MVC notes: Tekele Cotton turns in another well-rounded effort in Wichita State victory
ST. LOUIS – Wichita State senior Tekele Cotton scored his 1,000th point on Friday, insuring that at least a bit of the spotlight fell on his offense.
Cotton, the two-time Missouri Valley Conference Defensive MVP, again performed well on defense by harassing Southern Illinois guard Anthony Beane into yet-another subpar game. But Cotton’s offense deserves a second look. He scored 12 points and handed out three assists with one turnover. While he missed 4 of 5 threes, continuing a recent slump behind the arc, he helped the offense by dribbling into the lane and making the defense move.
“It definitely adds another dynamic when he’s aggressive and driving downhill,” WSU guard Fred VanVleet said. “A lot of teams like to sag off him and when he gets it going downhill, it just makes it harder, puts more pressure on the defense, and collapses everything.”
The Shockers won the free-throw battle 7-1 in the first half and 12-10 for the game. Cotton made 5 of 6.
“He drove it a couple times and scored around the rim and it just puts more pressure on the defense when you have a third ball-handler out there that can do that,” WSU coach Gregg Marshall said.
Cotton can put even more pressure on the defense with his outside shooting. But he is 2 of 18 in the past four games, dropping his season accuracy to 29.4 percent (30 of 102). That is a sharp dropoff from last season, when he made 37.1 percent (43 of 116).
Cotton’s 12 points give him 1,001 for his career, making him the 44th Shocker to pass 1,000. He also grabbed one steal, his 149th as a Shocker. That moves him into fifth on WSU’s career list and out of tie with Aubrey Sherrod and P.J. Couisnard. Jamar Howard is fourth with 153.
Wessel’s streak ends — Wichita State junior forward Evan Wessel’s streak of scoring in seven consecutive games came to an end.
It wasn’t because Wessel was off offensively, either. He took one shot — a three-pointer — and didn’t shoot any free throws. The Heights product’s scoring output the last five games only made his zero on the stat sheet notable. Wessel scored in double digits in three of the last five games, including 11 in a win over No. 11 Northern Iowa in the regular-season finale.
He still had an impact on the game, grabbing five rebounds and two steals in 28 minutes.
Beane shut down — Beane had a rough second half against the Shockers.
After scoring nine points in the first half as the Salukis traded leads, Beane managed one point in the second half while being blanketed by Cotton.
Beane finished second in the MVC in scoring at 16.1 points and has led the Salukis in scoring the last two seasons. He’s also a two-time second team All-MVC pick. In three games against WSU this season, Beane is 12 of 38 from the field and 3 of 14 from three-point range, averaging 11.3 points.
But to Beane, it wasn’t the lack of offense that sunk his team.
“I thought it really came down to our defense,” Beane said. “(WSU) got a lot of easy buckets. We got some good shots, we just weren’t hitting them. We didn’t get the shots we needed to get in the game, and they got a lot of transition buckets.”
No. 2 with a bullet — Second-seeded Northern Iowa snapped a four-game losing streak in St. Louis. The Panthers last won a game in the tournament in 2010.
“Feels like we got the monkey off our back,” UNI senior Nate Buss said. “Feels like it takes a big load off our shoulders. It took five years, but we got that first win, and it feels really good.”
Panthers coach Ben Jacobson avoided the losing streak as a topic with his team. Everybody knew and he did admit to some concern regarding his team’s confidence in Scottrade Center.
“Once a game like that gets close, some of that stuff can creep back in,” he said. “To see Deon (Mitchell) and Nate as seniors step forward and put that to rest and just drive us home, I thought that was terrific.”
Bradley tied the game 27-all early in the second half. UNI responded with an 11-0 on their way to a dominant second half. Bradley’s changing defenses kept the Panthers off-stride in the first half and the Braves kept the ball out away from UNI center Seth Tuttle for long stretches in the first half, in part by employing a triangle-and-two defense on Tuttle and Mitchell.
“We were able to keep it junked up a little bit by changing defenses,” Bradley coach Geno Ford said.
Ford was able to orchestrate his traps in the first half because the Braves played defense in front of their bench. Their defense slipped in the second half.
“They can’t hear you when you’re 80 feet away,” Ford said.
Buss scored a season-high 23 points and made 8 of 11 shots. Three of his 11 double-digit games this season came against Bradley.
“He doesn’t miss,” Ford said. “The stuff he does to us is just disgusting.”
Big changes at Bradley — Ford talked about next season for the Braves and improvements that need to be made.
However, it doesn’t appear likely Ford will be the coach making those changes. Bradley will have a new president soon and athletic director Michael Cross resigned last month and is finishing his tenure this month.
That leaves Ford, who is 45-86 in four seasons at Bradley, in a precarious position. The Braves finished this season 8-24, 3-15 in the MVC, its second last-place finish under Ford.
“Four years ago, we finihsed last and we were really, really bad,” he said. “We’re not that far away. We didn’t get beat handily that often this season. I feel like there was a couple things our team is desperately missing, but it’s not six things like it was.”
They‘ll be back — Fourth-seeded Illinois State and fifth-seeded Evansville combined for one senior starter.
The Redbirds will lose Daishon Knight, a second-team All-MVC pick. Newcomer of the Year DeVaughn Akoon-Purcell and second-team All-MVC pick Reggie Lynch return.
The Aces start juniors Egidijus Mockevicius and D.J. Balentine, both All-MVC picks, and Adam Wing and sophomores Blake Simmons and Jaylon Brown. Sophomore Mislav Brzoja earned a spot on the All-Bench Team.
Both teams would like to give those returners post-season experience.
“When you look at the body of work for this team, I’d like to think somebody would like for us to participate,” Evansville coach Marty Simmons said.
Illinois State (20-11) can dream about the NCAA Tournament for at least one more day. With an RPI rank of No. 72, it may have a shot at the NIT. Evansville (19-12) will probably have to settle for the CBI or CIT.
“I do think we’re in good position with our non-conference schedule, some quality wins, and what we‘ve done in a great league,” Redbirds coach Dan Muller said. “We’ve got a pretty good resume in a lot of ways.”
Bad turn for Evansville — Balentine scored 17 points, but shot an inefficient 6 of 17 to get there. He made 3 of 7 shots in the first half.
A sore ankle, turned in the first half, contributed to his inaccuracy.
“Really bad,” he said. “The whole first half, I couldn’t move on it. I went back at halftime and they put three or four layers of tape on there. It just hurt the whole game.”
New members — The MVC inducted basketball players Mike Glenn (Southern Illinois) and Roger Phegley (Bradley), former Indiana State gymnastics coach Roger Counsil, Illinois State golfer D.A. Weibring, former Missouri State volleyball coach Linda Dollar and former MVC administrator Joe Mitch into its hall of fame on Friday.
This story was originally published March 6, 2015 at 5:37 PM with the headline "MVC notes: Tekele Cotton turns in another well-rounded effort in Wichita State victory."