But coach Clint Sargent didn’t think it would do any harm to talk about how his team played, and he liked what he saw.
“I loved how we competed. I loved our physicality and our connectivity. Everything we’re trying to be about daily, I thought showed up,” Sargent said.
“Now, there’s some areas where we need to be a lot better, but, overall, I was very pleased.”
Bowling Green went 20-14 last season and played in the CollegeInsider.com tournament, falling to Purdue Fort Wayne in the first round, 77-75,
Wright State won the last two meetings with the Falcons, prevailing at home two years ago, 80-71, and on the road in 2020-21, 85-67.
“We played well,” fifth-year senior guard Alex Huibregtse said. “Our defense was good, which was a good sign for us. And we’re definitely improving physicality-wise — especially compared to last year’s team.
“We’ve got a whole different team now. That’s been something we’ve been working on all summer and preseason, being more physical, being better at rebounding. Those things stuck out during that scrimmage, and it was a good sign for us for sure.”
TOP PLAYERS BOLT: Mid-majors are especially vulnerable with the ever-revolving door of the transfer portal, and the Horizon League has taken a monstrous hit.
Wright State coaches had to be taken aback when senior-to-be A.J. Braun transferred after his best season, averaging 12 points and 6.2 rebounds.
The 6-foot-9 center went to California Baptist, which was another puzzler. The Lancers were an NAIA school until transitioning to Division I in 2018-19 and joining the WAC. They went 16-17 last season.
Braun set a single-season Wright State record for field-goal shooting at 68.9% last year and tied Gary Monroe (1981-83) for the career mark at 62.5%.
The league also lost its top four scorers: Milwaukee’s BJ Freeman (21.1 average) to Arizona State, Detroit Mercy’s Jayden Stone (20.9) to West Virginia, Green Bay’s Noah Reynolds (20.0) to TCU and Northern Kentucky’s Marques Warrick (19.9) to Missouri.
Warrick, who leads all active players with 2,246 career points, was a Raider nemesis during his four years (he’s part of the last class that gets an extra year of eligibility because of the pandemic). He scored 39 points in the regular-season finale last year and then 35 in the league quarterfinals, both at the Nutter Center.
The least-surprising exodus was by HL player of the year Trey Townsend, who averaged 17.3 points and 8.1 rebounds. The 6-6 forward was a white-hot commodity after leading Oakland to an NCAA tourney upset of Kentucky.
Once the Grizzlies were bounced by North Carolina State in the second round, coach Greg Kampe was preparing himself for the inevitable.
On a podcast with Dan Dakich, Kampe said: “He’s going to get offered so much money, and I can’t match (that). We’ve got a ‘Keep Trey Townsend Fund’ going with our (NIL) collective, and we might be able to get $40,000 to $50,000 in there, but he’s looking at $250,000 to $300,000, from what I’m being told. It’s going to be hard for me to tell him to stay.”
The player who was dubbed “Mr. Oakland” after notching 17 points and 12 rebounds against Kentucky and 30 and 13 against NC State is now playing for Arizona.
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