Wichita State imposes its will for the first time this season in rout of Rice

For the first time this season, the Wichita State men’s basketball team fully imposed its will on an opponent.

WSU forced Rice into 10 straight turnovers at one point and held a double-digit lead for 35 minutes in a 90-61 rout of the Owls on Sunday afternoon at Koch Arena.

Even if the opponent was an outmatched Rice (3-4) team, the youthful Shockers (3-3) can’t take any win for granted this season. The win also snapped a rare two-game slide at Koch Arena for WSU and was the team’s first win in front of its home fans since February.

“Early in the game, they felt us,” WSU coach Gregg Marshall said. “Our staff keeps talking about we’re not making people feel us. We did foul quite a bit trying to blow up the handoffs. We’re still a little too handsy, but I felt like for the first time we were able to dictate to another team defensively how the game was going to go.”

Freshman Erik Stevenson scored a career-high 21 points, including four three-pointers, and added five rebounds to lead the Shockers. Jaime Echenique scored 14 points, while Markis McDuffie also had 14 points with five rebounds and five assists. Dexter Dennis was the other Shocker in double-figures, with 11 points.

WSU forced Rice into 18 turnovers while making 47 percent of its shots. Jack Williams led the Owls with 12 points.

After a stunning loss in their home opener three weeks ago against Louisiana Tech, it was clear that coach Gregg Marshall had given the Shockers a directive to begin the game: Take it straight at Rice. Marshall wanted to see some toughness from his team.

The Shockers followed orders, using used their bulk inside immediately to score on buckets from Jaime Echenique and Markis McDuffie on the low block. Freshman Morris Udeze came off the bench and scored on three baskets inside, as well.

“I don’t know what it is, but there seems to be times where we’re a little slow to react or slow to the ball or slow to rotate or slow to secure a rebound,” Marshall said. “That’s just my charge. Maybe it’s confusion or youth or inexperience, but hopefully we’re better athletes than that. That’s my biggest bugaboo with this team right now. I’ve got to get them to play quicker, faster, more energetic.”

Within seven minutes, WSU led 16-2 — not only because of its efficient offense but also because of a defense that forced Rice into 10 straight turnovers. After Rice scored on its opening possession, the Owls went more than five minutes between shot attempts — and that shot was volleyball-spiked into the ground by Udeze for basically another turnover.

Many of the turnovers were self-inflicted on Rice’s part, but WSU’s defense can take credit for taking away Rice’s initial look from the perimeter. The best example of that came on the 10th turnover when the Shockers stonewalled Rice for 30 seconds and forced a shot clock violation midway through the first half.

“They sped us up and got us playing at a speed we didn’t want to play at with the ball,” Rice coach Scott Pera said. “We couldn’t handle their pressure very well and they turned us over. That’s what good teams do to you on their home floors.”

Rice’s only attempt at a rally came when it connected on back-to-back threes to cut WSU’s lead to eight points, 16-8, but the Shockers answered that with a six-minute stretch where they outscored Rice 20-2 to establish a 36-10 lead with 6:28 remaining in the first half.

Stevenson highlighted the stretch with three three-pointers in his return to Koch Arena. He made four of his six attempts from beyond the arc in his first home game. Returning home seemed to snap Stevenson out of his shooting funk — he shot just 15 percent (3 of 20) from three-point range on neutral courts in WSU’s last four games.

“They’re soft ... you get some bounces off of them,” Stevenson said of the Koch Arena rims. “We shoot on them basically every day, so you know the depth perception in the gym and all of that. It’s a good shooter’s spot.”

Building a 26-point lead that early in the game seemed to sap the Shockers of the intensity they used to build their lead in the first place. While WSU was able to finish out the first half with a 49-24 lead, its defense came out lethargic in the second half.

Rice scored on its first four possessions, including three layups, as WSU’s defense suffered lapses that were absent in the first half. Marshall had seen enough after 10 straight minutes of sloppy play to begin the second half, burning a 30-second timeout after Rice had outscored WSU 23-14 and trimmed WSU’s lead to 18 points, 65-47.

WSU muddled its way through the rest of the half, not extending the lead again until a 12-2 spurt to close the game out in the final four minutes.

That fell short of Marshall’s standards, but the first 20 minutes gave him a solid foundation to draw on heading into a Saturday showdown with Baylor at Koch Arena next week.

“The first five games it was dog fight after dog fight,” Stevenson said. “We always got hit in the mouth first. It was good to impose our will on somebody in the first half.”

This story was originally published November 25, 2018 at 4:14 PM.