Wright State Women’s Basketball’s Winning Ways Continue; Men’s Basketball Loses Close One on the Road

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Photos courtesy of Wright State Athletics

The Wright State men’s and women’s basketball teams continued conference play on Sunday afternoon. While one team passed the test with ease, the other team just failed it by one possession.

The men’s team suffered their third straight road loss with a close 75-72 defeat at the hands of the Robert Morris Colonials, while the women’s team won their second straight game with a dominant 77-62 victory over the Youngstown State Penguins.

In Moon Township, PA at the UPMC Events Center, the show had to go on the men’s team and first-year head coach Clint Sargent as they visited Robert Morris without second-leading scorer Alex Huibregtse (HUE-bricks), who didn’t travel with the team because of a back injury he suffered in Thursday’s close win at home over Oakland.

Robert Morris (11-7, 3-4 Horizon) started the game on a 10-2 run, but it turned out to be a neck and neck battle for the rest of the afternoon. Wright State (9-8, 3-4 Horizon) was down 70-69 after an Alvaro Folgueiras bucket, but Brandon Noel tied it up at 70 with a free throw with 1:12 left. Then, Jack Doumbia had the ball stolen by Kam Woods, who took it the other way for easy layup at the other end to give RMU the 72-70 lead before Noel knotted it back up at 72 even with a layup of his own. Then, Amarion Dickerson threw down an alley-oop dunk off a textbook lob pass from Woods that gave the home team the lead back at 74-72. Then, Doumbia took the inbound pass and ran down the court before he got called for a double dribble. Solomon Callaghan would then foul Dickerson, who made one free throw to make it 75-72 with 1.5 left in regulation.

Andrew Welage then threw a perfect inbound pass the length of the court to Noel, who turned around and hit a three-pointer at the buzzer that looked like would’ve sent it into overtime, but officials looked at the replay and it clearly showed that the ball was still in Noel’s hands before the buzzer sounded.

Noel led the Raiders with 16 points (6-of-14 FG), nine rebounds, and four assists. Keaton Norris had 10 points and four assists, but he shot 4-of-10 from the field. Michael Imariagbe finished with seven points and six rebounds in just 13 minutes of action.

Doumbia – who started in place of Huibregtse – filled up the statsheet with 11 points, six rebounds, four assists and three steals. However, he shot 4-of-15 from the field and turned the ball over six times.

The biggest surprise of the day for the green and gold came from Welage, the graduate student from Greensburg, Indiana. Although he came in shooting 23.1 percent from downtown, the 6-6 guard stepped up when WSU needed it the most with a season-high 14 points off the bench while hitting 4-of-6 shots from downtown.

Colonials head coach Andrew Toole had five of his players score in double-figures led by Folgueiras with 16 points along with seven rebounds and four steals. 15 points for Josh Omojafo, 13 each for Dickerson and D.J. Smith, and 11 for Ryan Prather Jr. Woods finished with only four points, but he recorded seven rebounds, five assists and a pair of steals.

The Wright State men shot 41.9 percent overall from the field (26-of-62), 46.7 percent on 3-pointers (7-of-15) and 61.9 percent at the charity stripe (13-of-21).

Robert Morris shot 45.5 percent overall (19-of-54), 31.6 percent from downtown (6-of-19) and 70.4 percent on free throws (19-of-27).

Wright State outrebounded Robert Morris 37-36, but RMU had eight more points in the paint than WSU (34-26). There were 11 ties and 12 lead changes, while both teams each had 24 bench points and 23 personal fouls. As a result, both teams are now in a three-way tie for sixth place with Oakland in the Horizon League standings.

Meanwhile back home, it was a battle of in-state rivals as Kari Hoffman and the Wright State women’s team (4-14, 2-6 Horizon) used a big second half spurt to slide by Youngstown State (7-10, 2-5 Horizon) in the annual T1D Awareness Game with the Raiders wearing light blue warmup shirts.

First-year head coach Melissa Jackson’s Youngstown State squad was up 20-12 at the end of the first period, but Wright State outscored the opposition 65-42 over the last three quarters and even went on an 11-0 run near the end of the third period.

It was the Amaya Staton show at the Nutter Center as she recorded her fifth double-double of the season and almost had a triple-double with 14 points (8-of-11 FG), 16 rebounds and seven blocks. Those seven rejections from Staton ties a program record that was set by Christi Hill in 1982.

The WSU women also had 10 points each from Makiya Miller and Claire Henson, a career-high of 11 points off the bench from Abbie Riddle, nine points from Lauren Scott, and seven points off the bench from Macie Taylor. Olivia Brown filled up the statsheet with eight points, three rebounds, five assists and four starts in just her seventh start of the season.

The Wright State women connected on 44.4 percent on their overall shots (24-of-54), 50 percent of their three-pointers (7-of-14), and 81.5 percent of their free throws (22-of-27).

The Penguins – who waddled back up to Youngstown with their fourth consecutive defeat – were led by Malia Magestro’s 16 points, with 13 points from Jewel Watkins and 12 points off the bench from Haley Thierry (THEER-ee).

Youngstown State shot an abysmal 32.8 percent from the field (25-of-55) and 26.1 percent from beyond the arc (6-of-23), but they did make an outstanding 93.3 percent of their foul shots (14-of-15).

Wright State also outrebounded YSU 41-33, while both squads had 12 turnovers each. The Wright State women have moved up to ninth place in the conference standings, while Youngstown State dropped to eighth.

Notes
– Ellie Magestro-Kennedy, a redshirt freshman guard who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was a freshman in high school, played only four minutes in the contest. It was also the first time that she and her older cousin, Malia Magestro from YSU, have ever played against each other on the same court.
– The men’s and women’s contests were both tied at 34 at halftime.

Up next for Wright State: Hoffman and Sargent’s crews will play against teams from the Hoosier State of Indiana on Wednesday, January 14, with both games being streamed on ESPN Plus.
– The women’s team will make the trip to Indianapolis to visit the IU-Indy Jaguars at 6:30ET/5:30CT at an arena called “The Jungle”.
– The men’s team will return home to face the Purdue-Fort Wayne Mastodons at 7ET/6CT at the Nutter Center.

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