Five ways that Wichita State basketball can pick up its first road win at Temple
Wichita State puts the nation’s second-longest road winning streak on the line at 8 p.m. Central time Wednesday at the Liacouras Center in Philadelphia, where the 16th-ranked Shockers (15-1, 3-0 American) take on the Temple Owls (9-6, 1-3 American) in a game broadcast on ESPNU.
Here are five ways WSU can secure the win, which would tie Houston for the longest road winning streak in the seven-year history of the American Athletic Conference:
1. Assert dominance on the glass again
After being punked by West Virginia on the glass, Wichita State responded by outrebounding its opponents by an average of 9.8 rebounds the next five games. But in its three conference games, WSU has been outrebounded by East Carolina (by three), Memphis (by four) and Connecticut (by two).
Now those totals are no reason to be alarmed. In fact, WSU has posted excellent offensive rebounding numbers in those three games. The problem? WSU is having trouble keeping opponents off the glass on the defensive end, particularly against athletic teams like Memphis and UConn.
Memphis grabbed 15 offensive rebounds and converted 20 second-chance points, while UConn turned 19 offensive rebounds into 14 second-chance points.
The good news? In four conference games, Temple has averaged just 7.5 offensive rebounds. For the season, the Owls rank 211th in offensive rebounding percentage. Even under long-time coach Fran Dunphy, Temple has never been a strong offensive rebounding team. That has continued in the first year under Aaron McKie.
This is an excellent opportunity for WSU assert its dominance on the glass again. The Shockers are grabbing 73.5% of defensive rebounds, but their target against Temple should be to grab close to 80%.
This has the feeling of a big Trey Wade rebounding game. He hasn’t grabbed more than six rebounds in the new year, a mark that I think Wade will easily clear on Wednesday night.
Temple has been hurt all season on offensive rebound putbacks. WSU should target grabbing 10 or more offensive rebounds, which should allow the Shockers to dominate in second-chance points.
2. Be ready to guard in transition
An average Temple possession lasts just 15.5 seconds, per KenPom.com, the 19th-fastest pace nationally. Nearly a third of Temple’s shots are taken in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock, per Hoop-Math.com.
The Owls love to play fast, but that does not mean they are good at playing fast. Once again from Hoop-Math.com, Temple has the 27th-worst effective field goal percentage (47.3%) in the country for shots taken in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock. Synergy tracks Temple’s transition offense at 0.97 points per possession, which ranks 246th nationally.
Too many times Temple pushes the pace, only to come up empty. More on this shortly, but Temple is simply not finishing plays during its three-game slide. Here are two plays from Temple’s 14-loss at home to Tulane that show the types of misses the Owls are dealing with currently:
This fast-paced style won’t be new to WSU. The Shockers were superb in slowing down Memphis, the AAC’s fastest team, just last week. And Memphis plays even faster and more efficient than Temple in transition.
WSU limited Memphis to just six points in transition, in part because Memphis was ice-cold shooting for the first 35 minutes of the game. But also because the Shockers hustled back on defense and communicated well in transition. That didn’t leave any cracks for Memphis to exploit and left the Tigers trying to win 1-on-1 battles like this against a top-20 defense.
Expect a lot of extremely aggressive drives straight to the basket from Temple’s guards in transition. It will be important to WSU that it communicates in transition to make sure its matched up properly. That’s usually a challenge to younger players and all of WSU’s guards are either freshmen or sophomores, so it’s even more important to the Shockers to keep chatting.
But WSU’s young core has proven up for the challenge before, namely the Memphis game, and with so many potential drives, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jaime Echenique or Morris Udeze to slide in and take a charge or two.
Another crucial piece to this will be avoiding live-ball turnovers that could lead to easy buckets for Temple. With the Owls struggling so much with their offense, WSU doesn’t want to give them any freebies. Temple has two of the best ballhawks in the country in Nate Pierre-Louis and Quinton Rose. Pierre-Louis is such a good on-ball defender, it wouldn’t be surprising to me to see WSU have whoever Pierre-Louis isn’t guarding bring the ball up because he’s that good of an on-ball defender.
It will be crucial for WSU’s freshmen guards to protect the ball. Grant Sherfield had an up-and-down performance against UConn that included five turnovers. He won’t get a break from the pressure against Temple, but he will have a chance to show he learned from his mistakes three days ago.
3. Let Temple hoist away on two-point jumpers
Temple is in the midst of a serious identity crisis on the offensive end in Aaron McKie’s first year at the helm. For the season, the Owls rank 283rd in the country in effective field goal percentage (46.6%) and 296th in two-point percentage (45.5%). In conference play, Temple’s offense has bottomed out. In four games, Temple ranks last in the conference in points per possession (0.84), effective field goal percentage (39.7%) and two-point percentage (38.7%).
“The name of the game is putting the ball in the hole, and we’re struggling with that,” McKie told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “We’re getting good looks, the ball is just not getting in. We’re playing like a finesse team on the offensive side. We’ve got a team where we should be attacking the paint and getting to the free-throw line.”
McKie is not lying about getting good looks. According to Synergy, Temple is taking 10.7 unguarded catch-and-shoot attempts per game, which is the 14th-most clean looks in the country on a per-game basis. Instead of cashing in, the Owls are clanking away and have made just 29.2% of those open looks, the 20th-worst accuracy on open catch-and-shoot attempts in the country.
Here’s a quick collection of the kind of open shots Temple missed against Tulane. As you can see, Temple is just flat out missing wide open shots — shots that they will probably start hitting soon to even out the averages.
Alani Moore (37% accuracy on 6.1 threes per game) and De’Vondre Perry (43% on 2.9 attempts) are both capable shooters, but it doesn’t help Temple that four of its top playmakers in Quinton Rose (26% on 3.9 attempts), Nate Pierre-Louis (19% on 2.5 attempts), JP Moorman (30% on 3.1 attempts) and Monty Scott (32% on 2.5 attempts) are all struggling this season.
But what’s even more troubling is Temple’s affinity for taking two-point jumpers. The Owls are taking more than the national average, yet making just 27.9%, per Hoop-Math.com, which is the third-worst accuracy in the country.
Rose the primary culprit here. More than a third of his shot selection is two-point jumpers, which isn’t great to begin with and then it gets even worse when you see that he’s only making 24% of them. That’s 17 for 72 for the season, in case you were wondering. Tack on Rose’s poor three-point shooting (26%) and he is 32 for 130 (25%) on all jump shots this season.
At 6-foot-8, Rose is lanky and a good finisher near the rim. So the game plan for Jamarius Burton or Dexter Dennis or whomever guards Rose should be to keep him away from the rim and force him to dribble into tough, mid-range jumpers. If Rose takes shots like these against WSU, then the Shockers can live with the results:
Temple isn’t great at generating looks at the rim and WSU has been good at limiting shots at the rim and defending shots at the rim this season. That’s a good combination, as the Shockers’ defense projects to force Temple into many inefficient shots. If Temple has a hot night shooting, then it could make it a game. But if the Owls continue shooting like they have been, then WSU’s defense has a chance to make Wednesday another miserable night for them.
4. Play through Jaime Echenique again
For the first time in a long time, WSU ran its offense through the post and made Echenique its focus in the matchup against Connecticut. Echenique responded with the best game of his senior season: 19 points on eight field goals, both of which tied his career highs.
While Memphis freshman Precious Achiuwa has Echenique beat in raw talent and athleticism, there’s a case to be made that Echenique is the most refined player in the conference with his back to the basket. He can be a dominant force and he showed why with his array of post moves against a very good defender in UConn’s Josh Carlton.
Temple actually rates above-average in post defense on Synergy, but I think that has more to do against the post players they’ve gone up against. Temple has been starting Jake Forrester, a 6-foot-8, 220-pound sophomore, who is a fine defender, but it’s difficult to imagine him being able to hold up against Echenique (6-11, 260). Temple also has freshman Arasha Parks (6-9, 230) and junior Justyn Hamilton (6-10, 220) as options, but they are raw.
Echenique played a career-high 37 minutes on Sunday, an impressive display of endurance that I did not know he had in him. There’s no way he’s playing that many again on Wednesday, but if Echenique can bring a crisp performance in 25ish minutes against Temple, then he could be in store for a big game.
And if WSU establishes Echenique inside, then that’s even better for my fifth and final point.
5. Make Temple’s defense pay for giving up open threes
It would be easy to look at Temple’s three-point defense and assume it’s outstanding because opponents are shooting just 28.9% against the Owls this season beyond the arc.
But then you do some digging on Synergy and find out that Temple is giving up 12.4 open catch-and-shoot attempts per game, which is next to dead-last in the nation in a category you don’t want to be next to dead-last in. Simply, Temple has survived because opponents are making just 30.6% of those open looks.
Do you know who is good at punishing teams for giving up open threes? Tyson Etienne, Erik Stevenson, Dexter Dennis and Jamarius Burton.
A common theme among the open threes allowed by Temple’s defense was poor angles taken on off-ball screens. Instead of trailing the shooter, Temple’s guards tried to shoot the gap between the passer and the shooter and often died on the screen, which allowed the shooter a wide open three. The Owls also mixed in some zone in their game against Houston and didn’t always have the energy on their rotations to close out the shooters.
To me, that spells a big game coming for Tyson Etienne, at least one where he is able to shoot a lot of catch-and-shoot threes. If he’s feeling it on Wednesday night on Broad Street, then the freshman from Englewood, N.J. could be in store for a 20-point outburst. This matchup also sets up favorably for Erik Stevenson, depending on how much time Pierre-Louis spends on him.
This story was originally published January 15, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
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