With help of former NBA coach, WSU women’s basketball draws up game-winning play
With an assist from a former NBA coach, Keitha Adams had the right call for a game-winning basket in the closing seconds of the Wichita State women’s basketball team’s 72-70 win over Temple at Koch Arena on Sunday.
The Shockers had a sideline out of bounds play with 5.7 seconds remaining and the score tied when Adams, WSU’s head coach, had center Trajata Colbert set a screen, then receive a back screen that freed her for the wide-open, game-winning basket with 3.9 seconds remaining.
It was the third straight victory for WSU, which improved to 11-7 overall and 3-2 in the American Athletic Conference. The Shockers also snapped the five-game winning streak by Temple, which fell to 11-7 overall and 4-2 in conference play.
“A good friend of mine, Tim Floyd, gave me that play,” said Adams, who coached at UTEP for eight years with Floyd, a former NBA coach who was the head man in charge of the UTEP men’s basketball team during that span.
“It’s usually a play you run when you’ve got very little time on the clock. When I called that timeout, I just decided we’re going to go for the high percentage and let’s set a back screen and see if we can get a wide-open two-footer. If you get that screen and it’s there, then you can’t get one better than that. I just went with my gut.”
Even if the end result was an open layup for Colbert, what came before that wasn’t nearly as easy.
Temple looked like it would be the team to hold for the final shot when it rebounded a WSU miss with 13 seconds remaining. But instead of calling a timeout, Temple pushed the ball in transition and looked to attack a back-pedaling WSU defense.
When Temple passed ahead to guard Ashley Jones on the left wing, Jones took one dribble and tried to attack the middle of the floor. But WSU’s Seraphine Bastin read the move, shuffled her feet and planted herself in front of Jones, who barreled over Bastin and was whistled for an offensive foul to give WSU the ball back with 5.7 seconds remaining.
“I knew she was coming in really fast,” said Bastin, who finished with 12 points and six rebounds. “I knew I had to stand in there.”
WSU called timeout and Adams knew her team would inbound the ball on the sideline in front of WSU’s team bench. The coach entrusted McCully to be the one to throw the pass.
McCully admitted after the game that she could not see the play develop with a Temple defender jumping up and down in front of her.
“I just went with my mind,” McCully said. “I couldn’t see (Colbert) at all. I just knew I had to throw it real high. I just launched it up there and let it go.”
“I told her to lay it on the right side of the rim,” Adams added.
In order for that blind lob to work though, WSU had to execute the rest of the play. The Shockers sent two guards sprinting toward the ball in an attempt to draw Temple’s attention to the sideline, which worked better than Adams could have anticipated.
Colbert set a screen for one of those guards and her defender actually left to go double-team the WSU player headed toward the ball. The final part of the play was for Bastin to set a back screen on Colbert’s defender. Since they had already left, Bastin just screened her defender to ensure Colbert was wide open underneath the basket.
That’s why it didn’t matter that McCully sent a sky-scraping lob toward the rim. That’s how wide open Colbert was to catch the pass and take the go-ahead layup with 3.9 seconds remaining. Temple had a look at a game-winning three at the other end but missed.
WSU erased an eight-point halftime deficit to snap a red-hot Temple squad and continue its recent string of strong play. The Shockers reeled off a 9-0 run late in the fourth quarter to win 61-53 at East Carolina, then came back from a 13-point halftime deficit to beat Tulsa 57-46 earlier this week.
“We’re gaining experience and we’re getting better in these situations,” Adams said. “We’ve got a long ways to go and a lot of growth that we can still continue to make, but we feel like we’re improving. We just kept battling.”
The Shockers return to action for a 6:30 p.m. Wednesday game at Koch Arena against South Florida (10-8, 2-2 American).
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