RELATED: New Wright State coach a man of the world
Wright State introduces Nagy as new coach
But while there will be an incremental increase in free time in the coming days, it won’t last long with the summer practices set to begin in a few weeks.
Nagy spent one his recent breaks sitting down with the Dayton Daily News to talk about how the transition is going and where it is headed:
Q: In the seven weeks you've been here, have you learned anything about Dayton or Ohio that you didn't know before?
A: There's a lot that I didn't know. I hadn't been in the state of Ohio much, so I am learning. I've learned a lot about the area just driving around looking for a house. I feel like I know this east side of 675 better than anybody right now. One thing I do like about it is, from Dayton you can get to a lot of areas very quickly. The recruiting area has just shrunk for us. You can drive three hours in South Dakota and not hit a person. I can go out the back door and trip over a player here. But there's more competition for players, too. More schools and everything. But it's great because we've been able to have guys on campus here that we never would have been able to have at South Dakota State.
Q: Have you found a new favorite restaurant in the area?
A: That's a hard one because there's so many. I don't know that I've eaten at one more place more than once to this point. My wife Jamie and I's favorite place to eat is PF Chang's. I know they have one here, and our anniversary is coming up, so we're going to go there. About five years ago when we lived in South Dakota, the closest one was Omaha, which is three and a half hours away. On our anniversary one year we drove there and back just to eat at PF Chang's. We figured that was seven hours in the car when we could talk.
Q: Your anniversary isn't the only big date coming up. Do you have any big plans for your 50th birthday next month?
A: Jamie wants me to come back to South Dakota. No matter where you are, you have friends because you're a coach and then you have your real friends. Now that I'm not the coach at South Dakota State, I think I obviously have less friends in South Dakota then I had before. I think my wife will find that out. She's trying to invite people. It would have been a lot easier to invite people to a 50th birthday party for the coach of South Dakota State as opposed to the coach at Wright State. I always said to her, 'If I wasn't the coach, I wonder how many friends we'd really have.' But we have some great friends there. We really do. And I'm looking forward to going back and being with my family.
Q: In the limited free time you have, what type of hobbies do you enjoy?
A: I golf, but I'm not in love with golf. It's hard when you're gone so much with your job, then when you have some time to do stuff, golf is something that takes a lot of time. If I'm going to do something, I want to be good at it. With golf, if you want to be good at it, you have to spend a lot of time with it. It's just not real conducive, particularly from a basketball coach standpoint, doing that and then trying to be a good husband to your wife and a good father to your kids. You'd just never be around. I've never been really good at golf and probably never will be. But as the kids get a little older and are gone a little more, I have found myself golfing some more.
Q: What kind of things will you be looking for when you get the players in the gym for summer workouts?
A: Our philosophy has always been to recruit really good offensive players and spend most of our time working on defense and the toughness part. In the spring, summer and fall, usually my assistant coaches run the workouts. It's a lot of individual skill development, offensive skill development. Once we get to October, I get much more involved and we spend more time working on defense and the things players don't generally work on when they walk into the gym. Generally guys don't go into the gym and work on defensive slides and or rebounding or diving on the floor for loose balls and things like that. We've always been pretty good offensively because we recruit good offensive players and we let them play. I think the main reason we've been successful is we demand other things like defense. That's what's most important to me. One thing that we've noticed since we've been here with these players is that they're tough kids. (Former coach Billy Donlon) has done a good job of recruiting tough kids. We feel like we add to need to some offensive skill to it, but the start is already there because these guys are tough, they're gritty and get after each other, so we know we're going to be good defensively.
Q: What is you philosophy on scheduling non-league opponents, and how close are you to finalizing this year's slate?
A: It could be August or September before we're done with it. We're just trying to get a good balance. It's easy to get road games. It's hard to get home games. At this level, it's really hard. We would play anybody anywhere, but we don't want to play too many of those games. It depends on your team that you have coming back. You don't want to beat them up. You do want to challenge them. We do want to get to the point where we're playing a schedule — and it's hard to do — but I would like to get to the point where we're playing a schedule that would make it possible for us to get an at-large bid by the end of it. Now that means you have to play a pretty good schedule, and you need to win a lot of those games. The problem with that is, if you have a really good team and you have a chance to get an at-large bid, none of those teams are going to play you. They all do their homework, and they know who's leaving and who's coming back and what teams are going to be good. So if you're looking to go get guaranteed games, one where they're going to pay you $90,000 or $100,000, if you have a good team, that don't want to play you. It doesn't make any sense to them. At this level, that's probably the most difficult thing we do is schedule.
Q: There are a lot of new coaches coming into the Horizon League this year. Do you see that turnover as an advantage?
A: I think everybody sees it as an advantage. There have been a lot of good players that have transferred out or left their programs, so I think everybody looks at it and feels like it's wide open right now. I'm sure they all feel to some extent that this will be a good year for any team to jump up and win it.
About the Author