The WSU Men’s basketball team moved into first place last Friday by beating the NKU Norse 69-67. The Raiders swept their season series with the Norse while improving to an impressive 13-2 at the Nutter center this season.
Over seven thousand fans piled into the Nutter Center for a game that was nationally televised on ESPNU.
The first half proved to be a competitive matchup. The score went back and forth between he two teams. When the buzzer sounded for halftime, the Raiders held a 32-30 lead. Everett Winchester had nine points to lead the team. The Raiders struggled to defend NKU’s Tyler Sharpe in the first half, as he went off for 14 points, including three three-point baskets.
The second half saw WSU take leads as big as 12. NKU made a run to cut the lead to three with under five minutes remaining. From there the teams kept it close but WSU got the win with a late second shot from true freshman Jaylon Hall. Loudon Love had a perfect second half with 10 points on five for five shooting. He led the team with 15 points while Parker Ernsthausen and Jaylon Hall added 10 points each.
After the game, Ernsthausen and Love spoke about the effect of such a large crowd and how this was a very important game. Ernsthausen looked back at last season as well and said “It means a lot after they got us three times last year. We won there earlier which is a lot but tonight was special with the big crowd. That was the biggest crowd I’ve seen in four years… they were a big part tonight.” Love added that, “"It was a high-emotion game like Parker said, huge crowd… but we still have work to do, three more games coming up.”
Coach Scott Nagy recognizes that the team didn’t rebound well, but they were able to persevere and get the win. “They whipped us on the glass… it’s not very often you get beat ten on the glass and win the game. We were good defensively and we didn’t turn the ball over.” He also added that, “it was great to have a crowd like this for our guys to play so well and so hard.”
WSU is back at the Nutter Center on Monday, Feb. 19 to take on Cleveland State. WSU will be celebrating senior night and will have a pre-game ceremony to recognize Grant Benzinger and Trey Stacey.
![Wright State currently has plans to redevelop the basement of the Russ Engineering Center into an innovation lab, which would be named the Ronald D. Bullock/Bison Gear Innopreneurship Laboratory.
The project, which will cost a total of two million, is to be funded in part by a philanthropic gift from Ronald D. Bullock, alumnus of the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
Given the recent budgetary situation the college does not anticipate direct university dollars to complete this project, according to Nathan Klingbeil, professor and dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. It is seeking public funding to cover the remaining one million.
Bullock’s gift includes an endowed faculty position -- that means that curriculum would be designed around, and be taught by a faculty member trained in “the scholarship of design and innovation,” according to Klingbeil.
The lab will be “a design and innovation space where students can take concepts all the way from an idea to an actual product,” said Klingbeil. “The whole idea is to create a shared space for interdisciplinary projects.”
Another focus of the laboratory is to promote entrepreneurship. The College of Engineering has been developing the lab with the Raj Soin College of Business.
Through discussions with Bullock, the College of Engineering aligned its own needs with his passion “to produce the types of engineers that the manufacturing community needs: people who don’t just have books skills, but people […] with the ability to make, design, build, and even think about the business plan,” said Klingbeil.
The gift agreement was put into place since 2014. Designing phases of the lab were started shortly after the agreement was signed; the lab was originally expected to be completed in the summer of 2016. The delay has been caused by the university holding off on new construction projects, as well as the passing of the donor and the estate settlement process, according to Klingbeil.
Currently there is no definitive timeline for the completion of the project. Since it would be difficult to complete a project of this scale during the academic year, it is anticipated to be completed during the summer of either 2018 or 2019, according to Klingbeil. “It’s an exciting project [that] has been a long time coming,” he said.
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