Wright State ends Bryant's dream season in NCAA Tournament First Four
DAYTON, Ohio — This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
The Bryant men’s basketball team earned its first NCAA Tournament appearance and headed to Dayton filled with confidence that the story of the season was far from over. Wednesday night’s game against Wright State was supposed to be just another chapter of the book.
It ended up being the last.
The Bulldogs, who entertained in Smithfield, Rhode Island, all season playing with the perfect blend of confidence and swagger, looked like a team playing in its first NCAA Tournament game. Bryant played well in spurts but the inconsistency in offensive production made it impossible to keep up with a determined Wright State team playing in its own backyard. The Raiders had the crowd, had the consistency on both ends of the court and handed Bryant a 93-82 loss, ending the best season the Bulldogs have had since becoming a Division I program.
"As a competitor, this doesn't feel real good," Bryant star Peter Kiss said. "But taking a step back from it ... I'm really proud of the guys on my team as well as my coaching staff."
"Our guys played hard enough to win," Bryant coach Jared Grasso said. "We just didn't play well enough to win."
What cost Bryant on Wednesday was its inability to string momentum-building plays together. There were moments in both the first and second half during which it looked as if the Bulldogs were about to go on runs and take over the game — as they have all season — but Wright State refused to cooperate.
The game was never going to be a low-scoring affair. The Raiders, who are not noted for their defense, controlled the game by not letting Bryant’s big two of Kiss and Charles Pride get hot.
While the Bulldogs searched for offensive contributions, Wright State built a lead, slowly and methodically and never looked flustered when that lead dissipated.
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"We didn't play well in the first half. Coach told us in the locker room keep our heads up, that our second half was going to be better," senior Luis Hurtado said. "So we just came out ready to compete. We are a group that work really hard and we never give up.
"And I feel like coming out in the second half, we wanted to make a run, but it's kind of difficult. It didn't play our way."
Bryant was down by seven in the first half, got it down to two and came out of the second half with an emphatic alley-oop dunk, tossed by Kiss to Hall Elisias, that tied the game. All season, a play like that was an indicator of big things to come.
Wright State didn’t let that play affect what it was doing. The Raiders scored five quick points to gain some separation, and then continued to score, score and score some more.
The Bulldogs were getting buckets of their own but not at the same frequency. Wright State’s A.J. Braun made a free throw that put the Raiders up, 67-57, the first double-digit lead of the game, and as quickly as Bryant got it back to single digits, Wright State pushed the lead back to more than 10.
Kiss struggled in the biggest game of his college career — or at least as much as you can when you’re putting up 28 points, 18 of which were scored in the second half.
There was no posing, no swag, no trash talk because the Wright State defense – namely the effort of Tim Finke, who was on Kiss most of the night – wasn’t letting the nation’s top scorer go off. Kiss was settling for jumpers early before trying to get more aggressive, but the officials weren’t giving calls to Kiss, or anyone else for that matter, as he drove to the basket trying to make something happen.
Kiss finished the game with 28, but went 11 of 25 from the field.
"I've been saying it all year – everybody knows Tim's our MVP," Wright State coach Scott Nagy said. "I never worry about how many points a guy scores. I always tell our players, it's how many shots are we going to make him take."
"Our big two, three didn't play as well as theirs," said Grasso, who saw Kiss and Pride – the nation's top scoring duo – get outscored by Wright State's Tanner Holden and Trey Calvin 58-36. "Their guys made shots and plays and ours were not as effective."
Wright State maintained a double-digit lead most of the final 10 minutes. The game was paused for a moment with 6:27 left and Bryant down, 77-63, when the power suddenly went out at UD Arena. It was a moment that would have been the perfect bookmark for a Bryant comeback.
The electricity returned to the court but it didn’t return to the Bulldogs’ offense. Bryant shot 31 of 71 from the field Wednesday night and went 4-for-24 from the 3-point line, 1-for-13 from deep in the second half.
"You get down, there's no seven-point shot," Grasso said. "Unfortunately sometimes you feel like you've got to make a three. We took a couple of rush ones."
The Bulldogs were happy to have the opportunity on Wednesday but unhappy with their inability to take advantage of it and to continue a season that has made for quite a story.
"This experience, its sad it has to end," Hurtado said. "But like [Grasso] said, we gave everything we had and it was not our night."