Cold shooting start dooms Wichita State basketball in third straight loss downtown
In the least-attended downtown game in the 13-year history of the event, the Wichita State men’s basketball team gave the fans who were in attendance on Saturday night little to cheer for.
Not even a late flurry of points could save the Shockers from what was their worst offensive slump of the season in a 79-69 loss to South Dakota State in front of 4,076 fans.
It was the third straight defeat for WSU at Intrust Bank Arena and the fifth in the last seven games there. It was also the second straight loss this season for the Shockers (7-3) and their first in Wichita under first-year coach Paul Mills.
“If you go 11-of-43 around the rim on 2-point tries, you probably know it’s going to be a long night,” Mills said. “Unfortunately, it was a long night for us.”
Mills believes it will be an outlier performance from a WSU team that had used its size and athleticism all season to score efficiently this season. The Shockers entered Saturday ranked top-70 nationally in 2-point percentage (53.8%) but shot a season-worst 25.6% inside the arc against the Jackrabbits.
South Dakota State isn’t a particularly good defensive team defending the rim, but it did make an effort to force WSU to finish over its players in the paint. Those were shots WSU had proven capable of finishing, but on Saturday, the Shockers clanged shot after shot from point-blank range.
“Don’t get discouraged because one or two or three or four don’t fall,” said WSU guard Colby Rogers, who scored a team-high 21 points. “I think that kind of got to us a little bit. We missed a couple of easy ones and started overthinking it. We’ve got to have short-term memory and keep attacking, keep being aggressive. The worst thing you can do is take your foot off the gas and let them discourage you.”
The best way to demonstrate how much meat WSU left on the bone was to examine the rebounding battle. The Shockers grabbed 11 more offensive rebounds than South Dakota State, 18-7, yet were outscored 9-8 in second-chance points.
WSU was averaging 39.8 points in the paint, with at least 34 in every game, but finished Saturday’s game with just 18.
“If you told me we were going to be plus-11 on the O-glass and we were going to have 43 opportunities at 2, I would have said it would be a pretty good night,” Mills said. “We’ve got to do better at our conversion rate around the rim.”
“They did have a big size advantage and they had 18 offensive rebounds, but more importantly to us they only had eight second-chance points,” South Dakota State coach Eric Henderson said. “That tells me we didn’t quit playing. We made them score over the top of us and that’s what our plan was.”
It was hard not to become discouraged during a 10-minute stretch that bled into the start of the second half where Wichita State scored a total of three points spanning 19 possessions that featured 18 missed shots, two missed free throws and three turnovers.
That turned a 23-20 lead for the Shockers into a 40-26 deficit before Mills had to burn a timeout three minutes into the second half.
“I have 100% faith that we’ll learn from this,” WSU junior Harlond Beverly said. “We know what to do, we just have to continue to improve on it.”
After scoring 39 points (0.68 points per possession) in the game’s first 31 minutes, the Shockers rallied to score 30 points (1.76 points per possession) in the final nine minutes. WSU shot a season-high (against Division I competition) 40.7% on 3-pointers with 11 makes beyond the arc.
But not even the best scoring flurry of the season could save WSU from the 17-point hole it dug.
WSU trimmed the deficit to 66-57 with 3:30 remaining, but Zeke Mayo, a Lawrence native, sealed the victory with five straight points to help the Jackrabbits, the preseason favorite in the Summit League, improve to 5-5 this season. Mayo finished with a game-high 25 points, six rebounds, seven assists, two steals and eight turnovers.
“It was heartwarming to see all of my friends and family in the stands,” Mayo said. “But I just treated this like another basketball game, honestly. I’m so locked in to our team right now and just finding ways to help us improve and win games.”
While the two sides hadn’t played since 2017, the opposing coaches were very familiar with one another. Mills, who came from Oral Roberts, squared off against Henderson’s teams nine times in the Summit League the last four years, with Henderson holding a slight 5-4 edge.
“I have a lot of respect for Paul and how he runs his program,” Henderson said. “They’re going to play a fun style of basketball as he continues to get this thing built up with his culture and his guys. I think fans here are going to see a fun style, an up-tempo style with size and guys who can really shoot it. It’s going to be a quality brand of basketball.”
Rogers tied his season-high with five 3-pointers, while Beverly added 18 points on 4-of-12 shooting with six rebounds, four assists, four turnovers and two steals. Kenny Pohto grabbed 13 rebounds, including eight on the offensive end, but struggled to ever find his touch in a 3-for-12 performance for nine points and five turnovers. Xavier Bell drilled a WSU career-high three 3-pointers to finish with 11 points, but he finished just 1-for-11 inside the arc.
While WSU’s offensive attack had more brunt force, South Dakota State employed a drive-and-kick style that generated cleaner looks. The Jackrabbits also punished WSU just about every time it turned the ball over, six times hitting 3-pointers (Kalen Garry had 22 points with five of those 3-pointers) immediately following turnovers and finishing with a 24-8 advantage in points off turnovers despite the two teams finishing just one turnover apart.
“The good thing is that you can grow from losses. It isn’t as if it’s debilitating,” Mills said. “You learn from it and we’ll get in the film room and we’ll grow.”
