POSTGAME AUDIO WITH JAYLON HALL WHO HAD 19 POINTS
82 Milwaukee 7-10,6-9 Horizon
92 Wright St. 17-4,15-3 Horizon
For the second night in a row, the Wright State men’s basketball team used its offense to pull away with a win, taking down visiting Milwaukee 92-82 on Saturday in the regular season home finale inside the Nutter Center.
The win improved the Raiders to 17-4 overall and 15-3 in Horizon League play, matching their most League wins in program history with last season’s regular season champion squad. Wright State has two regular season games remaining, a back-to-back next weekend at Northern Kentucky. The Raiders will go into that series with a chance to tie and break their program record for most consecutive Horizon League wins, which is 10 set by the 2007-08 team.
For the second straight night, Loudon Love led the Raider offense, turning in 29 points, including 18 in the first half, on 11-of-16 shooting overall with 12 rebounds. He was 7-of-8 at the free throw line and added three assists and a block in 36 minutes of action. The 36 minutes were a season-high and one minute shy of his career-best 37 from February 2018, also against Milwaukee.
With his 21 combined rebounds this weekend, Love moved to third all-time in Horizon League history and now sits on the cusp of 1,100 career boards at 1,096. That figure is tied for 96th-most in NCAA history.
Jaylon Hall joined Love with 19 points of his own off the bench, paced by a 4-of-4 mark from three-point range. Tanner Holden finished just shy of a double-double of his own wit 14 points and nine rebounds, tallying an 8-of-9 mark at the free throw stripe. Trey Calvin was the final double-digit scorer, turning in 13 points with a trio of three-point baskets, adding four assists and three steals.
Grant Basile added to his Horizon League-leading block total with three, and now has 34 on the year.
Wright State used a 24-8 scoring run over six minutes midway through the first half to turn a seven-point lead into 20, extending it to 22 a few minutes later before Milwaukee used a 12-5 run of its own to close the Raider lead to 52-37 at the halftime break.
Both sides traded baskets early in the second half, with the Raiders still holding a double-digit lead at 65-53 at the under-12 timeout. After a pair of Finke free throws, the Panthers cut the margin to six with just under nine minutes to play. Wright State answered with a quick, 7-2 run, aided by a Calvin three and a dunk from Love, to push the lead back to 11, but Milwaukee would not go away.
The visitors pulled within six with under five minutes to play and trailed by seven with 2:41 remaining before a final blitz from the Raiders that saw Calvin hit a final three and a Hall jumper that kept Milwaukee at bay in the closing seconds.
Wright State and Milwaukee each shot 47 percent from the floor overall (Raiders 29-of-62; Panthers 31-of-66) but the Raiders found more success from deep, connecting on 10-of-19 (53 percent) of their three-point attempts to Milwaukee’s seven makes (7-of-20, 35 percent).
The Raiders got it done at the free throw line, going 24-of-26 from the stripe, a 92 percent rate, while Milwaukee had 17 trips to the line, hitting 13 for a 77 percent clip. Wright State won the rebound battle 44-29 and pulled down 28 defensive boards.
GAME RECAP COURTESY WRIGHT STATE ATHLETICS
