Shockers feel like mental lapses were costly in home loss to Memphis
Armed with a 16-point lead in the first half, Wichita State should have had the opportunity to close out a victory against Memphis at Koch Arena on Saturday night. It did not.
After falling behind by 13 and rallying back to even the score late in the second half, WSU should have had at least a chance to win in the end. Instead, the Shockers never had the ball with the chance to tie or take the lead in the final three minutes.
There’s no denying Memphis did enough to earn its 88-85 victory over Wichita State on Saturday, more specifically Jeremiah Martin, who scored a game-high 37 points with 29 coming after halftime. But it’s also true the Shockers robbed themselves of at least a chance to win because of silly mistakes.
After his team won five of its previous six games, WSU coach Gregg Marshall was in a somber mood following a loss that dropped his team to 13-13 overall and 6-8 in American Athletic Conference play.
“We’ve shown we can play pretty well in stretches, but not consistently for 40 minutes,” Marshall said. “We’ve got to be smarter. Some of our fouls are just really dumb. Some of the plays we made or didn’t make were things we discussed in the timeouts and huddles and we just didn’t execute. It’s on me. I’ve got to get them better.”
For the first 10 minutes, WSU appeared to have carried over its hot play to another game in front of a rowdy Saturday night crowd. Koch Arena was rocking when WSU pounced on the Tigers, 24-8.
But over the next 22 minutes, Memphis shredded the Shockers by nearly 30 points, outscoring WSU 60-31 during that span to take a 68-55 lead with 8:10 remaining in the second half following another Martin three-pointer.
WSU’s crowd wouldn’t allow the Shockers to bow out without a fight. WSU rallied, erasing the 13-point deficit in four minutes on back-to-back threes from Dexter Dennis and Markis McDuffie, tying the score at 75-75 with 4:03 remaining.
“The crowd gives us a lot of confidence,” WSU center Jaime Echenique said. “They deserve something and we want to give them what they want to see, that Shocker basketball.”
Koch Arena had reached its ear-splitting peak, but it wouldn’t even last 10 seconds. That’s when Martin broke WSU’s full-court press by himself to create a fast break, then found Raynere Thornton cutting in for a thunderous jam and foul. Just like that, WSU’s crowd was silenced and Memphis regained the lead.
“We thought we got off to a great start, then we just mentally broke down throughout the game,” McDuffie said. “We started making bad mistakes. They went on their run and we fought back, but it wasn’t enough. We just kept making silly mistakes.”
Thornton missed the free throw following the media timeout, giving WSU a chance to tie the score or take the lead. The Shockers ran a play to free Dennis up in the corner for a three, but when Ricky Torres found him with the pass, Dennis dropped the ball below his waist and Martin swiped it away from him.
WSU produced a defensive stop, but again wasted a possession when Torres tried to force a pass to a cutting Dennis that ricocheted off him out of bounds.
“When it’s a good game like that and it’s crunch time, every possession matters,” McDuffie said. “One thing you don’t do in crunch time is turn the ball over and make mistakes. That’s what we did and that’s part of the learning experience. We have to learn from our mistakes and take these losses as lessons.”
“We just made a lot of dumb plays tonight,” Dennis added. “That’s kind of the reason why we took an ‘L.’”
Those two wasted possessions would prove fatal, as they were the last two chances WSU had at tying or taking the lead. Memphis extended its lead to 79-75 with 2:41 remaining when Kyvon Davenport posted up and spun like he was going up for a hook shot to bait Echenique into the air for a block attempt, only to dish it to a cutting Thornton for the easy dunk.
WSU’s following two possessions ended with contested fadeaway jumpers from WSU’s seniors, Samajae Haynes-Jones and Markis McDuffie, who combined for 7 of 27 shooting from the field. Memphis built an 81-75 lead in the meantime.
The Shockers would rally one final time, as Erik Stevenson made a drilling layup to cut Memphis’ lead to 82-79 with 52 seconds left. WSU had enough time to play out one final possession to try to get a defensive stop, but that plan was nixed when Dennis fouled Martin lunging for a steal 94 feet away from the basket on the in-bounds pass.
Martin made two free throws to push the lead to five. Stevenson again responded with a clutch basket, drilling a deep three to cut Memphis’ lead to 84-82 with 42 seconds remaining. Again, WSU had time to spare if it wanted to try to get a defensive stop. And according to Marshall, that was the plan.
“We talked about it over and over in the timeout whoever was guarding (Memphis guard Kareem) Brewton, we were going to leave Brewton and double team the ball,” Marshall said. “If they got into the frontcourt and we could get (Davenport) or (Thornton) to have the ball, then we were going to foul them. Otherwise, we were going to play it out.”
When WSU matched up on the court, Stevenson was guarding Brewton. When Memphis in-bounded the ball to Martin, he casually trots the ball up with 35 seconds and ticking on the clock. The ESPN cameras show Marshall nearly five feet on the court going ballistic trying to catch the attention of Stevenson to leave Brewton and come double-team Martin to force the ball out of his hands.
Stevenson hesitates leaving his defender and waits until Martin is about to cross halfcourt to engage. Martin uses Stevenson’s late arrival to his advantage, as he simply changes direction back into Stevenson and the slight bump is enough to earn a whistle 47 feet from the basket with 20 seconds still left on the shot clock. The mistake proved costly, as Martin made both free throws for a four-point lead.
Memphis made 24 of 33 free throws in the game, while WSU was 11 of 17 from the line.
“I don’t know why he fouled Martin, but that was just one of 20 to 30 things we did like that,” Marshall said. “Not being locked in mentally and understanding we’ve go to play harder and play better, but we’ve also got to play smarter and we didn’t do that.”
Here are other takeaways from the game:
Martin puts Memphis on his back: It wasn’t a total surprise Memphis senior guard Jeremiah Martin went off, considering he was averaging nearly 30 points per game in the month of February before Saturday. But WSU had done well defensively in the the first half to force Martin to miss seven of eight shots.
Martin unleashed his full fury in the second half, scoring 29 of his game-high 37 points after halftime. He made 8 of 11 shots, including five three-pointers, and sank all eight of his second-half free throws.
Basically, any time Martin had the ball it was an automatic basket for Memphis in the second half.
“He’s been playing out of his mind,” Memphis coach Penny Hardaway said. “He’s representing the city. He understands what it means to the city. He’s been here for our years. He’s never made the NCAA Tournament and he’s playing like he’s never made it and he wants to make it.”
Marshall referenced that same NCAA Tournament hunger when speaking about Martin and Memphis, which starts five seniors.
“Those guys haven’t been to the tournament and they want to go,” Marshall said. “They’ve got five guys that are really hungry for it. Our seniors have been to the NCAA Tournament before. I don’t know if they’re quite as hungry. I think they are, but I’m not sure.”
Martin’s fingerprints were all over the biggest moments of the second half for Memphis. He drilled two threes in the opening four minutes to highlight a 12-2 rally that put Memphis in front, 48-44. He then reeled off the following in the span of 63 seconds: step-back three, steal and dunk, another step-back three. When Memphis took its largest lead of the game, 68-55 with 8:10 remaining, it was done by a Martin three.
After doing well to contest shots in the first half, WSU failed miserably to make Martin think about the defense in the second half.
“We contested him at times like you contest in a junior-high game, you stay on the ground,” Marshall said. “He’s a big-time shooter and he needs a big-time contest. We’re not quite ready to do that.”
McDuffie said it felt like Martin’s early scoring binge coming out of halftime gave him the rhythm he needed.
“I think he just got real confident and he just kept attacking us,” McDuffie said. “We’ve got to stay focused on defense because the other team is going to come at our neck and Martin sure enough do that. He got to the free throw line and made all of his free throws. He just had a real great game.”
Hardaway said that Martin simply adjusted how aggressive he was being. The coach didn’t like that Martin was in a pass-first mode to start the game.
“He came out too passive,” Hardaway said. “The first few pick and rolls instead of attacking their big, he dropped it to our big and our big shot a jump shot. That’s not who we need him to be to start the game off. We need him to be aggressive and make plays.”
Dexter Dennis stays hot: In his last three games, the 6-foot-5 freshman wing from Louisiana has made 15 three-pointers and is shooting 62.5 percent from beyond the arc.
This coming after Dennis made just 18 threes in his first 22 games on 33.3-percent accuracy.
“It’s just a confidence thing,” Dennis said. “Watching film, seeing yourself shoot so many shots, you just have to step up and think they’re going in. I believe it when I shoot it’s going in every time now.”
On a team desperate for outside shooting, Dennis’ emergence has been a welcomed addition to a suddenly efficient offense.
“It does a lot for us,” McDuffie said. “I love the way he’s been playing lately. He’s been very confident. The one thing I know about his shot is that he shoots the same shot every single time. He’s not falling to the right or anything like that. I knew it was just a matter of time for him to get it going.”
On the whole, Hardaway said he was thoroughly impressed with how far the Shockers have come in the seven weeks since the teams met in Memphis on Jan. 3.
“I told coach (Marshall), light years difference,” Hardaway said. “The freshmen are understanding who they are. The guys are playing really hard. He’s doing a phenomenal job with nine new players. Coach Marshall is one of the best coaches in the country, not just in our conference. They look totally different than in the beginning. Even though they were playing hard, it’s like they’re starring in their roles more. They know who they are.”
Marshall agreed with the sentiment but after watching WSU’s 85-74 loss at Memphis, noted that it was a low bar for a standard.
“I know our schedule had lightened up and we had won a few games and we were getting better and we still are better,” Marshall said. “We are way better than we were the first time we played Memphis. I watched that film (Friday) before the game and we were atrocious. So yeah, we’re better.”
Two teams battling for seeding: Marshall might not want to look ahead to potential seeding in Memphis for the AAC tournament, but there was no denying the matchup was a pivotal one for two teams vying for similar seeding.
Memphis greatly improved its odds of landing a No. 5 or No. 6 seed with the win, which improved the Tigers to 9-6 in the conference and in sole place of fifth place. A win could have tied WSU with Memphis in the loss column; instead the Shockers fall to 6-8 and seventh place, one game behind South Florida at 7-7 and a half-game up on Tulsa (6-9) and SMU (5-8).
“We looked at their schedule and noticed the teams they were playing in the next four were more in the middle or bottom, so this game was pivotal for us,” Hardaway said.
WSU is favored in three of its final four games of the season: two home games against Connecticut and East Carolina and the road finale at Tulane. The Shockers will be underdogs at SMU on March 3.
Winning out would likely land the Shockers the No. 6 seed at the conference tournament, while a 3-1 record could result in a tie with USF, which holds the tiebreaker, and the Shockers falling to No. 7. In both scenarios, WSU will still play on the first day of the conference tournament on Thursday in Memphis and be tasked with winning four games in four days to win the title.
“We’re still getting better and I can see the growth in this team,” McDuffie said. “We just fell short today, but we still have four games left to move up a couple of spots and I’m confident we will.”
This story was originally published February 24, 2019 at 4:12 AM.
.jpg)