New York, New York: Shockers’ season-long transformation carries WSU to NIT semifinals
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Gregg Marshall could hear Frank Sinatra’s crooning the opening line of his 1978 rendition of “New York, New York” so clearly in his mind that he couldn’t help but hum along to the notes on his way back to the locker room.
The coach was grinning from ear to ear, well aware a water bath was awaiting him inside the next door he opened. Wichita State’s 73-63 victory over Indiana on Tuesday was far from his crowning achievement in his 12-year tenure with the Shockers, but knowing the lows of where this team climbed, nothing felt better in this moment than winning a sixth straight road game over a blue blood at one of college basketball’s cathedrals at Assembly Hall.
Marshall and the Shockers are headed to New York City — Madison Square Garden, to be exact — for a semifinal game in the National Invitation Tournament next Tuesday.
“You know, we’ve won a lot of games, man,” Marshall said after the celebration subsided. “I can’t say it’s the most fun I’ve ever had winning games because we’ve been to the Final Four, we’ve gone 35-0, we came back down 17 points to win when our streak was going. There’s been some tremendous wins ...
“But nothing is better than that right now.”
Maybe this celebration felt difference because the circumstances were so different than those past memories of excellence. Those Shocker teams were stocked with veterans. They were used to winning. They expected to win.
But these Shockers?
They had already lost the most games at WSU (11) since 2010 by the end of January. They lost their first six road games by 101 combined points. Eight of their 11 rotation players are first-year players to the Division I level. They didn’t know how to win.
The players suffered through the hurt, dealt with the pain, experienced the lowest low in the program in more than a decade. That’s what makes this 14-3 close to the season by WSU so special and why the celebration was a little more exuberant.
“There’s something special that’s going on right now,” WSU senior Samajae Haynes-Jones said.
“We’re going to be playing in April,” WSU center Asbjorn Midtgaard said, half-impressed, half-amazed. “Who would have thought we would be here even a month ago? It’s just incredible.”
After losing by 20 on the road to Connecticut to fall to 1-6 in American Athletic Conference play, WSU’s two seniors remember distinctly a conversation where the younger players were challenged.
Was losing like this okay with them? Or were they going to do something about it?
“’Don’t wait until next year, let’s do it now,’” McDuffie remembers pleading. “’Let’s commit to the right now.’ Once we did that, we turned the switch, and ever since, we’ve been balling out.”
The senior has held his end of the bargain. McDuffie (660 points) has scored more points in a single season than anyone not named Xavier McDaniel (844) and Dave Stallworth (769) in WSU history. When WSU absolutely needed a win to bolster its postseason resume, McDuffie scored a career-high 34 points to beat Temple at the conference tournament to make sure the Shockers could even get into the NIT.
On Tuesday, McDuffie was once again brilliant. He scored a game-high 21 points and had 16 by halftime. After one of his crowd-silencing triples, McDuffie ran down the court screaming, “This is my time” to the WSU bench.
Watching from his New Jersey home, Derek McDuffie, Markis’ father, beamed with pride.
“When I saw that, I knew he was ready to bring his team home,” Derek said in a phone interview.
Markis McDuffie isn’t motivated by the thought these postseason games could be his final in a Wichita State uniform. He doesn’t feel like his back is against a wall. Instead, he’s motivated by performing on a bigger stage under a brighter spotlight.
Assembly Hall and its thousands of screaming fans provided the perfect conditions to satiate McDuffie’s wants. His biggest shot of the night might have been when Indiana trimmed WSU’s lead to one midway through the second half and McDuffie responded with a three-pointer to restore a cushion.
“I love playing against crowds like that,” McDuffie said. “That’s when you can go out and prove everybody wrong. It’s like picturing a bunch of haters in the building and you’ve got to go out there and prove them wrong.”
McDuffie was born and raised in Paterson, N.J., right across the Hudson river from Madison Square Garden. The family is avid Knicks fans. There’s a family photo that shows the McDuffie father and son duo wearing No. 20 Allan Houston Knicks jerseys when Markis was 5-years-old. To them, and millions of others, the Garden is the mecca of the basketball world.
Now his college basketball career will end in the arena he grew up idolizing.
“Let me tell you, this is a dream come true for him and this will be extraordinary for him,” Derek said. “To see him play at the Garden, to hear his name called out, to see his face shown up there on the big board, I couldn’t ask for a better ending. To be honest with you, it’s going to be one of the best experiences of my life.”
That reality hadn’t sunk in with Markis less than an hour following the game.
“I know it’s going to be amazing,” he said. “My dream was always to play at the Garden. That’s the most famous arena. To play there, man, that’s a dream come true.”
Once WSU found out it was playing in the NIT, the team set its goal to win three straight games to send McDuffie back home.
That remained important, but along the way WSU realized it was playing for something even bigger than its senior leader. To the first-year players, winning had never been this fun because they’d never done it at this level before. To the two seniors, winning had never been this fun because they’d never been a part of a team that’s grown this much over the course of a season.
“We want to keep playing with each other,” said WSU freshman Dexter Dennis, who scored 17 points, made five threes and recorded a career-high six blocks. “We wanted to get Mark home, but we want to finish this thing for us. We like playing with each other, being around each other. We don’t want this to end.”
At the start of this summer, Marshall knew getting 10 first-year players to gel would be a monumental challenge. He made it a priority to organize as many team-bonding activities as possible.
That’s why you could find the players over at the Marshall household more often than ever in his tenure. They ate together. They had pool parties together. They tried to return serves from Shocker fan and rising women’s tennis star Katie Swan together. They even got in some chicken-and-pickle action at the new restaurant opening in Wichita.
So when ESPN’s cameras captured the locker-room celebration — Marshall bursting in, Asbjorn Midtgaard and Isaiah Poor Bear-Chandler dumping a water cooler on him, Marshall, a 56-year-old, pumping his fists and dancing around like he was a college student himself — those emotions are genuine.
That celebration was eight months in the making.
“It felt good, it felt really good,” Marshall said. “The water was cold. I’m worried about my tie because it’s soaking wet. I may have to get it dry cleaned, but we’re going to roll with it.”
The camera lingered on the scene and at the very end it showed Marshall finally find McDuffie in the scrum. The coach pulled his four-year senior in and wrapped him in a bear hug.
“This program owes him such a debt because he is now the bridge,” Marshall said. “He has bridged now the past to the present and what’s to become the future, and I’m just tremendously proud of him, the leader that he’s become and as well as the tremendous performer that he is.”
That hug was four years in the making.
“That meant a lot, man,” McDuffie said. “Me and coach, man, we’ve been together for four years. We’ve been through a lot, you know what I’m saying? There was a million feelings going on right there. We have a lot of love for each other.”
Leaving the locker room, long after the victory, Marshall emerged still humming that same song. He couldn’t get it out of his head or stop smiling.
I want to wake up, in a city that doesn’t sleep
And find I’m king of the hill
Top of the heap
“I love that song, Frank Sinatra is one of the greatest,” Marshall said. “We’re at the heap now, but to be the king of the hill, we’ve got to win two more.”
This story was originally published March 27, 2019 at 12:16 AM.