Wright State, Bryant take similar routes to First Four

He was an assistant at Fordham when Derek Whittenburg was fired in 2009 and took over on an interim basis. At age 29, he was the youngest coach in the country, and he led the Rams to a 1-22 record, going 0-16 in the Atlantic 10.

“I sat in this gym with the ‘Go Dayton Flyers’ chant going on. It’s still ringing in my ears,” he said with a smile.

“I’ve also coached in this gym multiple times in the NCAA Tournament (as an assistant at Iona). We didn’t have any success. And coaching here at Fordham, we didn’t have any success.”

He’s hoping that changes when his 16th-seeded squad takes on another No.16 seed in the Raiders at 6:40 p.m. Wednesday. And both have had similar paths to the First Four.

The Raiders (21-13) had a 2-7 start that included a 96-52 thrashing at Purdue. But they gained traction at the end of the season, racing through three 20-win teams on their way to the Horizon League title.

“I think having won the last five games we played, our guys are at a high level of confidence,” coach Scott Nagy said. “Obviously, we had to come back from decent deficits in the second half in a couple of those games. That gives you confidence, but I’d prefer not to get in that position, too.”

Bryant (22-9) played an ambitious non-league schedule while starting 6-8, losing to Clemson, Cincinnati and Rhode Island by reasonable margins and to Houston by 67.

Yep, the AAC champs handed the Bulldogs a 111-44 defeat.

“That one wasn’t a lot of fun,” Grasso said with a grimace. “We played as poorly as we can. Losing by 67 points is embarrassing. (Houston coach) Kelvin Sampson apologized to me on the sideline. He told me he had no one else to put in the game — like I was the little brother he felt bad for.

“But it’s a long season. The timing of it was right for us because it gave us time to realize we’re not as good as we think we are. I told my coaches it could be tough early, but that we’ll improve if we keep working at this. And this group did.”

Notre Dame (22-10) and Rutgers (18-13), a pair of No. 11 seeds, play in the second game at approximately 9:10. And, as expected, tickets went fast.

The doubleheader was a sellout by Monday, and tickets on the secondary market are selling on Ticketmaster.com for about $90 for the upper arena and $150 for the lower arena.

Bryant practiced before the Raiders, and ND and Rutgers went afterward. And while the sessions mostly consisted of layup lines and laughs, there was a boisterous cheer at one point.

That was when Wright State studnt manager Dustin Delloma became the first to swish a half-court shot after numerous others tried.

Nagy also was light-hearted throughout the session, chatting much of the time with TV announcers Steve Lavin and Avery Johnson. If he was aggravated at all by being relegated to the First Four, he didn’t show it.

“There was no talk of that. Personally, I don’t want to be a 16 seed. It just makes your road that much tougher. And so, the better the seed, obviously, the better chance you have,” he said. “But I thought to myself, if we’re going to be a 16 seed, then it would be nice to be in Dayton.”

Credit: Jim Noelker

Credit: Jim Noelker

Those that do NCAA bracket projections had both the Raiders and Bulldogs in a play-in game, so it wasn’t a surprise to either.

The 16 seeds in the First Four all had comparable NET rankings: Texas Southern (197), Wright State (191), Bryant (200) and Texas A&M Corpus Christi (241).

The two that went straight to the field of 64 were ranked higher: Georgia State (159) and Norfolk State (156),

“I’m not too caught up in the seed. That stuff doesn’t really affect me, Grasso said. “Could we have been a higher seed? I think so, but it doesn’t matter. They tell you where to go and who to play. And we prepare accordingly. I think our guys will be ready to compete.”

One major perk of playing against a competitive peer is having a real chance of picking up an extra “unit.”

With each NCAA game played, a team earns one unit for its conference. For the 2021 tourney, each unit was worth $337,141.

That amount is paid to the league each year for six years (for a total of $2.022,846). Each school gets an equal share from that payout.

Not that the players need anything more on their shoulders than they already have.

Nagy, who is making his fifth trip to the tourney, knows all about the pressure of March Madness.

“Being at South Dakota State and being here, I think the best seed we’ve had was a 12. You’re playing a 5, a 4, a 3 or a 2. I think those are the numbers we played. And you’re playing a great basketball team. You’d better be ready to go right away and play with confidence,” he said.

“But I really don’t think (the NCAA) is much different than playing in the championship game of your conference tournament. It’s hard to know as a coach how your kids are going to respond until they get there.

“But we’ve seen some flat starts for our teams that we’ve been able to come back from. If that happened, there wouldn’t be much panic.”

WEDNESDAY’S GAME

NCAA First Four at UD Arena

Wright State vs. Bryant, 6:40 p.m., truTV, 980