How a tiny detail helped decide winning and losing in Wichita State basketball game

On the surface, Xavier Bell’s swift foray to the basket in the final two minutes of last Saturday’s win over Southern Illinois seemed like a great individual play.

Bell finished the bucket while being fouled and his three-point play with 1:46 remaining was the final time Wichita State scored in a 69-68 victory over the Salukis at Koch Arena.

But there was a reason why WSU head coach Paul Mills chose to highlight a particular part of the play that was not recorded in the box score following the game.

“Colby’s screen,” Mills said with a clear sense of appreciation, “was a big-time screen.”

Understanding why Mills was so particularly pleased with Rogers’ screen offers insight into the chess match taking place during games and reveals how tiny details sometimes provide the difference between winning and losing.

How Shockers put a small twist on a familiar play

The play Wichita State executed in the last two minutes this past Saturday is a variation of a play the team has run several times before this season.

It starts with Xavier Bell dribbling out front and Colby Rogers on the opposite side, with the other three players hugging the sideline or baseline to space the floor. Rogers will take off at a sprint straight toward Bell’s defender, as if to set a screen, only to veer off at the last second and continue to the other side. This fake ball screen is known as a “ghost” screen in the basketball lexicon.

WSU likes the guard-to-guard ghost screen because it can create temporary indecision for the defense, as guards are not as experienced in defending ball screens when their man is the screener. More times than not, Bell finds room to turn the corner and continue his attack on the basket.

The occasional defense will try to switch, but trying to guard two moving players like that can become messy, so most defenses have guarded the action with their defenders sticking to their original mark.

If SIU scouted WSU’s play calls this season, it would have seen Rogers ghost the screen every single time the Shockers ran it.

How Colby Rogers helped Wichita State win

The game flipped in WSU’s favor in the second half when Rogers delivered three straight 3-pointers in less than 90 seconds and added a mid-range jumper to complete an 11-point-in-3-minute scoring barrage.

In basketball parlance, Rogers was on a heater.

“A couple of those Rogers shots,” SIU coach Bryan Mullins said, “that’s just a high-level player making a tough shot.”

Following the final jumper of the barrage, Mullins called a timeout and switched the way his team was guarding Rogers. For the final four minutes, SIU heavily overplayed the WSU sharpshooter in an attempt to prevent him from even catching a pass.

Once Mullins made his move on the chess board, Mills countered with one of his own: dialing up a backdoor play for Rogers. It would have worked, too, if not for a heads-up play by SIU junior Troy D’Amico sliding over to block Rogers from what would have otherwise been a simple layup.

The failed attempt could be chalked up to the heightened defensive attention being paid to Rogers, which led to some on-the-fly thinking for Mills to come up with a creative way to exploit Rogers’ shooting gravity in WSU’s favor.

How WSU executed game-winning play

When thinking of a play that could take advantage of SIU’s focus on Rogers while also not forcing the ball his way, Mills decided to make a slight tweak to a play WSU has gone to several times before this season.

A possibility of surprising SIU already existed by calling for Rogers to actually set the screen for Bell because WSU had never shown that on film this season.

But the timing to debut the new look was ideal because Rogers’ scoring spree had grasped SIU’s complete attention. Mills knew if Rogers set a solid screen, Bell would likely gain the advantage going downhill with his preferred left hand because Rogers’ defender wouldn’t risk leaving him.

“They were being real physical and trying to deny me the ball, so eventually I ran traffic at them to get other guys open because they were so glued to me,” Rogers said.

Sure enough, SIU’s Xavier Johnson was so concerned about staying attached to Rogers that he was a step late diagnosing the screen and was a step slow in switching off on Bell, who was already speeding around the end and hurtling toward the paint.

Johnson lunged at the last moment, a last-ditch effort to beat Bell to the spot, but that split second of indecision at top of the key was too much to overcome. Officials determined Bell won the foot race and after he finished an acrobatic shot, he made a free throw to complete a three-point play.

The free throw ended up being the difference for WSU in a 69-68 victory.