Grant Basile led all scorers with 27 points for Wright State (20-13), which also got 17 from Trey Calvin, 12 from Tim Finke and 10 from Keaton Norris.
Tanner Holden scored 12 points and grabbed 10 rebounds for the Raiders. Basile also reached double figures in rebounds with 11.
“I think here lately we’ve gotten down in games and haven’t gotten overly discouraged and so we’ve grown from that,” Wright State coach Scott Nagy said. “Now obviously being up is a different feel, but still when they’re making a run you can get discouraged and you can react negatively and our guys didn’t.”
Wright State advanced to the championship game Tuesday night against Northern Kentucky .
The Raiders have won their conference tournament three times, most recently in 2018 when they topped Cleveland State in the championship game to earn their third NCAA Tournament bid in the Division I era.
After a strong first half, Wright State scored the first seven points of the second half to open up a 17-point lead.
Cleveland State (20-10) struck back with a 9-0 run, but Norris stopped that with a 4-point play when he was fouled making a 3-pointer and hit the free throw.
The closest the Vikings got after that was seven on a pair of occasions.
The first time, Finke hit a pair of free throws to steady the Raiders, then Norris hit another trey the next time the Vikings threatened.
“I think that the games leading up to this, several we’ve been down in the second half and remained confident so when they made that run we remained confident,” Nagy said. “Our guys are growing. You can see their belief is growing, so it’s a lot of run for me as a coach to watch.”
The Raiders came out of the gate hot, hitting their first five 3-pointers and 10 of 15 shots from the floor overall.
They missed their next nine, though and Cleveland State cut a 12-point deficit to three at 27-24 with just under six minutes left in the half.
The Vikings had multiple chances to tie it, but they missed a pair of 3-pointers and Tanner Holden drew an offensive foul to stop another possession.
Finke followed that with a baseline jumper, and the Raiders built their advantage back to double digits with 9-0 run.
Holden hit a pair of free throws to keep it going, and he found Basile wide open for a 3-pointer during the spurt.
“I think if you look at some of our games, when we get going early, we’re tough to stop,” Basile said. “We’ve been down lately so getting some easy ones was nice. I got a couple of easy looks where guys were dribbling in and giving me an open spot.”
Cleveland State got it back to 10 at 36-26 on a pair of Yahel Hill free throws with 40 seconds left.
“I thought they played a great style of basketball, no different than they played the first two meetings,” said Cleveland State coach Dennis Gates, whose team won both regular season meetings. “Their shots were falling. Shooting a high percentage is what paralyzed us.”
Trotwood-Madison grad Torrey Patton, a second-team all-Horizon League pick, struggled for CSU. Patton finished with four points on 2-for-10 shooting. Wayne grad Deshon Parker had eight points for the Vikings.
“Hats off to Wright State,” Gates said. “We knew all season no matter what their record was, that program is a championship program. They have great players and obviously a great leader, so hats off to them.”
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