This was supposed to be Wright State’s last easy game, one more breather before the crucible of Horizon League play began. Division I teams are supposed to crush Division III teams. That’s just how it works — but not always.

Cincinnati, then ranked 11th and unbeaten, probably expected to rout Wright State a week ago, but the Raiders led 28-22 at halftime. This time, the tables were reversed on the Raiders, who had to overcome a 22-21 halftime lead to beat Mount St. Joseph 58-49 at the Nutter Center on Sunday.

“There’s great parity in the game of basketball,” Wright State coach Billy Donlon said. “Eight days ago, we played Cincinnati, and everything thinks we’re playing well. Now we’re in a dogfight in our home gym against a team everyone expects us to beat by a lot. We were bad. Mount St. Joseph had something to do with that, but we were bad.”

Wright State (9-4) opens Horizon play against the only two teams in the conference with losing records. The Raiders host Green Bay (5-7) at 7 p.m. Thursday and Milwaukee (4-10) at 7 p.m. Saturday. They then host Cleveland State (8-5) at 7 p.m. on Jan. 9 before a stretch of four road games.

“It’s going to be tough,” junior Cole Darling said. “There are a lot of good teams this year. We have to get back to playing the basketball we know we can play, great defense and everything.”

Six Raiders who appeared in Sunday’s game have never played a Horizon League game.

“We tried to use the Miami game as a big example of what a Horizon League game is,” Donlon said. “Miami is in a good league. It’s somewhat comparable to our league. But the game itself, the rivalry, the intensity, the physicality, was very similar to our league games.”

Shooting woes: The Raiders have had their two worst 3-point shooting performances of the season in their last two home games. They made 3-of-13 against Miami and 1-of-15 against Mount St. Joseph.

Until Reggie Arceneaux got a 3-pointer to roll in during the second half, the Raiders were 0-of-11 from long range.

“Things just weren’t dropping,” Darling said. “That goes back to being focused. We just didn’t have a good night.”

Yoho sick: Freshman J.T. Yoho played only two minutes because he came down with the flu Sunday morning. He was coming off a 13-point performance against Cincinnati.

“I gave him a minute or two, but you could tell he was paler than me,” Donlon said. “That’s not a good sign.”

Around the league: The Raiders became the fourth Horizon League team to reach nine wins, following Valparaiso (10-4), Loyola (9-3) and Illinois-Chicago (9-3).

Those four teams lead the league in scoring defense with Wright State ranking first. Loyola, UIC and Wright State were picked to finish seventh, eighth and ninth in the league.