SAN DIEGO — On the surface, Arizona and Wright State don’t have much in common entering Friday’s first-round showdown of the NCAA Tournament.
The Wildcats are among the favorites to win the national championship. Wright State, the Horizon League Tournament champion, is trying to accomplish something only 1 out of 144 No. 16 seeds have done in college basketball history: Upset a top seed.
The Wildcats rank 19th in college basketball in possessions per game; Wright State is 135th. This is Arizona’s 36th trip to the Big Dance; Wright State is playing in its fourth-ever NCAA Tournament.
Dig deeper into the Arizona-Wright State matchup, however, and the teams aren’t as different as one might think. Wright State ranks 35th in the country in free-throw percentage (76.9%), while Arizona is 103rd (73.8%). In Wright State’s First Four win over Bryant on Wednesday in Dayton, Ohio, the Raiders shot 26 for 32 from the free-throw line.
Guard Tanner Holden hit 14 for 16 from the line, finishing with 37 points.
“They try to play fast and they put foul pressure on you,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said. “There are some similarities in terms of how they share the basketball and how it’s free-flowing. … The similarities are they don’t mind getting up and down the court. They play with great fundamentals and they read and react to a lot of things in the game.”
‘Glue guys’ meet
Like Arizona forward Dalen Terry, who was named to The Athletic’s “All-Glue Guy Team,” Wright State redshirt junior forward Tim Finke, who briefly played at Grand Canyon before transferring to the Raiders, is the team’s “utility guy.”
While Finke doesn’t stuff the box score, he’s a do-everything player that normally guards the opposing team’s best player. Finke guarded Bryant star Peter Kiss and held him to 28 points on 25 shot attempts.
“He’s a great kid, plays extremely hard and he’s your ultimate ‘glue guy.’ You’d say he’s very similar to what Dalen Terry does for us,” said Arizona assistant TJ Benson, who recruited Finke to GCU. “He does whatever he wants, whatever you want him to do for the team and I think he’s found a pretty good spot at Wright State. … He will do anything you need him to do, from guarding the opposing team’s best player to rebound, shooting and passing, he’s always been that guy — even in high school, when I went go see him play his senior year — that’s impacted the game in a lot of ways.”
Lloyd said Finke “is a tough, hard-nosed player and he plays with great effort.”
Wright State trekked from Dayton to Viejas Arena to make its pre-tournament practice at Viejas Arena on Thursday.
“We’re a little tired from the trip, but we’d rather be tired than not be in it,” Nagy said. “We have a tall task in front of us, both figuratively and literally in terms of who we play.”
Emotional season leads to NCAAs
Playing in the NCAA Tournament is a reward for a special season for programs like Wright State, which come from one-bid conferences, but this year’s run is more special to Nagy.
The coach’s father died on Oct. 6, followed by a close family friend that Nagy referred to as his brother.
“And we got off to a terrible start,” Nagy said. “And I wasn’t in a very good spot emotionally, mentally, spiritually. And so I wasn’t much help when we got out to that bad start.”
Wright State’s players lost loved ones as well. Center A.J. Braun’s father died, along with the grandfathers of Holden, forward Grant Basile and James Manns. Nagy’s son, T.J. Nagy, also grieved his grandfather passing. Grieving the deaths of close family members affected Wright State and the emotions trickled onto the court, but it made the Raiders closer as a unit.
“When we were 2-7, our guys were loving on each other. It’s the reason why we were able to turn our season around. Because even when things weren’t very good, we held each other up,” Nagy said. “And so it’s been one of the most rewarding seasons of my 27 years of being a head coach because of that.”
When Wright State held off Northern Kentucky in the Horizon League Tournament championship game, the emotions poured over.
“It was interesting, even after the championship game, you go around some of the parents, and just see the crying. And it’s like none of us had any time to ever grieve any of this stuff because we’re going through this basketball season,” Nagy said, holding back tears. “I didn’t have time to grieve it. Bawled like a baby after. Just hugged my wife, just not being able to grieve my dad’s death because of everything else that was going on.”
No bad guys
Win or lose against Arizona, Nagy’s 27th season as a head coach is one that may go down as his most memorable one.
“I don’t have a guy on this team that just eats up all my energy in terms of his attitude, have to worry about him every day when he comes to practice. And they just have been a very giving group,” he said.
“It’s not easy in this day and age, it just isn’t. I don’t care what anybody says. In 27 years, I’ve seen this change. It’s a very self-serving sport. And it has become more so — and the entitlement has grown for sure. We just haven’t seen a bunch of it on our team. And it’s been a joy for me to coach this team because of that.”
