Just 10 seconds into the game, Kentucky’s 7-foot Amari Williams threw an alley-oop pass to 6-foot-11 Anderson Carr for a mighty dunk and the rout was on.
The Wildcats had a double-digit lead in just over 4 ½ minutes and ended up winning, 103-62. It was WSU’s most lopsided loss in nearly three years, going back to a 44-point drubbing at Purdue in November of 2021.
Wednesday night, the Raiders opened their home season against Ohio Christian University — a small NAIA school in Circleville previously known as the Mount of Praise Bible College — which hasn’t had a winning season in seven years and has only one person on the roster over 6-5.
And that player — 6-7 Caleb Schmelzer — picked up two offensive fouls in the first 61 seconds of the game and ended up on the bench.
WSU’s start this time was a little different than two nights earlier. The Raiders’ 6-foot-8 Brandon Noel promptly blocked a jump shot by C.J. Faulkner, a guard from East Dayton Christian.
Faulkner would eventually finish with 15 points, but that was one of the visitors’ few bright spots as Wright State — using a strong second-half defense — dominated for an 89-60 victory.
Neither opponent has provided a true barometer for what kind of team the Raiders are. Kentucky is a level or two above them and OCU is two tiers below.
“Our guys are ready to play a like opponent,” Sargent admitted afterward.
And that comes Saturday when the Raiders travel to Oxford to play Miami, which opened the season with a 77-63 win at Appalachian State.
Wright State and Miami have played each other 38 times, with the RedHawks holding a 21-17 edge.
The Raiders, though, have won the last five meetings, but Sargent said you can’t put much stock in the carry-over effect of recent history because teams these days — thanks to NIL enticements and the revolving door transfer portal — are built on ever-shifting sands.
Programs now change personnel and character from one season to the next.
Like other schools, WSU has been hurt by defections in recent years, but it’s also picked up players and one of them — Jack Doumbia — was made available by the team after Wednesday night’s game.
‘An experience I’ll never forget’
The 6-foot-6 transfer from Norfolk State — who also has had stops at Cloud County Community College in Kansas and Tallahassee Community College in Florida — came into the postgame interview room with redshirt sophomore guard Logan Woods from Fairfield High School.
As he sat down, Doumbia admitted a little louder than maybe he intended that this was his first time ever being interviewed like this and he seemed unsure how he was to start.
“They’ll ask you questions,” whispered Woods, who sat next to him.
Doumbia nodded and took it from there, his charm and gift of gab winning over the room within minutes.
“You should come in every game,” someone eventually offered.
“I’d love to,” he grinned. “I love talkin’ to you guys.”
During the few minutes of formal talk and then later in private outside the Raiders’ Nutter Center locker room, Doumbia — who came off the bench against OCC, played just under half the game, and made all four of his shots, including a crowd-rousing break-away dunk — offered an unvarnished and fresh take on the Raiders start to the season.
Addressing the shellacking in Kentucky, he first gave his impressions of Rupp Arena:
“It’s quite a place, one of those places when you’re young and watching on TV, you dream of playing on that court one day. I wish our outcome would have been different, but it’s definitely an experience I’ll never forget.”
As for the part he’d like to forget:
“Any time you lose by that much you’re going to have some type of doubt creep in. At one point I was thinking, ‘We’re the worst players ever!’
“But you’ve just got to get back to work and fight through those thoughts and understand sometimes stuff like that happens.”
Against Kentucky — playing limited minutes off the bench — he didn’t score. Several other players had similar nights, though a few ended up with decent lines in the box score:
Noel, a preseason first team All-Horizon League pick — finished with 20 points and eight rebounds. Alex Huibregtse had 18 and Solomon Callaghan — who did not play Wednesday due to a lower leg injury Sargent said — had 15 on 7-of-9 shooting from the floor.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Although Sargent got the job in April when he was elevated from associate head coach after Scott Nagy left for Southern Illinois., he said his official coaching job began Monday night:
“When you get beat by 41 and you get in the locker room, I have my expectations, and I have a team full of guys with their own expectations. I just tried to get them to embrace some of the negativity, some of the criticism.
“When I’ve failed, I know how good that’s been for me as a man and how much growth has (come) from that . Getting them to understand that – to embrace that and learn from it – is my job.”
Doumbia talked about this side of Sargent earlier in the session:
“One thing about Coach Sargent, he deeply cares about more than just your basketball. I’m just glad I’m able to witness it. I’ve never witnessed that type of coaching before.”
Energy off the bench
Although he was born in Maryland, Doumbia moved to Africa — when his parents returned to their native Ivory Coast — when he was eight. At 16 he packed his belongings and returned to America to begin a basketball odyssey, beginning with two different high schools.
In seven years, he’s now played on six different teams in five different states. With his two community college stops and his time at Norfolk State, he had played in 73 college games before coming to WSU.
He’s trying to decipher his role here — “I want to figure out what the team needs me to do and every night it might be different,” he said — and right now Sargent said that’s with him coming off the bench and giving the team a burst of energy.
“As you can see, we don’t have a lot of twitchy, athleticism and length and he is all of that,” Sargent said. “When he comes off the bench, he can be that spark plug.”
Sargent said Doumbia and Woods — who finished with 12 points and played some notable second-half defense — can “absolutely be X factors for us.”
He especially noted Doumbia’s defensive presence: “He can speed up the ball handlers and get them out of rhythm.”
Wednesday night the Raiders were led again by Huibregtse, who had 22 points on 8-of-11 shooting from the floor, and Noel, who had 18 points, nine rebounds and blocked four shots.
Sargent said it was now time to “turn the page” and concentrate on the RedHawks.
As a newcomer, Doumbia was asked what he knows about Miami.
Without missing a beat, he grinned: “I know we’re trying to beat ‘em.”
That made Woods and the rest of the room laugh.
In private later, he asked about Miami:
“How far away is it?”
Told it was about a 70-minute drive — something like 53 miles — from the Wright State campus, he was surprised:
“Oh, just 50 miles! So it’s like a rivalry. I love rivalry games.”
But before he left, his thoughts drifted back to the Kentucky game and how he thinks he and his Raiders are far better than they showed in that outing:
“I want to play them again, but I know the only way that could happen is for us to win our conference and get into the NCAA Tournament.”
It’s thinking like that that Sargent hoped would come from two such a polar opposite start to the season.
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