She already had her line down pat:
“Get me rewrite! Now!”
She needed to change the Raiders storyline against Cleveland State because it was reading just like one with Green Bay 10 days earlier.
Wright State is a good team, but against the two best teams in the Horizon League, the Raiders have found themselves in dire need of a rewrite.
“I wish we could play the first half over again,” Hoffman said after WSU’s 72-61 loss to the Vikings on Wednesday night.
In the first two quarters, the suddenly hesitant Raiders had no inside defense and couldn’t get their own shots to fall and that spelled real trouble against CSU.
The Raiders trailed 27-14 at the end of the first quarter and 49-30 at the half.
WSU coaches changed their game plan at halftime and the players responded. They outscored the Vikings 31-23 in the second half, but they’d dug themselves too big of a hole early on, especially when, down the stretch in the fourth quarter, they again began to misfire.
The script was the same in their Jan. 7 game against (now 14-3) Green Bay.
The Raiders trailed 18-6 after the first 10-minute period and 45-24 at the break. Again, they rallied — outscoring the Phoenix 39-30 in the second half — but the early deficit had been too great, and they lost, 75-63.
“It’s frustrating,” said Hoffman, whose team fell to 11-8. “Against the best teams in the league we aren’t dictating. We need to start faster against them.
“All year we’ve seen when we play well out of the gate, the whole game goes that way. And (even in losses) we at least stayed close the entirety of the game.”
Against CSU, Wright State struggled offensively, especially from three-point range which has been a staple of the team this season. Wednesday night the Raiders made just 6 of 27 attempts from beyond the arc (22 percent) and the team’s two top scorers and most prolific long-range shooters — Alexis Hutchison and Kacee Baumhower — went a combined 0-for-9 on their three-point hoists.
Meanwhile CSU — which is now 16-3 — shot 60 percent from the field (29 of 48.) In the first quarter, the Vikings made 11 of 13 shots (84.6 percent.)
“Yeah, but they all were from two feet!” Hoffman said.
CSU outscored the undersized Raiders in the paint, 50-26.
There were a few highlights:
Guard Layne Ferrell shot well early and finished with 15 points and Jada Tate came off the bench and provided some resistance inside even though, at 5-foot-11, she gave away four inches to the Vikings’ Jordana Reisma and two inches to Carmen Villalobos.
Tate, who played four seasons at Tiffin before coming to WSU this year, pulled down nine rebounds, made all three shots she took from the floor for six points and had two steals.
“She had a great game,” Hoffman said. “She played hard. She understands team defense really, really well and that’s what we needed today.”
Hoffman was also pleased with the way her team responded in the second half:
“Theres a lot of fight in this team and I love to coach them for that reason.
“And the good thing is, it’s a long season. I told them down the stretch, ‘All these games are going to matter a whole lot.’ We’ll see these teams again. And then we’ll see what we’re made of.”
In other words:
“Get me rewrite! Now!”
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