Michaell Imariagbe led the 23-12 Horizon League champ Raiders with 19 points, including five 3-pointers. Solomon Callaghan followed with 18, knocking down four treys. TJ Burch and Michael Cooper added 15 and 13 respectively. Jacari White’s 26 points led the 30-5 Cavaliers, while Sam Lewis and Malik Thomas chipped in with 12 and 11 respectively.
The Raiders overcame a sluggish first half start to get their offense in gear after the first media timeout. With an unlikely suspect, Imariagbe, who’d made only one 3-pointer all season, finding his stroke with three from beyond the arc, while Callaghan drained four, Wright State surged to a 43-38 halftime lead.
But that quickly vanished after the break when Wright State which had committed just one first half turnover, coughed it up three times in the first two minutes. That caused exasperated Clint Sargent called a quick timeout.
That stopped the ballhandling miscues, but didn’t stop the Cavaliers’ charge. Back-to-back 3s from Lewis and Thijs DeRidder gave Virginia a 51-47 lead. Treys from Cooper and Imariagbe quickly erased that, as the game headed towardsthe home stretch.
The lead see-sawed back and forth until Virginia went on a 9-0 spurt, matching their biggest lead, 67-61, with 7:52 left. But Wright Statr wasn’t done, countering with its own 9-0 run, Callaghan’s free throws making it 70-67 at the 5:32 mark.
That’s when Virginia took command, with White and big man Johan Grunloh doing most of the damage, as the Cavaliers went on a decisive 8-0 run to put it away.
The Raiders started off slow, missing six of their first eight shots, before getting on a roll. Wright State hit five straight, including three from beyond the arc to seize a 19-13 lead on Burch’s layup. Virginia answered back, with Jacari White knocking down the second of his three first-half treys of his own to regain a 26-24 advantage.
But the Raiders responded in this back-and-forth half, Callaghan’s fourth 3-pointer of the making it 39-36, before Burch’s driving layup sent them to the lockerroom up, 43-38.
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