Coming on the heels of the spectacularly dominating performance on the part of the UC Basketball team against the Dayton Flyers on Saturday will test their strength against the Wright State Raiders tonight. Coming off a 20 win season a year ago Wright State was picked to finish 2nd in the Horizon League behind perpetual Horizon League hegemon Butler. On the season the Raiders are 3-3 with the three wins over teams that I have never heard of, or alternately, teams I have known to only be terrible. The losses are thus, blown out against Indiana, and relatively narrow losses to Richmond and Southern Illinois in something called the Chicago Invitational Challenge. An entity whose existence was something that lay far beyond my realm of knowledge until I started doing some rudimentary research on the subject of recent Raider Hoops 10 minutes ago. Obviously being naught but a dream before it's founding in 1964 Wright State isn't knee deep in tradition. Maybe ankle deep, or more probably big toe deep. But they do have some impressive wins since moving up to division 1 in the 87-88 season. Xavier, Michigan State and Butler have all gone down to Wright State while ranked in the last 15 years. The most memorable of them was the Horizon League final in 2007 against Butler which clinched the Raiders second NCAA tournament birth which, as with all American victory celebrations, caused mass hysteria and most probably bodily harm.
As ever time for a few opposing players to watch, or rather listen for since this game won't be on TV.. Wright State is a pretty balanced team offensively. Vaughn Duggins, N'gai Evans and Troy Tabler all average over 12 points a game. They have a new coach this year in Billy Donlon who, while probably not the youngest coach in America certainly looks like the youngest coach in America. Wright State is a decent team, but if UC plays to their potential this should be a blowout.
And now for a good old fashioned intentionally unintentionally hilarious student made video. Got to dig the retro 80'sish background music.
Go Cats!