Just Like the Good Old Days in Dayton
by Bill Kintner
DAYTON, Ohio – Former coach Ralph Underhill is the man most associated with basketball at Wright State, and he was sitting in the third row behind the Raider bench for the Horizon League semifinal games at the Nutter Center.
During his 18 years at the helm, he averaged 20 wins a year and won 20 or more games 10 times. He won the Division II National Championship in 1983, won 21 games in just his third year of Division I and guided the Raiders to an NCAA Tournament appearance in his sixth year of Division I. He owns the all-time season win record with 28, which he did twice.
For all of that success he now resides in the Wright State Athletic Hall of Fame.
Underhill looked relaxed in a sport coat and open collar. He is 65 years old and doesn’t look a day over 50. There was a steady stream of fans stopping by to talk with him. There is no doubt that he was the most popular coach in the Nutter Center on Saturday night.
Soft-spoken and friendly, he was open to take the time to chat with anyone who wants to stop by and talk with him.
He is retired for now and living across the river from Cincinnati in Northern Kentucky.
Underhill recently coached and served as general manager in the financially troubled ABA. When pushed a little he admits that he wouldn’t mind getting back into college coaching if the situation was right.
He has kept up with the Raiders on TV and in the paper and he likes what he sees.
“They’ve got some veterans, and it helps if you can get your veterans to come around for you,” observed Underhill. “The coach is doing a good job. It looks like the other teams in the Horizon League, like Butler and Loyola, all seem to be about the same size. There doesn’t seem to be anyone that stands out inside. It looks like the league has a lot of shooters now.”
That is quite a bit different from when Underhill ran the show. He always seemed to be able to land a big man. He had seven-footer Mike Nahaar, current 6’10” NBA player Vitaly Potapenko and 6’11” Steno Kos.
Not only did he have big guys, but he had up-tempo teams that ran, pressed and scored. In the early nineties his teams averaged around 90 points per game.
Before one big game Underhill once boasted that he was going to press the opponents as soon as they got off the bus. When you talk to some of the old-timers who were around when the Raiders played in the old PE Building, it seemed like his teams pressed so much that Wright State was the home of the “Permanent Press.”
Times are different now, the game is different now. There are rarely teams that score over 80 points a game. Defense is where the emphasis is now.
Could Underhill adapt his run and shoot style to the current style of play in college ball?
He thinks he still could. He said that in the ABA his team put up 178 points one night with a 24-second shot clock. He grew up in Kentucky and that is the style he learned to play.
“A lot of teams like to keep it close to the vest, especially in tournaments where it is one and done. But I always liked to put a little room between me and the guy I was playing. My style was to run, fast break, press, switch defenses,” said a smiling Underhill. “I have kept my brand or type of basketball through the years.”
When asked if teams today could still recruit enough good athletes at the mid-major level to play his style of basketball, Underhill thought it could be done. He thinks that you could still get a lot of good talent from Europe like he used to and then get some tweeners – guys who are 6’5″, 6’6″ – from this country. He pointed to Maryland as a team that currently runs and shoots, not like the old UNLV teams under Jerry Tarkanian, but more so than most teams today.
With a crowd of 9,100 at the Nutter Center on Saturday night is was reminiscent of the early nineties when Underhill was the coach. The Nutter Center was new, the Raiders were winning and the crowds were big.
Underhill thinks that the fans will once again fill the Nutter Center if the team can keep winning and the Raiders schedule good teams.
“We had Kentucky on the schedule two or three times, Louisville a couple of times, went to the St. John’s Tournament and the Syracuse Tournament,” he recalled. “So you play some teams like that, we also had Wisconsin at home, so you play good teams and win and that really helps.”
As Underhill chats with fans after the Wright State game, his old assistant coach Bob Grote walks by. He is doing the color commentary on the Wright State Radio Network.
With Ralph Underhill, Bob Grote, a big crowd and a Raider win over Green Bay, it seems like old times in the Nutter Center.
