Not that Sargent isn’t grateful for the commitment of his staff and players. But the results fell far short of his expectations.
“Obviously, I’m disappointed looking back at our year. I felt like we were incredibly close to clicking, and it just didn’t happen,” he said.
“The number of close losses, I felt, really kept this team from feeling confident about itself.”
The Raiders finished 2-9 in games decided by no more than four points and overtime games.
They may have to swallow some of that and say they just weren’t good enough. But sometimes the opposition helps out with miscues in the final minute, and that rarely happened.
“I felt like it took us too long to jell and become a team. The chemistry and my ability to get everybody in the boat — how we were going to win and how it could look collaboratively — we needed the whole team, and it took us a while to understand that,” he said.
Sargent’s top objective was to get his players to not look at defense like a kid forced to eat peas. But the Raiders made only modest progress there.
The most positive outcome was in the program’s goal of holding teams to no more than one point per possession. They did it 10 times this year, twice as often as last season.
But they were only 294th out of 364 teams in points allowed at 76.4 per game after finishing 341st last season at 81.2.
They’re 331st out of 364 teams in defensive efficiency (points allowed per possession) after finishing 341st a year ago.
“The identity of our team fell back into the groove of being an offensive-minded team. That pattern for our teams here at Wright State has to break. It has to change. That starts with me,” Sargent said.
The Raiders were dynamic again on offense: eighth nationally in field-goal shooting (49.4%), 17th in 3-point shooting (39.4%) and 89th in points per game (77.3).
But along with their indifference toward defense, they often were out-muscled on the boards. They finished with a plus-1.8 rebound margin per game but opponents racked up more offensive rebounds (328-307), which can be killers.
“As the season went on, it just felt like our identity became offense, and inconsistency on defense was there. And you can’t win if you can’t rebound the ball and be better defensively night in and night out. And we just weren’t,” Sargent said.
Actually, optimism was soaring around the program after a promising start. OK, aside from the Kentucky debacle to open the season.
They were 7-5 and had wins over Miami (22-8 going into the weekend) on the road, Marshall (19-12) at home and Princeton (18-10) in the Myrtle Beach Invitational.
The Raiders looked to be the second-best team in the Thanksgiving week tourney since they also took eventual champion Bradley (24-7) to the buzzer in a 77-74 setback.
But the momentum stalled when they returned home and fell to Youngstown State by 10, followed by two road losses. It was a grind after that.
They allowed 74.2 points in the first 12 games and 79.1 in the final 21.
“Our best players have to will that to change, and I have to do a better job of getting that to happen,” Sargent said of a defensive mindset.
“It’s just not been in place here for the last few years. But it WILL change, and we WILL win — and that’ll be the most important ingredient.”
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