The Raiders started with seven of their first eight games away from home. They’ve played No. 1 Purdue in deafening Mackey Arena, and they’ve also tangled with Horizon League favorite Cleveland State in a hostile setting.
Their eight opponents have a cumulative 43-29 record. Take George Washington and Long Beach State out of the mix, and it’s 37-15.
Instead of building a shiny resumé, the Raiders are sitting at 2-6 — equaling the worst eight-game start since the program joined Division I in 1987-88. And Nagy’s biggest concern is making sure his players can fight off self-doubt before it leads to more losses.
“There’s different kinds of confidence,” he said. “There’s offensive confidence, which I worry about with some of our guys. They’re not where I want them to be. But there’s a confidence that comes with defense, too.
“When you’re confident on offense. you attack. It’s the same thing with defense. You’re looking across from the guy and saying, ‘I’m going to whip you.’ But we can’t get there until it becomes the most important thing to us.”
Nagy believes the Raiders’ will soon meet the defensive standards they’ve set in the past — and a slew of upcoming home games should help. But they’re a long way from reaching those norms.
They’re 11th in the 12-team league in points allowed, giving up 80 per game. They were first last season at 67.4.
They’ve also surrendered 85 or more points in four games this season. In the previous four years combined, they gave up 85-plus a TOTAL of four times.
“There’s a simple saying that everyone has heard a billion times: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. We don’t have the will, so there’s not a way for us right now,” Nagy said, before adopting an optimistic tone.
“I think it’ll change. I told the guys I’ve had teams in the past that have started off just terrible defensively — and we’ve had one of the worst starts I’ve seen, and I can’t believe it — but they turned out to be great defensive teams. We’re going to get there.”
Nagy’s go-to stat is defensive efficiency, not points per game, since the former takes into account pace of play.
It’s no great surprise the Raiders aren’t faring well there, either. Every foe since the opener against Division-II Lake Erie has scored at a robust clip of more than one point per possession.
They’re 325th among 358 D-I teams in that category, allowing an average of 1.099 points each time their opponents have the ball. They were 16th nationally last season at .912.
Of course, they no longer have Loudon Love, who was two-time league player of the year in part because of how he impacted games defensively.
But to Nagy, it’s too late into the season to still use that as an excuse.
“You can say, well, we lost a great defender in Loudon — and, in my opinion, he was the best defensive player in the league. You never had to trap in the post because he’d take care of his guy. He was a good shot blocker. He was great with ball screens. But why can’t we better?”
Nagy, of course, has been harping on defense since the Raiders allowed 96 points in back-to-back games against their first two D-I foes (Marshall, Purdue).
He’s hoping his top players will give his vocal cords a break and start speaking up with conviction.
“We need our guys who are our leaders and the guys who have the focus on them — quite frankly, we’re talking about Tanner (Holden) and Grant (Basile) — to establish with our team that the most important thing is defense and rebounding. And we’re not there yet,” he said.
WEDNESDAY’S GAME
Akron at Wright State, 7 p.m., ESPN+, 103.9
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