Gregg Marshall gives Echenique injury update and recap on WSU’s loss on VCU
The Wichita State men’s basketball team concluded its non-conference portion of its schedule with a 7-5 record following a 70-54 loss at VCU at the Siegel Center on Saturday.
Markis McDuffie led WSU with 16 points, while Samajae Haynes-Jones scored 10 and freshman Jamarius Burton came off the bench for 12 points. WSU now has 12 days off before beginning American Athletic Conference play on Jan. 3 at Memphis.
Here are four takeaways from the Shockers’ press conference following the game:
Echenique sidelined with foot injury
The game swung almost immediately following the injury to WSU junior center Jaime Echenique, who exited the game with 7:31 remaining in the first half and did not return.
WSU had just taken its largest lead of the game, 24-17, and on the ensuing offensive possession, Echenique set a screen and rolled to the basket. Without much contact, Echenique went to the ground clutching his left foot. He remained on the ground, and Isaiah Poor Bear-Chandler and Asbjorn Midtgaard had to help him straight to the locker room.
“I don’t really know anything 100 (percent), but the trainer’s initial observation is it’s plantar fasciitis,” Marshall said. “(The trainer) thinks it’s not completely torn, but I’ve had it and that’s a tough deal. It’s very painful, and Jaime will have to soldier on and try to figure out a way whenever he can to play with it.”
Echenique returned to WSU’s bench at the start of the second half wearing a protective boot on his left foot. The Shockers had outscored opponents by 93 (399-306), in Echenique’s 205 minutes prior to the game.
‘We just kind of ran out of horses’
With Dexter Dennis sidelined with a concussion for the second straight game, WSU entered the game with four scholarship guards.
That lack of depth became a factor when Haynes-Jones picked up his second foul with 12:26 remaining, then McDuffie picked up his second foul with 10:59 remaining, forcing both of WSU’s seniors to the bench.
“Our two seniors, the only two guys with any experience, are both saddled with two fouls way through the first half,” Marshall said. “And the first foul was ridiculous, but it is what it is.”
Marshall is typically one of the stingiest coaches in the country playing players with two fouls in the first half. But when guard Erik Stevenson picked up his second foul with 6:20 remaining, Marshall felt like he had to insert Haynes-Jones back in the game to remain competitive.
The gamble led to Haynes-Jones picking up his third foul with 4:58 left, which forced Marshall to play walk-on Eli Farrakhan for the final five minutes of the first half.
“And Samajae was playing well, he looked very comfortable against their pressure and he was knocking down shots,” Marshall said. “He never got in a rhythm after that.”
Although WSU only trailed 37-34 at halftime, there was a sense of an uphill climb in the second half with Echenique sidelined and the mounting foul trouble with the guards.
“With Jaime in the boot at halftime and Dexter out and then Samajae (Haynes-Jones) saddled with three fouls, I knew it was going to be a daunting task,” Marshall said. “At least they kept fighting, and that’s the first thing you’ve got to do with a young team, let them know they have to fight for 40 minutes. We didn’t buckle (Saturday). We buckled a little bit at Oklahoma.
“We just kind of ran out of horses there.”
‘There will be brighter days’
WSU’s offense scored 20 points in 30 second-half possessions, 0.67 points per possession, the sixth time this season WSU’s efficiency has operated at under 0.80 points per possession for an entire half.
The Shockers went scoreless for nearly eight minutes to start the second half, missing their first 11 shots.
“There seems to be the same lid with this team,” Marshall said. “We just struggle to score, then we lose our focus with any type of execution. We tighten up and put our head down and go. That seemed to be the only way we could score in the second half.”
The final numbers weren’t pretty. WSU shot 35.6 percent (21 of 59) from the field, 23.1 percent (6 of 26) on three-pointers and 60 percent (6 of 10) on free throws. The Shockers also committed 17 turnovers against VCU’s Havoc defense.
After strong starts, McDuffie and Haynes-Jones fizzled out and combined for 9 of 25 shooting. Point guard Ricky Torres was sped up by VCU’s pressure and went scoreless on 0-for-3 shooting with seven turnovers. Freshman Stevenson’s shooting slump continued with a 1-for-7 performance.
“It looked like the court was smaller than it was because our guys were shrinking the court helping each other,” VCU coach Mike Rhoades said. “They run a lot of back screens and multiple actions. With multiple actions, you’ve got to have multiple efforts, and I thought our multiple efforts were very high (Saturday).”
“The best thing they do is speed you up,” Marshall said. “They do a great job of getting you out of what you want to do. Sometimes they give you easy shots, but other times you’re turning it over and forcing something. When you play them, you’re playing opportunity basketball if you can make that first pass out of the trap and we struggled to do that.”
WSU dominated the rebounding battle, grabbing 41 percent of its misses (17 offensive rebounds) and holding a 38-32 advantage on the glass over VCU. But the Shockers struggled to capitalize on those second chances, as they only scored four points in the second half on 10 second chances.
“This was our first true road game, and I think we played like it a little bit,” Marshall said. “You’ve got to try to grow from these experiences. We knew what it was going to be. A tough game, a tough year for that matter. We’ve got to seek growth. There will be brighter days.”
Unicorns of the Randolph-Macon basketball family
There were plenty Virginia ties for Marshall in the trip to Richmond. He played in high school in Roanoke, Va., a three-hour drive from Richmond, then played in college at Randolph-Macon in Ashland, Va.
Both head coaches have ties to Randolph-Macon. Marshall played for legendary head coach Hal Nunnally, then became an assistant under him. VCU head coach Mike Rhoades started his coaching career as an assistant under Nunnally in 1996, then took over when Nunnally retired in 1999. Rhoades coached Randolph-Macon for 10 seasons before leaving for VCU in 2009.
“We’re both unique in the Randolph-Macon basketball family, unicorns, if you will,” Marshall said. “It’s a wonderful basketball program and there’s a lot of people in college basketball that played at Randolph-Macon that can trace their roots back to that program. It’s amazing how many of them there are. I don’t know why that is, but coach Nunnally was a very talented basketball coach, and he taught the game the right way.”
While the basketball rivalry makes sense for WSU and VCU (the Rams return to Wichita next December to complete a two-year contract), the mutual respect between Marshall and Rhoades makes the series a good fit as well. Both coaches said after Saturday’s game they would like to continue the series past next season.
“Coach Marshall is an awesome coach, and his record speaks for itself,” Rhoades said. “I’ve known him for a long time, and his teams play super hard, they play the right way, and they’re disciplined. They’re young, so those really good players are only going to get better and better.
“I watched every game on them. From the beginning of the year to now, it’s crazy how much better they are. There’s going to be a lot of teams that aren’t going to want to play them as the year goes along.”
Marshall said he saw a handful of his high school and college teammates after the game, but one meeting had a sobering end to the trip for him.
He was excited to see Bob Willoughby, a former teammate in college who played at Randolph-Macon from 1983-87, but then troubled to hear that his 29-year-old son, Bobby, has been missing in Virginia since November.
“Twenty-nine years old, good-looking kid missing. Now that’s a real problem,” Marshall said. “That’s a real problem. We lost a basketball game, it kind of puts it in perspective.”
This story was originally published December 22, 2018 at 7:38 PM.
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