How Jaime Echenique connected with WSU so quickly, ending with a kiss on senior day
When Jaime Echenique came to Wichita State in the summer of 2018, the Shockers gathered as a team.
Echenique came to WSU as part of a large recruiting class that included Erik Stevenson and Dexter Dennis. Steve Dickie, the Shockers’ character development coach, met with the players and had the new guys go around and share their tribulations.
When he came to Echenique, Dennis said, tears were shed.
“We had no idea of the things he had been through,” Dennis said. “It made us very empathetic towards him and his whole situation. After you hear what he’s been through, it’s hard not to pull for him. To see him be able to be successful at this level, I’m just so proud of him.”
Echenique was celebrated on his senior day Sunday, about two years after that team meeting. As he was subbed out for the final time at Koch Arena, he high-fived his teammates before walking to the center of the floor. He leaned down and kissed Devlin Court.
After the game, he met with a couple of fans who’d created custom T-shirts covered with cutouts of Echenique’s face and had signs with the same image of his face to match. During the game, fans held up other signs honoring his journey to Wichita from Colombia. Some simply said “Jaime.”
Echenique was in Wichita for two years, but it felt like four. Dennis believes his connection with WSU, the Shockers’ fans and his teammates ran deeper than most junior-college transfers ever experience.
“One of the players told me one time, ‘I look up so much to you because you came here and you just hoop; you developed your game, and you look so confident,’” Echenique said. “I couldn’t believe that he was telling me that. I started reflecting about it, and it’s true. Somehow I put myself in a position where I have to trust my process and have confidence in me.
“If I don’t have confidence in me, who else will?”
Echenique’s senior day went perfectly to plan. He finished with 13 points, seven rebounds, four steals and two blocks. Most important, he helped WSU to a 79-57 win over Tulsa in which the Shockers’ walk-ons got to see the floor.
Tulsa came into the game with a chance to win the American Athletic Conference title outright and knock WSU further away from the NCAA Tournament. The Shockers walked out of Koch Arena back on the inside of the bubble and a first-round bye in the AAC Tournament next week.
The tone was set in the first four minutes.
WSU scored the game’s first nine points as Dennis buried a couple of 3-pointers. Echenique missed the opening shot, but he found other ways to impact the game early on, and his teammates seemed to rally around him.
Echenique earned four rebounds, two blocks and two steals in the first four minutes.
“We knew how this game will help us in order to move forward,” he said. “Basically what Coach told us in the locker room is that, ‘This game counts for two.’ ”
Echenique’s first block came on WSU’s first defensive possession. Tulsa’s Elijah Joiner, who broke Shockers fans’ hearts with a buzzer-beating three-pointer in the teams’ first meeting, drove into the paint. With Echenique patrolling, he swatted the layup back down to the floor.
The Shockers ran the floor, and WSU sophomore Jamarius Burton, who missed the go-ahead bucket at Tulsa earlier this season, drained a three-pointer for the game’s first points.
Echenique was a pivotal piece to the Shockers’ first-half defense. Tulsa didn’t reach 10 points until there was 7:29 left before halftime. But he has been a crucial part of all of WSU’s success throughout the season.
“He’s been our rock,” WSU coach Gregg Marshall said. “He’s had a really good career, and he’s up there in all statistical categories. He doesn’t score 20 a game. He doesn’t get 12 rebounds a game, but he blocks shots. He has a wonderful free throw percentage. His numbers belie the quality of player than he is.
With AAC honors coming out Tuesday, Echenique has a chance to become the first Shockers big man to land on the first team since Shaquille Morris in the 2017-18 season. On Echenique’s senior day, Marshall talked about him in relation to some prominent past WSU centers.
“Garrett (Stutz) was very, very valuable to that team in 2012,” Marshall said. “Shaq was really good as far as talent, but we had more talent surrounding him. ... Jaime has had a tremendous year, and his impact on our team is probably as good as we’ve had from a big guy in 13 years. ...”
“I shudder to think where we would be without him.”
When Echenique was announced to the crowd during his senior day celebration Sunday, his Shockers teammates ran to him. They surrounded him, danced with him and hugged him. Dennis even leaped onto Echenique’s shoulders.
At times this season, Echenique has carried the Shockers in the same way. As the only senior on the roster, he has perhaps been most valuable in the mental side of the game, and that makes sense because of what Dennis said the senior shared when he first arrived at WSU.
Echenique arrived in the U.S. without knowing much English. He went to Trinity Valley Community College in Athens, Texas, where he didn’t even start. Marshall saw him at a juco camp and liked him enough to take a chance on a raw player from Colombia, and Echenique has paid that faith back.
“I was really trying to hold it,” Echenique said. “It’s not easy to leave a place that you love so much. It has been an amazing two years. It will be hard to leave this place and all of these amazing people who came to support me tonight.”