Point guard Keaton Norris, one of two players made available to the press after the closed doors of the locker room finally opened, also had a critical appraisal:
“I thought it was just an ‘us’ issue. It was an individual thing. I thought we all weren’t there. (Guys) were too into their own things, too worried about our own stats, whatever. It’s got to get better so this won’t happen again.”
Wright State has lost its last five games to Youngstown State, three of them at home.
This defeat — against a Penguins team that came into the Nutter Center, 6-5 — really hit a sour chord afterward.
Although none of the three Raiders who spoke — Sargent, Norris and the mostly-silent guard Logan Woods — offered exact details of the “undercurrent” issue, the problem was alluded to in the postgame comments and, at times, was evident on the court.
Norris spoke of the older guys on the team — and as a redshirt junior he’s one of them — needing to assert themselves: “We need more guys speaking up when they see stuff that shouldn’t be happening on the floor and off the floor. Because that’s the same stuff that happened in the past.
“And look where that got us.”
After going to the NCAA Tournament in 2021 and winning a First Four game against Bryant before being beaten by No. 1 Arizona and ending the year 22-12, the Raiders have been mired in mediocrity the past two seasons.
They went 18-15 in 2022-23 and lost at Milwaukee in the quarterfinals of the Horizon League Tournament.
Last season they finished 18-14 and fell in their first Horizon League tournament game, a 99-97 overtime loss to Northern Kentucky in quarterfinal matchup at the Nutter Center.
After the season, head coach Scott Nagy took a job at Southern Illinois and Sargent, his associate head coach, took over.
Wednesday night Norris said we “weren’t there collectively.” Sargent used words like “disconnected” and “disjointed.”
He said the team “emotionally flatlined.”
Woods just shook his head and said the performance was hard to swallow.
On the court, you noticed a few disjointed moments. One came midway through the second half with Wright State trailing by two, 58-56.
Fifth-year transfer Jack Doumbia, often a dynamic freelancer who gets to the basket at game’s end, had the ball out front.
Alex Huibregtse, a long-range sniper who had made three of his six trey attempts at that point and is second in the league in both three-point field goals and long-range percentage — called for the ball.
Doumbia said “No” and passed to a player to the other wing.
During a break in the action moments later, Huibregtse and Doumbia had a brief, animated exchange.
Last week Sargent praised the energy Doumbia, who joined the Raiders this year after playing mostly off the bench at Norfolk State, brought to the team, but said it took some adjustment for some of the other players who were used to a set offense and not one player going off script down the stretch, even though it often brought results.
At halftime Sargent huddled on the bench in private conversation with Brandon Noel, the team’s “pillar,” as Doumbia called him last week, and the preseason pick for Horizon League Player of the Year.
Noel was being double teamed on defense and had Penguins players coming right at him on offense. He would finish the game with a double-double — 10 points, 10 rebounds — but he was hampered by foul trouble
Sargent said he was just giving his 6-foot-8 leader a pep talk: Trying to get him in a positive frame of mind and “ignite” his confidence.
“He’s the first guy on the scouting reports,” Sargent said. “I told him they’re going to try to be handsy and physical with you. You are a marked man.
“I wanted to help him step into that, (but) it’s going to continue to be a learning process for him.”
One noticeable stat that stood out was bench points.
Youngstown State got 32 points from its backups. Wright State got 13.
“I’m reading guys with how they look. If you are not ready to play, I’ll play a short bench. I’m not just going to give guys runways if you optically do not look ready to play. And we had a couple of guys who didn’t look quite right, like they were ready to play. So, I’ll roll with five if I have to.”
All that boiled down to Wright State — which led by five at the half, 40-35 — being outscored by 15 points in the second half.
Doumbia led the team with 17 points and 10 rebounds. Huibregtse had 15 points.
The Raiders are 7-5 and play at Eastern Michigan on Saturday before going into full league play in January.
The Horizon League schedules have teams playing a few conference games in December that are interspersed with non-conference games and Sargent said his team didn’t respond to the fact that this game had added importance in league standings.
“We had that look to us tonight that ‘it’s just another game on the schedule,’” he said.
Sargent shouldered some of the blame: “It’s my job to get them motivated that they understand the magnitude of the game, and tonight we just didn’t have any consistency, any pop to us as a team.
“Just nothing.”
Sargent said he hopes his team responds the right way.
“We have a bunch of guys who lost the game,” he said and noted that falls on him and his coaches too.
“You hope that you don’t take it in an offended way. That you own it. And that looks differently for each guy.”
He said he believes his players will respond as they should and be better for it.
“I’m sick and tired of saying that, but I know that’s true.”
The bottom line is, he said:
“We still have a lot to learn about ourselves.”
And some of what the Raiders learned Wednesday night they didn’t like.
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