Wichita State looking to ‘dominate’ Saturday’s closed scrimmage with ORU

Wichita State will see an opponent in a different jersey for the first time this Saturday when Oral Roberts heads to Koch Arena in a closed scrimmage for the second straight season.

Last year the teams broke it up into a morning session, which included drills such as time-and-score situations, out of bounds plays, and work against zone defenses, and an afternoon session that was basically a 40-minute scrimmage. Wichita State reportedly dominated the morning session, while Oral Roberts won the afternoon scrimmage.

The objective this Saturday is simple to Wichita State, which will be without its two best players in Landry Shamet and Markis McDuffie.

“We want to dominate this scrimmage like we would want to dominate a game,” senior forward Rashard Kelly said. “We’re treating this like a dress rehearsal for a real game. We want to keep building our tempo and our chemistry and that pace we’ll need when the season kicks off.”

Wichita State has a week after the scrimmage before its first exhibition game, next Saturday against Henderson State, and nearly two weeks before its first game on Nov. 10 against Missouri-Kansas City at Koch Arena.

After practicing against the same players all summer, the Shockers are looking forward to going up against some new faces.

“It’s always good this time of year to see where we stand against different competition,” senior Shaquille Morris said. “We want to show off all of the hard work we’ve been putting in this summer. We want to show we can execute all of the sets and quicks that Coach Marshall wants us to execute. It’s good to have different competition in to see how we compete.”

Oral Roberts is picked to finish seventh out of eight teams in the Summitt League’s preseason poll. Oral Roberts senior center Albert Owens (17.4 points, 5.6 rebounds) was selected as a first-team all-conference player, while sophomore forward Emmanuel Nzekwesi (9.8 points, 6.4 rebounds) was tabbed a second-team selection.

Oral Roberts finished 8-22 last season and last in the Summit League with a 4-12 record. The Golden Eagles were rated No. 236 in the country in the end-of-season report by Ken Pomeroy; for comparison’s sake, that was a little worse than former Shocker foe Bradley (No. 217) and a little better than Drake (No. 258).

This story was originally published October 27, 2017 at 5:25 PM with the headline "Wichita State looking to ‘dominate’ Saturday’s closed scrimmage with ORU."