The Wright State men’s basketball team played another good game today, but they turned out to be on the right side of the result in their 78-70 win over the Northern Kentucky Norse and snapped a three-game road losing streak as well.
NKU scored the first three points of the afternoon on a three-point play from LJ Wells, but WSU countered back and then some with an 11-0 run. Later on, Wright State was up 28-21 before Northern Kentucky cut the deficit down to one with a three-ball from Josh Dilling and a three-point play from Keeyan Itejere. After Andrea Holden hit a free throw to make it 29-27, before Sam Vinson hit a pair of shots from the line to knot it up again at 29 all before Dilling hit another trey ball to give the Norse the 32-29 advantage.
WSU then took the 33-32 lead on back-to-back buckets from Jack Doumbia and Keaton Norris before a foul shot was made from Itejere to make it 33 all. Then, the green and gold took the halftime lead at 40-33 after a 7-0 run with a Holden dunk and five consecutive points from Doumbia. Ironically, Clint Sargent’s guys never trailed in the game again after that.
It was 49-43 in the middle of the second half until the Raiders had their grew their biggest lead of the day with an 11-point margin thanks to a layup from Brandon Noel (noll) and a three from Andrew Welage, which made it 54-43. It also went from 58-52 to another 11-point game at 63-52 until Alex Huibregtse a foul shot and a layup before Norris hit a shot of his own. Near the end of the game, Itejere cut the deficit down to three at 73-70 with 1:04 to go, but the Raiders scored the last five points of the day thanks to a layup from Noel, a pair of made free throws by Norris, and another foul shot by Noel to put the cream cheese on the bagel.
Norris had the best scoring performance of his career with 21 points on 8-of-11 shooting to go with three rebounds, five assists, and no turnovers. 15 points and eight rebounds off the bench for Doumbia, 12 points and six rebounds for Noel, 11 points for Huibregtse, and eight points and eight rebounds off the bench for Michael Imariagbe.
Wright State didn’t shoot too well overall today, making only 47.6 percent of their shots from the field (30-of-63) and 38.9 percent of their three-pointers (7-of-18). However, they outrebounded NKU 41-29 and committed only 10 turnovers.
Darrin Horn had four Norse players in double-figure scoring: 17 points each from Dilling and Trey Robinson, 11 points and eight rebounds from Itejere, and 10 points from Vinson. Dilling shot 4-of-6 from the beyond the arc.
Northern Kentucky only turned the ball over nine times, but they weren’t too good shooting the ball themselves, hitting just 39.6 percent of their shots (21-of-53) and 40 percent of their trey balls (6-of-15).
Both teams shot 68.8 percent from the foul line, with WSU at 11-of-16 and NKU at 22-for-32. As a result of today’s contest, the Raiders (10-10 overall) and Norse (9-11 overall) are tied for 7th place in the Horizon League standings since they are both 4-5 in conference play.
Up next: Wright State returns home to the Nutter Center on Wednesday, January 22 to host the Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panthers for a 7ET/6CT tip-off.
