Here’s the juggling act Gregg Marshall has on his hands as WSU plays SMU at home
Wichita State’s string of nine straight basketball seasons with at least 25 wins is likely to end, as the Shockers are mired in an 8-11 season with a 1-6 record in the American Athletic Conference.
But put into context, those struggles aren’t as unusual. Consider this: WSU has the fifth-fewest minutes returning from last season in the country and the Shockers have played the 10th-most difficult schedule in the country to date, according to the NCAA’s NET metric.
This season has been a juggling act for coach Gregg Marshall, who has to balance coaching hard with staying positive enough to keep the confidence level up for a team that essentially has nine first-year players currently receiving minutes.
“You have to be a psychiatrist, you have to be a psychologist, you have to be a cheerleader, you have to be a disciplinarian, you have to be a taskmaster,” Marshall said on his radio show Monday. “There’s so many facets and when they’re struggling, these young kids are so fragile. It’s a struggle at times to push those right buttons.”
The good news is that after a brutal first seven games in AAC play where the Shockers played seven of the top eight teams in the conference, the schedule eases up. WSU is done playing contenders like Houston, Temple and Central Florida and still have two games remaining against East Carolina and Tulane.
WSU is in desperate need for a feel-good victory and up next is a team in SMU (12-7, 4-3 AAC) for an 8 p.m. tip at Koch Arena on Wednesday that is missing its best player in Jarrey Foster because of injury. This is a game the Shockers must win to make a push in the second half of the conference season.
“The biggest thing I need to do as a coach is get more guys playing toward their potential, whatever their ceiling is,” Marshall said. “I need to get a handful on a given night and the most important ones like Markis McDuffie and Samajae Haynes-Jones. We’ve got to have more guys who are playing closer toward their potential.”
Through 19 games, WSU is one of the worst shooting teams in the country. The Shockers rank No. 324 in field-goal percentage (40.7) and No. 322 in three-point percentage (30.3). Even the wide-open shots the offense is generating are clanking off the rim.
The only way to improve shooting is repetition. That requires players spend time outside of team practice to work on their shooting, something Marshall has been disappointed in earlier this season. After the team’s day off Sunday following the Connecticut road trip, Marshall didn’t ask the team who was in the gym on their own.
“Because last time I asked them, I was disappointed in the answer,” Marshall said. “It’s up to them. Maybe some of them were in the gym, maybe they weren’t. It’s a learned skill and it takes time and it takes practice. We have ‘X’ amount of practice every day and (Monday) we shot quite a bit.
“Guys who can make them hopefully will step up and make them, and if they can’t or they’re not willing to work on making them, then maybe this isn’t the game for them. Maybe they need to take up something that doesn’t require a lot of skill or practice.”
Losing makes everything more difficult, and for a team like WSU that has won just once in the past 41 days, that can sometimes affect the mindset of young players.
That’s the challenge facing Marshall and the Shockers. The opportunity to turn around the season is there in the coming games; now it’s up to WSU to capitalize.
“The biggest thing I try to affect is how hard they play,” Marshall said. “We’re extending ourselves to a certain point, but we’re not willing to take that next step, that second step. That break-neck intensity and passion and toughness. Guarding the basketball, checking out on the defensive glass.
“They’ve got to play to the best of their abilities if we’re going to have a chance to win and right now that’s not happening.”
SMU at Wichita State
Records: SMU 12-7, 4-3 AAC; WSU 8-11, 1-6
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Koch Arena (10,506), Wichita
TV: ESPNU
Radio: KEYN, 103.7-FM
About SMU: These teams split last year’s matchup with the road team winning on the other’s home court each time. SMU leads the all-time series 6-5 with WSU having won three of five games in Wichita... Jahmal McMurray was chosen to the AAC honor roll last week for a 29-point performance in a win over Tulane. The Topeka native is averaging 18.3 points and making 3.4 threes per game, the 22nd-best mark in the NCAA... SMU is just 4-4 without its star Jarrey Foster in the lineup this season. The Mustangs have been 75-19 in games when Foster plays, but he is expected to miss Wednesday’s game because of injury... SMU point guard Jimmy Whitt is the only player in the AAC to be ranked in points, rebounds, assists and steals. He finished with a triple-double earlier this season... SMU is one of five schools that have won at Koch Arena in the last six years. Cincinnati is the only team to have won twice during that span.
About WSU: The Shockers are coming off two straight road losses in which they never led. That snapped a nearly 10-year streak where WSU held a lead in 167 straight regular-season conference games... Freshman Jamarius Burton is coming off a career-high 16 points against Connecticut... WSU’s offense will be looking for a jolt back at Koch Arena after shooting a combined 31 percent from the field in last week’s two road games, as the offense averaged just 50.5 points... The second SMU game last season proved to be Markis McDuffie’s best game of his junior season, as he scored a season-high 26 points to lead the Shockers to an 84-78 win at Moody Coliseum. McDuffie needs just four more points to crack the top-25 all-time scoring list at WSU... WSU has lost seven of its last eight games, but all eight opponents have been top-100 teams in the NET. The Shockers have played the 10th-most difficult schedule, according to the NET.
This story was originally published January 29, 2019 at 5:34 PM.
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