Wright State players welcome changes Nagy making

New Wright State coach Scott Nagy always had trouble lining up non-conference home games during his 21 seasons at South Dakota State. Last year’s team played all but four games on the road before starting Summit League play, and only two of the visitors were Division I squads.

That’s why you won’t hear him complain about the Raiders’ mix of seven non-league home games and six on the road. They open the season Nov. 11 at Southern Illinois.

“It’s easier to get home games here than where I was previously. I’m very happy with that,” said Nagy, who added that he doesn’t expect that to last. “I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to get good, and then nobody is going to want to play us here.”

Nagy would gladly accept that problem. It certainly would solve one of the challenges in his program: building a bigger fan base.

The Raiders averaged 4,355 patrons last season and haven’t topped 5,000 per game in the last six years.

“You can do all kinds of promotional things, but there’s really, in my opinion, only one way to do it, and that’s to win,” he said.

“It doesn’t come the other way around. You have to win to get people to show up.”

The Raiders will work toward being worthy of more support when they officially begin preseason practice Monday.

Here are five things to know:

Fire away: The Raiders were one of the nation's most deliberate teams under previous coach Billy Donlon, finishing eighth in the Horizon League at 68.5 points per game.

Nagy likes to push the tempo. South Dakota State was second in the Summit League last year in pace of play, shooting on average just 17 seconds into the shot clock.

“The standard wisdom is that if you play fast, you can’t be good defensively. But the way we’ve done it in the past is to play with good pace and yet still be good defensively. That’s what we expect,” he said.

Turning into a transition team may be a drastic change, but the returnees have embraced it.

“Last year, we’d HOLD the ball for about 17 seconds and then run an action,” junior guard Grant Benzinger said.

Second chances: The Raiders retreated after their missed shots under Donlon to discourage opposing fastbreaks, which worked. But it also made them the league's worst offensive rebounding team.

Nagy is going to risk giving up easy baskets to generate more put-backs.

“They’d shoot ball last year, and five guys would check back. Yeah, it’s tough to run on a team like that, but I think you’re missing out on some opportunities,” Nagy said.

The holdovers like the switch. Not pursuing their misses went against their instincts.

“If a shot goes up, we’re going to crash the glass,” Benzinger said. “That’s way different from last year. It was, hey, let’s get back and build a fort on defense. We’ll still do that, but we’re going to get more points off the glass.”

Go with the flow: South Dakota State made postseason trips in each of Nagy's last five years. How did he do it?

“Good players,” he said.

He also didn’t stifle their creativity. Although they’ll run set plays, Nagy wants the Raiders to take some initiative.

“We give our kids a lot freedom,” he said. “We expect good offensive players to be aggressive. We don’t turn the ball over a lot. Part of that is we shoot it. We don’t hang on to it forever.”

The players won’t miss having to look to the bench before possessions.

“He’s more of coach that relies on the players’ skill and what they have other than his coaching,” junior guard Mark Alstork said. “I love it.”

Potential weakness: The Raiders lack experienced frontcourt players. Third-year sophomore Parker Ernsthausen is the top returnee, and he averaged 1.7 points per game.

But Nagy has made a big addition to the team. Literally.

Louden Love, a 6-9, 300-pound freshman from Geneva, Ill., is expected to get quality minutes. But he’ll be raw. He sat out his senior year in basketball after suffering a knee injury in football.

“Players have already seen he’s going to be a very good addition to the team,” Nagy said.

Getting acquainted: Having spent 21 years at one school, Nagy isn't accustomed to coaching a team filled mostly with players he didn't recruit.

“I told the guys I didn’t expect them to trust us right away, but, hopefully, we can build that trust and they can buy into what we’re doing. For the most part, they’ve already done that,” he said.

“The challenge will be, offensively, what’s a good fit for us? Who should take the most shots? Defensively, we’ll be very good. We’ve got very tough-minded kids. The previous staff did a good job of coaching good athletes.”

About the Author