They finished with an uncharacteristic 18 turnovers. And leading the nation in field-goal shooting at 53.4%, they shot just 44.9 — just the fourth time this season they’ve been held under 45%.
They played well enough defensively again to win — that’s five straight solid defensive showings — but their normally fine-tuned offense was spewing exhaust.
“In terms of our players’ effort and their engagement and not giving in, if I’m going to talk about those things and we get them, then as a coach, if I don’t get the outcome I want, I don’t get to whine and complain,” coach Scott Nagy said.
“We were good defensively tonight. We just weren’t enough offensively, which doesn’t happen very often.”
The Raiders also had 18 turnovers at home against Cleveland State and 17 at Northern Kentucky and in the first meeting with PFW — and still managed to win.
But as Nagy said: “We can’t turn a ball over that much. We talk about that, and you just can’t. That’s probably the one thing that is just so glaring to me.”
An under-the-weather Trey Calvin threw three passes into opponent hands and had four turnovers in all.
“I struggled with whether or not to put Trey back in for the second half. He’s not feeling well, running a fever, but he wanted to go,” Nagy said.
“There aren’t excuses in terms of that. We’ve just got to get healthy. We have a little bit of that running through us, but everybody probably does.”
Tanner Holden and Brandon Noel also had four turnovers and Alex Huibregtse three.
“As a player, they definitely got to me — their guards,” Huibregtse said. “They had a lot of ball pressure. They were up into us. We knew they were going to do it from the last time we played them and from scouting.
“We just didn’t take good care of the ball. We were just being loose with it.”
The Raiders, who fell to 16-13 and in a tie for fourth in the league at 12-7, were averaging just 11.4 turnovers.
But even with the fumble-itis, they had chances to win.
After PFW’s Rasheed Bello converted a 1-and-1 to tie the game with 17.2 seconds left in regulation, the Raiders held for the last shot.
Calvin dribbled out the clock and took a contested step-back 3 that missed badly.
Bello was at the line for another critical 1-and-1 for PFW (19-10, 10-9), which had a two-point lead with 17 seconds left in the extra session, but he missed the front end.
Calvin, who has come through in crunch time throughout his career, maneuvered for a mid-range jumper, but it was blocked by Anthony Roberts.
The team’s leading scorer at 20 points per game, Calvin finished just 3 of 15 from the field and 1 of 7 on 3′s. He made 6 of 6 foul shots for 13 points.
A.J. Braun had 16 points and 10 rebounds, Noel 10 points and 10 boards, Holden 19 points and Huibregtse 15.
“Look, we’ve been riding that dude for two or three years, and so I’m not going to say anything about it. I’m going to trust him,” Nagy said of Calvin.
“If you want to say. ‘I wish he would have done this’ … I’ll leave it in his hands, and I’m not going to spend a lot of time worrying about it.”
NOEL HONORED: Brandon Noel, a chemistry major and the current Horizon League player of the week, was named to the five-player conference all-academic team.
A GPA of at least 3.2 is required to make the team, and the other picks were Cleveland State’s Tristan Enaruna, Robert Morris’ Jackson Last and Oakland’s Blake Lampman and Trey Townsend.
SATURDAY’S GAME
Northern Kentucky at Wright State, 7 p.m., ESPN+, 101.5, 1410
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