots (and four turnovers) to do so thanks to the way WSU’s defensive stalwart Tim Finke made him work for everything he got.
When it came to offense, the night belonged to WSU’s Tanner Holden, who had 37 points, one shy of his career high, and Trey Calvin, who had 21 points even as he fought through a stomach virus that had sick to his stomach before, during and after the game and required a postgame IV in the training room.
When the opponents are putting on rousing performances like that, it’s hard for you to find a stage for your own histrionics and Kiss was mostly subdued Wednesday night.
He did venture a pair of muscle poses after baskets, and he blew a couple of kisses at Raiders players and once was warned for hanging on the rim after a dunk. He talked at times to Raiders players. but there wasn’t any “trash talk,” Finke said
As the game wore on, Holden seemed to direct a conversation or two toward Kiss after some of the Bryant star’s more animated reactions.
Afterward, though, Holden said it had been nothing and instead talked about the yeoman efforts of his teammates, especially Finke.
Nagy did too and he once again called the 6-foot-6 junior guard “the MVP” of the team.
Maybe so, but that vote should be split. Holden was again the team’s rudder, especially on a night when Basile struggled inside.
Holden made 11 of 15 field goal attempts, 14 of 16 free throws – thanks to his aggressive play he leads the nation in free throw attempts – and he pulled down 11 rebounds.
As his son was putting on a show, Rodney Holden – Tanner’s dad and once a hoops star himself at Marshall University – stood in the stands, three rows from the court and watched intently. His family was behind him.
Afterward, like his son, he focused on the team effort:
“This was a team win. They played very well as a group and that’s what it takes. It’ not one individual.”
Pressed on his son, he did admit: “Tanner played well. He did what he was supposed to do. But I’m proud of all of them.”
And rightly so.
The Raiders 93 points were their second highest offensive output of the season, and it equaled the biggest offensive night UD had in the Arena this season when the Flyers scored 93 against Alabama State on Dec. 1.
Big test awaits
Speaking of UD, who would have ever thought you’d hear “Let’s go Raiders!’ chants rock the Arena?
That was some of the beauty of this historic night.
Before the game the athletics directors of the crosstown rivals – WSU’s Bob Grant and UD’s Neil Sullivan – stood shoulder to shoulder just off the court in an amiable conversation.
This was WSU’s 22nd time playing at UD Arena, going all the way back to a December 1972 loss to Miami University. Since then the Raiders have won 15 times here.
Many of the games where against Central State in the 1980s, but the Raiders did beat the Flyers 101-99 in the Arena in 1990.
That was part of the long-since canceled Gem City Jam. The last time Wright State played here was 1997 when they lost 94-63.
Since then there has been no real basketball relationship between the men’s programs at the school.
But before Wednesday’s game, Grant said UD had been ‘terrific” with them and he praised the efforts UD put into hosting the First Four and the way the tournament made all the participating athletes and teams feel special.
And WSU ought to feel good after this night.
They showed themselves well to a national TV audience and they got a raise-the-roof embrace from a packed house at UD Arena.
Afterward Bryant coach Jared Grasso and especially Peter Kiss praised the Raiders.
“Wright State is a great basketball team,” Kiss said. “They’re coached extremely well.”
And now comes the monumental test.
After flying across the country in an NCAA charter in the wee hours of the night following the game, WSU must quickly refocus on mighty Arizona.
“I feel like Arizona is predicted to win a lot of brackets, so it will definitely be a fun matchup for us,” Holden said in the postgame press conference.
When he said that, Nagy, sitting a few feet away, turned his head in his direction as if to say: ‘What?”
Later when Holden had left the room, Nagy offered: “Tanner said it will be fun…yeah?
“I don’t know a lot about them because I don’t look ahead. I heard on TV the other day, somebody said they’re the second biggest team in the country, That’s obviously going to be a problem.”
The box score from the First Four game underscored that concern.
Bryant outscored WSU in the paint, 50-26.
“The question is, can we get shots around the basket?” Nagy said. “Can we rebound the ball? All those kinds of things. Can we guard them in the post?”
“Coach (Dan) Bere has that scout and he’s already sent ahead to me in my email the offense and defense parts.
“I’ll have a chance to look at it on the bus and on the plane a little bit.”
And so for him, the biggest night in Wright State basketball was about to turn into one of the longest.
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