The conference doesn’t have any superpowers, but it probably has more teams than usual capable of winning it all.
“This is the best our league has been since I’ve been here,” said Nagy, who is in his eighth year.
“There’s just so many teams (that could win it). None of it would surprise me.”
The event kicked off with three first-round games Tuesday with the home teams all winning, and the quarterfinals will be held Thursday at campus sites.
Wright State (the No. 4 seed) hosts Northern Kentucky (5) at 8 p.m., while Purdue Fort Wayne (8) plays at Oakland (1), Cleveland State (7) at Youngstown State (2) and Milwaukee (6) at Green Bay (3).
The semifinals and final will be at Indiana Farmers Coliseum on Monday and Tuesday.
The Raiders will be playing NKU at the Nutter Center for the second time in six days. It’s the first time they’ve opened the tourney against their final regular-season foe since losing back-to-back games to UIC in 2014-15.
The Raiders are coming off a 94-88 win, tallying the most points by any team against the defensive-minded Norse since also winning 95-63 on Jan. 24, 2020.
They swept the season series, and when asked about the difficulty of beating a team three times in one year, Nagy said: “In terms of level of desperation, people say, ‘Ah, it’s hard to beat a good team three times.’ It’s hard to beat a good team ONCE. It just is. That’ll be the focus. It’s just that game.
“Obviously, both teams will learn from the previous two games, but we’re not going to throw more pressure on people by saying, ‘Oh, we’ve got to beat these guys three times.’ No, you’ve just got to play them one time.”
Nagy also shrugged off the familiarity factor in the Norse returning so soon.
“I don’t think it’s easy for anybody, but you look at the NBA. They play each other in a seven-game series and make adjustments. So, they’ll make some adjustments, and we’ll make some adjustments, and we’ll see how it goes.”
One change the Raiders will need to make is in defending Marques Warrick. The 6-foot-2 guard with the distinctive green sneakers exploded for 39 points in the first meeting, going 15 of 23 from the field, 5 of 10 on 3′s and 4 of 5 on foul shots.
The 39 points tied Green Bay’s Noah Reynolds for the most against the Raiders this year.
Trey Calvin was assigned to Warrick, and Nagy sounds as if isn’t planning any matchup changes. But he doesn’t want to leave Calvin on an island.
“We’ve got to do a better job of giving him help. We can’t just isolate him. I don’t know if there’s anybody in the league, if you just isolate him, that can stop Warrick,” he said.
“There’s spots where we can help from and shrink the floor like they did to us. They shrunk the floor on us.”
That was a reference to the Norse’s tightly packed zone defense. Coach Darrin Horn probably isn’t going to flip to man-to-man — just like Nagy isn’t going to switch from man to zone — but the Raiders have shot 56.5% and 54.2% in the two games while scoring a combined 179 points, so changes probably are advisable.
NKU is a proud program, though. It’s the only one that can match Wright State’s success since Nagy’s arrival in 2016.
The Raiders have won or shared three regular-season crowns and captured two tourney titles in that span, while the Norse have two regular-season titles and four tourney championships, including last season.
They were the preseason favorites but have lost two key starters. All-league wing Sam Vinson has been out since Christmas with a torn ACL, while versatile center Keeyan Itejere has missed the last three games with an undisclosed injury.
“It’s two good programs. I’ve got a lot of respect for Darrin. If you look at (Saturday’s game), he was down his starting center, and Vinson, who is clearly one of the top players in the league,” Nagy said.
“What they’ve done this year — we were playing for fourth and fifth place. We’ve had all our guys, and he’s missing two. I think he does such a good job. In terms of what he expects of his players and what we expect of our players, we’re pretty similar.”
THURSDAY’S GAME
Horizon League quarterfinals
Northern Kentucky at Wright State, 8 p.m., ESPN+, 101.5, 1410
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