Four seconds remained, and WSU diagramed a play, but it didn’t come off and Vaughn Duggins’ short baseline jumper from the right bounced off the rim as the final score, Miami 56, Wright State 55, flashed overhead.
“We didn’t execute,” WSU coach Brad Brownell said on Sunday, Dec. 13. “It wasn’t what we were trying to do.”
So now he knows a little about the other side. In Brownell’s first game as WSU’s head coach, his team won at Millett Hall by a point on a final play. The next year in Fairborn, the Raiders won again, on a 3-point buzzer-beater by Todd Brown.
Last season, the RedHawks crushed the Raiders in Fairborn, but this game returned to the texture of the two earlier slugfests.
“That ball went up,” said Kenny Hayes, a Miami senior from Northmont High School. “It looked like it was going in and I said, ‘please don’t let it be good.’ ”
It wasn’t good, even though Duggins thought his shot might turn the game.
“I thought it was right on,” Duggins said, “but a couple things went wrong on that play.”
Wright State carried a seven-point lead into halftime as two Miami turnovers resulted in five WSU points.
“I could have wrecked the locker room there,” Miami coach Charlie Coles said. “I could have been on that the rest of my life. I’m glad I didn’t go crazy.”
Instead, he somehow refocused Miami on the rest of the game, and when Hayes drove for a layup with 21.3 seconds to play, Miami had the lead, 56-55, for the first time since very early in the game.
“At the end of the day, if you told me we would hold them to 56, I’d be happy with that,” Brownell said.
He wasn’t smiling when he said it.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2157 or mkatz@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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