Yes, the Raiders have been among the scoring leaders in the Horizon League during his seven years. And yes, their field-goal percentage of 49.6 last season was third in the nation, behind only Gonzaga (52.1) and Colgate (51.1) — and the best clip at the school in 30 years.
Nagy, though, will say he deserves no credit for that production beyond recruiting players with feathery strokes.
“I spend very little time thinking about offense. There are a lot of people who think that’s the ONLY way I think, that I’m an offensive coach, and I’m not,” he said.
“We’re going to score. I have zero concern about that. If I did nothing offensively and had no organization, we’d still score a lot of points. But can we get people stopped?”
The Raiders averaged 79.9 points last year — despite having had their top two scorers transfer to high-major schools before the season. That mark was second in the HL and 20th in the country.
They averaged 82.0 in 2020-21 and 80.6 in 2019-20.
Nagy says if there’s a secret to his high-powered offenses, it’s staying out of the way.
“I give our guys a lot of freedom,” he said.
The Raiders follow some offensive principles but have few set plays.
Though he’ll occasionally get irate on the sidelines over an ill-advised shot, Nagy doesn’t want his players second-guessing themselves.
At least once they’ve shown they can be trusted.
“Freedom, No. 1, is earned. It doesn’t mean you come down and take any shot you want. Resect is earned, and that comes from putting in time in the gym, producing in practice. And then, yeah, we let you do certain things,” he said.
“Our kids understand what a good shot is. When you’re shooting 50%, you’re taking good shots. Our guys are comfortable offensively. They’re not looking at the bench, thinking, ‘I wonder if Coach thinks that’s a good shot.’
“I want players like that — aggressive and confident. The problem with that is, when they’re good offensive players, they don’t like to play defense because they’re worried about fouling. You tend to have a softer team, and that’s what we have to battle.”
The Raiders allowed foes to shoot 43.5% last season, which sounds respectable but was only 155th nationally (out of 352 teams).
And they gave up 73.7 points per game, which was a ghastly 275th.
Defense and a paltry rebounding advantage of plus-2.2 per game are the reasons they had their worst record under Nagy at 18-15.
They were first in the league in 2020-21 in scoring defense, allowing 67.4 points per game. But they were sixth last season and 10th the year before that.
“I’ll probably be saying the same thing in February: What our guys need to value more than offense is their defense and rebounding and toughness. But they get all their attention — all the media, all the ink — from scoring. The first thing family and friends look at is the stat sheet — how many points did you score?” Nagy said.
What interested parties probably should check first is minutes played.
A lack of commitment to defense keeps players fastened to the bench.
“It’s such an uphill battle as a coach to get guys to value themselves based on how well they played defensively — and what kind of effort they gave and what kind of teammate they were. That’s always the fight for us,” Nagy said.
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