After nearly two-year drought, Wichita State basketball returns to AP Top 25
It came one week later than expected, but the wait is finally over.
After one year, nine months and two weeks, the Wichita State men’s basketball team will enter the new year as a ranked team in the Associated Press Top 25.
With an 11-1 record following Sunday’s 84-66 defeat of Abilene Christian, the Shockers moved into the rankings at No. 24 with 135 points on Monday. That was 23 more points than last week when WSU was the first team outside of the AP rankings.
It is the first AP poll appearance for WSU since March 12, 2018, the payoff for an impressive month of December for WSU, which captured three impressive victories in a row at Oklahoma State (80-61), over Oklahoma (80-75) at Intrust Bank Arena and over VCU (73-63) at Koch Arena. WSU did enter the coaches’ poll last week at No. 25.
“If we won against VCU, I thought we could crash the polls,” Marshall said. “I think I made it plural with an ‘s.’ So when they came back from break (Thursday), I said that we crashed a poll, take off the ‘s.’ We still have work to do on the other one.”
Counting last year’s 14-4 close to the season, the Shockers have now won 25 of their past 30 games.
That has boosted WSU in the NCAA’s NET rankings, as the Shockers are rated as the top team in the American Athletic Conference at No. 10 with a handful of resume-building wins in non-conference play.
WSU coach Gregg Marshall said after the ACU win that he thinks the Shockers could be special as early as this season.
“If we don’t allow good to become the enemy of great, we can make a statement this year,” Marshall said. “We don’t have to wait for next year or the year after because we have 10 underclassmen. We can be good this year if we continue to work and dream it and make it happen.”
WSU spent 23 straight weeks in the AP poll during the end of the 2016-17 season and the entire 2017-18 season, ascending as high as No. 3 on Dec. 11, 2017. The Shockers will now play the 158th week all-time as a top-25 team with exactly half of those appearances (79) coming under Marshall.
The Shockers open AAC play on Wednesday against East Carolina (6-7) at Koch Arena for a 2 p.m. tip-off broadcast nationally on ESPNU.
This story was originally published December 30, 2019 at 11:13 AM.
.jpg)