Houston’s trips to Koch Arena have brought the best out of Wichita State basketball

Houston’s trips to Koch Arena have produced some of the most memorable games in Wichita State’s brief history in the American Athletic Conference.

From the 18-point rout in the Roundhouse in WSU’s first home AAC game in 2018 to the dramatic victory by the Shockers in 2021 for their highest-ranked home win in 54 years to the double-overtime thriller won by the Cougars last year, Houston has consistently brought out the best in WSU at home.

With the Cougars slated to leave the conference for the Big 12 this summer, Thursday’s 8 p.m. game (ESPN2 broadcast) marks Houston’s final trip to Koch Arena for the foreseeable future.

“I’ve learned a lot from (coaching against Houston),” WSU head coach Isaac Brown said. “When I first got here to Wichita State, it was all about defending and rebounding and playing with toughness. And Kelvin Sampson is one of the best coaches in the country, just from watching his teams from afar, the culture of those guys, the way they play hard and they defend. It’s not all about offense with them. They basically play football, in a good way. They’re the first team on the floor for 50-50 balls. They check out. They go to the glass like nobody I’ve ever seen before. Those guys find a way to win with their toughness.”

Since WSU joined the American, Houston has been the measuring stick for the conference. The Cougars have won at least a share of the AAC title in three of the last five seasons, finished in the top-20 of KenPom’s rankings each season and notched back-to-back Elite 8 appearances the last two seasons.

Houston’s sustained brilliance is why the series with WSU in Wichita has always felt like an event. Under Sampson, beating the Cougars has always felt significant.

That played a role in why the atmosphere was so electric on Jan. 4, 2018 when Houston was the unlucky visitor for WSU’s first home AAC game. A high-profile matchup, a national-television audience and a sold-out Koch Arena lit the match, then the No. 9-ranked Shockers set the building ablaze with 10 first-half 3-pointers. There might not have been a team in the country that could have withstood the tidal wave of emotion from that night in Wichita.

“They just sucked us down a dark alley and pulled out AKs on us from every direction,” Sampson said after WSU’s 18-point rout. “I didn’t know to look in front of me, behind me, up on the windows. We were walking on grenades. They just blew us up.”

Brown, an assistant at the time, still remembers the electricity in the atmosphere watching Landry Shamet, Conner Frankamp, Shaquille Morris and Markis McDuffie make three after three that evening.

“The players couldn’t hear themselves talking to each other on the court it was so loud,” Brown said. “Hopefully we can generate that type of fan support for this game because we need those guys here. It’s like having a sixth man out there on the floor and it gives our guys that energy to go out and play hard.”

Houston’s trip to Koch Arena in 2021 proved to be a monumental game in the program’s history, as the Shockers rallied for a 68-63 win over the No. 6-ranked Cougars for their highest-ranked home win since 1967.

Not only did the victory catapult WSU to the top of the conference standings, ultimately allowing the Shockers to win their first and only AAC championship in a pandemic-shortened season, but the win also led to Brown, who was the interim coach at the time, being named the full-time head coach just eight days later.

Brown said this year’s Shockers can take a lesson from that 2021 title squad ahead of Thursday’s game.

“We defended, we rebounded and we played with toughness that game,” Brown said. “And the biggest thing in that game was every time the ball was shot, our guys trusted the scouting report and they found somebody to go check out. So we’ll go back and show these guys a lot of those check-outs. In order to win this game, we’ve got to check out.”

The rivalry hasn’t gone the way WSU imagined when it arrived in the American. While the two teams have produced classics at Koch Arena, Houston has dominated the series away from Wichita, winning all six times by an average of 12.7 points.

But in Wichita, it’s a different story — regardless of record.

Houston was well on its way to another AAC title and WSU was mired in a disappointing bottom-half finish last season, yet the Shockers played their best game of the season in a double-overtime 76-74 loss to Houston.

So even though WSU (11-10, 4-5 AAC) enters again with a mediocre record and No. 3 Houston (20-2, 8-1 AAC)) once again sits on top of the conference, Sampson is expecting a battle on his final trip to Wichita.

“They call it the Roundhouse and it is a loud house,” Sampson told Houston Roundball Review this week.”Wichita State has always had great fans. That’s been one of the great programs for a long time. Their fans, their history, they’ve got a legacy of a great winning tradition, so every time you go there, you know you’re in for a fight.”

No. 3 Houston at Wichita State basketball preview

Records: Houston 20-2, 8-1 AAC; WSU 11-10, 4-5 AAC

When: 8 p.m. Thursday

Where: Koch Arena (10,506), Wichita

TV broadcast: ESPN2

Radio: KEYN, 103.7-FM

KenPom says: Houston 69, WSU 56

Series: WSU leads 18-17 (13-4 in Wichita)

Projected starting lineups

Houston Cougars

Coach: Kelvin Sampson, ninth season, 219-72

Wichita State Shockers

Coach: Isaac Brown, third season, 42-29