‘Mentally and physically tired’: What Wichita State said after listless loss at Temple
Wichita State lost its one-game advantage on the rest of the American Athletic Conference, the result of an ugly 65-53 loss Wednesday night at Temple that resembled the Shockers of last season more than the team that had started the season 15-1 and was ranked No. 16 in the country.
Here are five takeaways from WSU’s performance at Temple:
1. WSU never woke up
Even though the Shockers took a 32-26 lead into halftime, it wasn’t a result of a crisp offensive performance. WSU shot just 37.5% from the field in the first half and 3 of 11 beyond the arc.
“Both teams were kind of sleepwalking,” WSU coach Gregg Marshall said. “But obviously they turned it up in the second half and we just remained in our slumber.”
But then bad went to worse and WSU’s offense bottomed out with one of its worst performances of the season. The Shockers made just 7 of 31 shots (22.6%) from the field and missed all 10 of their three-pointers in the second half.
In 38 second-half possessions, WSU managed just 21 points — with only five points in the first 10 minutes.
So what happened out there?
“It was frustrating because we didn’t fight and handle the adversity really good like we have been,” WSU senior Jaime Echenique said. “It’s a minor step back. Sometimes you have to win ugly and we could have done that, but our energy was too low.”
“We let our missed shots dictate our defense,” Burton said. “Good teams don’t allow their offense to dictate how well they play defense and we did that tonight. We’ve got to get back to Wichita and watch film and learn from this.”
“We looked mentally and physically tired,” Marshall said, adding that WSU was “outplayed and outcoached.”
WSU’s defense, which forced 20 Temple turnovers, was good enough to get the job done on Wednesday. But it was good enough with the offense floundering as much as it was.
2. WSU never recovered from six-point possession
A six-point possession is almost unheard of in basketball. But WSU found a way to give one up on Wednesday and it never recovered after momentum flipped in Temple’s direction.
It began early in the second half, during WSU’s dry spell that allowed Temple to rally to within one point. Dexter Dennis’ cross-court pass was picked off by Temple’s Quinton Rose, and as he raced down the court, WSU’s Erik Stevenson tried to wrap him up. Officials convened and determined this was enough for a Flagrant 1 foul.
Rose made both of his free throws to give Temple a 33-32 lead with 16:25 remaining. The Owls got the ball back because of the flagrant foul and Monty Scott drilled a pull-up jumper. While the shot was in the air, WSU’s Jamarius Burton was whistled for a foul on the box-out, which again gave Temple the ball back.
Given a third chance, Temple capitalized with another pull-up jumper, this time by Nate Pierre-Louis. In a span of 31 seconds, WSU went from up one to down five, as Temple took a 37-32 lead with 15:54 remaining and never trailed again.
“That was a long possession,” Marshall said. “It was like a football game where they kept getting offsides and holding penalties and stayed down on that end. It was just bad and that was a big part of that. It wasn’t the biggest part, though. We weren’t good in the first half, either.”
WSU had three potential game-tying shots in the next three minutes, but missed all three three-pointers. The Shockers rallied back to within 48-45 with 7:32 remaining, but again missed a three-pointer when Dexter Dennis misfired from the wing. WSU never had a chance to tie the score again.
“We kept motivating each other that we could still make a run and still win the game,” Burton said. “It’s up to us to bounce back from those runs. We still had opportunities to win the ball game and we didn’t take advantage of them.”
3. Jaime Echenique had a career-best game
The 6-foot-11 senior center is putting together a convincing case that he is the most polished center in the American Athletic Conference.
Echenique has now played maybe his two best college games in back-to-back outings for the Shockers. After playing a career-high 37 minutes in Sunday’s double-overtime thriller at Connecticut while matching his career-highs in points (19) and field goals (8) to go along with eight rebounds, Echenique followed that up with setting new career-highs in points (20) and rebounds (13) against Temple.
“I had 20 today, but we lost, so that doesn’t matter nothing to me,” Echenique said.
On a night where WSU was ice cold from the perimeter, it’s only consistent source of offense was to funnel the ball to Echenique in the post and let him go to work. It seemed like every time Echenique received a post touch, WSU’s offense would at least generate an open look or made basket from the senior center.
“We know that when we pass the ball down there, he can get a bucket or create for others and make something good happen,” WSU’s Jamarius Burton said. “We have confidence in him down there and we’re just glad he’s producing.”
4. Good practice does not lead to good performance
In an extended road trip that saw the Shockers stay on the East Coast following their double-overtime win at Connecticut on Sunday, the team went five straight nights away from home.
After a listless second-half performance by his team, Marshall didn’t think the unusual travel schedule played a role in the uncharacteristic performance. In fact, after Tuesday’s practice in Philadelphia, Marshall saw no signs that a poor showing was incoming.
“We had a great practice (Tuesday),” Marshall said. “We practiced so much better (Tuesday) than we played (Wednesday). I don’t know why that is.”
There’s no time for the Shockers to sulk in their first loss in nearly two months.
Houston (13-4, 3-1 American) is coming to Koch Arena for a 3 p.m. Saturday showdown between two teams vying for the conference championship. Holding serve at home is crucial for WSU, which gave back its one-game lead over the Cougars with the loss to Temple.
“We’ll have to play better than this on Saturday or we’ll lose again,” Marshall said. “We have a really good team coming to our place with one day of prep basically.”
5. The streaks that came to an end
Wichita State went seven weeks in between losses and had plenty of impressive streaks built during that time span.
The most notable streak that ended was WSU’s eight-game road winning streak, which was the second-longest in the nation. WSU ended one game shy of tying the American record for most road wins in a row, which is still held by Houston.
The loss also ends WSU’s overall winning streak at nine games, one win shy of what would have been Marshall’s fourth double-digit winning streak in his tenure at WSU. The Shockers’ 15-1 start to the season ended as tied for the fourth-best start in program history.
“There’s that old adage, sometimes you play five games in a season that are a little better than your norm and five games that are a little worse than your norm,” Marshall said. “Well, this was worse than our norm. Hopefully we don’t have three or four more like this any time soon. We’ve been playing some really good basketball. Tonight was not indicative of that.”
WSU had its fair share of ugly losses last season and the returners said they know how to handle adversity better this time around.
“Every game is an opportunity, a chance to learn,” Burton said. “Today we were on the opposite end. We lost. But it’s still an opportunity to learn from this and get better.”
This story was originally published January 16, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
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