And because of that, he was constantly beating himself up.
“I’ve been really hard on myself the last, what seems to be, seven or eight games,” the 6-foot-3 redshirt senior guard said. “I just haven’t felt like myself.”
A lingering back injury that came from a misstep during a New Year’s Day practice was affecting his hamstring, as well.
Although extensive daily sessions in the training room at Wright State and in stretching exercises he does back at the apartment he shares with three teammates initially had helped alleviate some of the problem, the injury flared up again at the start of February.
Once he was the team’s leading scorer and one of the top three-point shooters in the Horizon League. Now he had trouble just standing pain-free, much less using that rock-a-bye ,back and forth move on a defender to launch his deep three-point attempts.
Early in the season Huibregtse was averaging 21.3 ppg. And even in mid-January, he had a 31-point outing against Purdue Fort Wayne.
But coming into Thursday night’s game with Cleveland State at the Nutter Center, Huibregtse had averaged 5.8 ppg in the previous six games in February. Twice he’d been held scoreless.
The second goose egg had come against the aforementioned Purdue Fort Wayne team he’d just torched and that empty box score had broken his string of 32 straight games with at least one three pointer on his ledger. That left him two games shy of Grant Benzinger’s all-time long range record at Wright State.
Huibregtse — who has scored 1,131 points in his 121 WSU career games — admitted there were times he wanted to let himself off the hook:
“Sometimes, to myself, I tried making that excuse. But at the end of the day I knew when I was out there playing, I needed to provide for my team.
“The fact that I wasn’t doing it hurt me a lot.”
Credit: Joseph R. Craven
Credit: Joseph R. Craven
Clint Sargent, WSU’s head coach, saw what Huibregtse was going through:
“How do you let your teammates lean on you when you’re about to fall over? When you’re a leader and you’re failing, how do you constantly show up? How do you have those moments when you take the blame …and don’t want to?”
That was the backdrop for the final game of the month, Thursday’s ESPN televised 9 p.m. tip-off against a Viking team that was coming in 19-10 overall and at 13-5 in league play was vying for the conference’s regular season crown.
CSU already had beaten the Raiders by 14 earlier this season and, with just under two minutes left in the half Thursday, it had a 16-point lead.
WSU needed somebody to lean on and that’s when Huibregtse suddenly turned into his old self.
In the first 9½ minutes of the second half, he made four of his five three-point attempts and added a lay-up — 14 points in what would end up a 20-point night for him — to help the Raiders erase the deficit.
“When Alex came alive everybody took a deep breath,” Sargent said.
The other Raiders — especially Brandon Noel, the other half of the team’s one-two punch, and freshman Solomon “Solly” Callaghan — didn’t just lean, they fed off him and helped Wright State pull off a stirring comeback.
Although Cleveland State led nearly 37 minutes of the game, WSU surged ahead in the final two minutes and won, 82-76.
Like Huibregtse, Noel ended up with 20 points and Callaghan — who made two pressurized 3-pointers and a heavily defended lay-up in the final 4:50 — added 14 points.
Huibregtse said the key had been making his first shot of the night:
“Getting to see the ball go through early – it seems like that hasn’t happened all season for me – I kind of took that and ran with it.”
Noel – who came to WSU State five seasons ago with Huibregtse, has lived with him since and took part alongside him in their Senior Day festivities beforehand Thursday – was asked how it felt to see his pal finally have a night like old again:
“First of all, I’m happy for him. I’m happy when he does good.
“But one of the things you guys (in the media) will never know is the work he puts in behind the scenes. All those extra hours, whether it’s in the gym working on his shot and ball handling or specifically on his back right now.
“He puts in a lot of work, and it showed tonight.”
‘I absolutely love his story’
Sargent was in the back of the media room as Noel shared his thoughts and later, when he took over the dais to dissect the game, he made it a point to expand the thoughts on all the work Huibregtse has done to continue to be a leader of the team:
“Alex has worked on himself as a young man, just growing up in college. To see (these players) grow up into men, there’s not a better feeling in the world. And Alex embodies that for me.
“Alex and I, I like to say, we’re very similar. We’re from the Upper Midwest. We have the same sense of humor. While that can be great, we also butted heads a ton through his career.
“He and I have had a unique window into each other’s lives. He’s got a big personality…and he was always somebody who was fearless.
“He had a very good moxie about him. But he can be stubborn and prideful. I can be stubborn and prideful, too.
“He just had to grow up and be a man. And he’s done that.”
Sargent said Huibregtse always had been “a great student and a great teammate” and with what he’s endured this season, he’s taken all that even farther:
“I absolutely love his story for it.”
‘It’s starting to come around’
As Huibregtse goes, so goes the Raiders.
When he struggled in February, so did WSU, which dropped four of six games.
In that span he made 8 of 36 field goal attempts (22.8 percent) and five of 29 three point attempts (17.2 percent,)
This is the same guy who was fourth in the Horizon League in three-point accuracy (41.7 percent) last season. And who – as recently as Jan. 15 – went 7 for 14 from long range against Purdue Fort Wayne.
That’s why Thursday night’s performance – he made 6 of his 9 three-point attempts overall – so lifted the team.
“It’s awesome to see him have a night like tonight when we needed him badly,” Sargent said.
Speaking privately outside the dressing room later, Huibregtse was hopeful about his injury: “It’s starting to come around the right time of the year.”
The Raiders end their regular season Saturday at IU Indy and then host the same Jaguar team Tuesday night at the Nutter Center in the first round of the Horizon League Tournament.
The winner of that will then travel to Pittsburgh to face Robert Morris, the regular-season champs. And that winner heads to Indianapolis for the Horizon League version of the Final Four at Corteva (formerly Indiana Farmers) Coliseum, with the winner making the NCAA Tournament.
With midnight fast approaching, Huibregtse wasn’t thinking about any of that now. Nor was he going to return to the training room for yet more treatment on his back.
“Tomorrow I’ll get after it, but it’s too late now,” he said with a weary smile. “I’m headed to bed. I’m going to sleep.”
He deserved the rest.
His teammates had leaned heavily on him this night and he had held them up.
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