After being down by 20 at one point, Wright State has the ball with 8 seconds left, going for the win against Northern Kentucky.
TJ Burch is bringing up the ball. With a full head of steam, he goes downhill, spinning off LJ Wells by the free-throw line. Bruch finds an angle and flips it up over Well. “Clank,” hitting off the backboard and the back of the rim, as the ball comes off the cylinder.
WSU’s Michael Imariagbe boxes out his defender. Tracking the ball out of the air, he takes flight, tipping the ball. “Swish.” The ball goes through the net with 0.2 seconds left on the clock as the Raiders took the one-point lead, 92-91.
With no time to get a shot up for NKU, they couldn’t get anything on the inbound. Wright State players run onto the court when the final buzzer buzzes, celebrating their 20-point comeback win over the Norse. Wight State wins 92-91 on Feb. 28.
This win moves Wright State to the top of the league, holding a record of 20-11 overall and 15-5 in league play, going into the Horizon League Tournament. This loss for NKU has them at the seven-seed in the tournament with a record of 18-13 overall and 10-10 in league play.
For Wright State, it was an all-around performance as five raiders had more than 12 points on the night, with Kellen Pickett leading the way. Pickett finished with 19 points and seven rebounds. Imariagbe, the hero for WSU, finished with a double-double. He had 15 points and 16 rebounds.
Dan Gherezgher and Donovan Oday both showed out on senior day with 21 points apiece.
In the first half, it started as a back-and-forth battle. Solomon Callaghan scored 12 of Wight State’s 14 points in the first six minutes. The Norse started to take over, going on an 8-0 run in the middle of the first half to take the first 10-point lead of the game, 26-26.
NKU kept piling it on, going on multiple small runs to get the lead as big as 20 points with a minute left in the half. Wright State got the last basket of the half to cut the lead to 18 going into halftime.
Coming out of halftime once again, it was a battle for seven straight minutes. Wright State kept cutting into the lead one by one, getting the game to a 10-point lead, still in NKU’s favor.
The Norse retained the lead for the next five minutes until the six-minute mark. The Norse were up by 13, looking to close out the game. Wright State went on a 9-0 run to cut the game to four, 84-80.
The Norse got the lead back within five, with two minutes to go, but Wright State went on a 7-0 run to take a two-point lead, 90-88. Oday, with the game on the line, went into contact and scored the layup, getting an and one. He converted the three-point play to take the one-point lead, 91-90, with eight seconds left.
The next play for WSU was etched into the history of the I-75 rivalry, as the Raiders won off a tip-in with milliseconds left in the game. Winning the game 92-91.
In the final play of the game, in which Wright State won, head coach Darrin Horn believes his team played great defense and guarded the play as he wanted.
“Forced a really tough two LJ switched into it. Now you get a six, seven guy on a guard, really difficult shot,” Horn said. “We just got to do a better job of putting a body on a guy and not let him get a tipping because again, he tips the ball under a second on the clock. It goes through with point two on the clock. So literally, if he just has, if he’s just knocked off just a little bit, he’s not getting that tip in.”
With seven seniors on the team, Horn believes all of those players have impacted the team in a major way.
LJ Wells and Mitchel Minor have been at NKU their whole collegiate career. Horn was honored to be able to coach them throughout that time.
“They’re both guys that love NKU and have stayed and been an important part of the program because of how much this place means to them. And I think a big part of that is because of how they feel like they’ve been treated, and they’re respected by the Norse Nation. And so, really, they mean an awful lot,” Horn said.