Raiders upbeat, foggy future aside
Team resumes campus workouts with no real guarantee of a season.
Scott Nagy has been a college basketball head coach since 1995, but he has not faced the start of a season quite like this one.
Nor has he faced an end of a season like the last one.
His Wright State men’s team was preparing for an NIT bid when that event was washed away in a sea of cancellations caused by the coronavirus.
Four months later, the pandemic continues, but the Raiders are back at the Mills-Morgan Center preparing for another season — if and when that might start.
“It’s been bizarre for sure,” Nagy said Thursday in an interview conducted outside the practice facility to promote social distancing. “I’ve had some people ask me if I have seen anything like this, and I haven’t. I don’t think anybody else can answer that honestly and say that they have, so it’s frustrating because we’d like to be more hands-on working with them and be around them because we know they’d do better when we’re with them, but we’re thankful the university is letting us come back and work out and be with them.
“I know the players are happy to be back. Even though it’s unusual and some of it is frustrating, it’s still better than not being with them.”
The NCAA allowed coaches and players to begin working together this week, and the Raiders are taking advantage while maintaining best practices to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
That includes requiring face coverings inside campus facilities, conducting interviews with social distancing and/or face covering and media filming practice from behind glass in a viewing room.
Players are scheduled to train in staggered groups each day, another effort to prevent the virus from spreading too far if someone does get it.
Up to eight hours a week of required activities are allowed at this point in the calendar.
“After every group works out, we want to make sure that the next group is safe to work out, so we’re again doing everything that we can try to follow the protocols and keep everybody healthy,” Nagy said.
“Right now, we’re not doing anything competitively where they’re going one-on-one or twoon-two where they’re very close to each other and facing each
other. It’s a lot of fundamental work with shooting and cutting and passing but none of the live one-on-one, twoon-two stuff.
“The other thing is just getting used to the protocols and making sure the guys come in and wear their masks, check in, take their temperatures, answer all the questions of whether or not they’re sick. We’re keeping them in pods, groups of guys that work with each group so that in case anyone in that group gets sick we’re able to shut that group down and the other guys can still continue to work out.”
The Raiders were 25-7 last season and won the Horizon League regular season title. They were upset in the semifinals of the league tournament in Indianapolis but were still guaranteed a bid to the NIT.
This season they return Horizon League Player of the Year Loudon Love but must replace point guard Cole Gentry and sharp-shooter Bill Wampler.
While college football schedules are in the process of being changed at multiple levels, a report from Sports Illustrated earlier this month indicated the idea of starting early, before the second week in November, had been floated with the thought a resurgence of the coronavirus could require the season to be paused in late November or December.
“I’ve learned not to have an opinion on those things because it doesn’t really matter when it’s something you can’t control,” said Nagy, who noted starting the season early might not make sense since players did not have the usual allotment of summer workouts.
He also acknowledged a later start to the season could be possible.
“Whatever we have to do to get a season in, particularly for our one senior Loudon Love, we want to make sure we’re able to do it,” he said.