‘Eight is enough’: Wichita State basketball will again be undermanned against Missouri

The Wichita State men’s basketball team will play with just eight scholarship players for the second straight game to open the season when the Shockers take on Missouri at 1 p.m. Sunday in Koch Arena.

WSU was without five scholarship players and all three walk-ons for its 85-80 victory over Oral Roberts on Wednesday. Their absence stemmed from a mixture of positive COVID-19 tests and exposure dating back to last Monday, which forced the Shockers to exit the Crossover Classic tournament in South Dakota.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been recommending a 14-day quarantine following exposure, but this week announced shortened alternatives — a 7-day quarantine with a negative test or a 10-day quarantine without a test — for asymptomatic people. That gave hope to WSU fans that a handful of the five Shockers missing from the season opener could make their debut on Sunday for the ESPN2 broadcast.

But those changes have yet to be adopted by the American Athletic Conference, which means the Shockers will once again be without guards Craig Porter, Chauncey Jenkins and Ricky Council and forwards Josaphat Bilau and Jaden Seymour. The only addition will be walk-on Jacob Herrs for Sunday’s game against Missouri.

A spokesperson for the AAC said he expects the conference will follow suit, but because the changes were made official fewer than three days ago, the conference’s Medical Advisory Group has yet to convene to make the formal adjustment.

“I just told the guys, ‘Eight is enough,’” WSU interim coach Isaac Brown said. “We don’t want to make any excuses, so we got to get rid of that mindset. Some teams only play with eight guys, so we don’t use that as an excuse. We’re going into the game looking at it as a positive because this is a big-time challenge against an NCAA Tournament team and it’s going to take the best basketball we can play to win this game.”

Missouri was picked to finish 10th in the SEC, but the Cuonzo Martin-led squad has looked closer to a top-10 team in the country this season. The Tigers crushed the same Oral Roberts team that pushed WSU at Koch Arena by 27 points in their season opener, then knocked off No. 21 Oregon, 83-75, on Wednesday.

Missouri returns four starters, its top seven scorers from last season and is the 11th most-experienced team in the country, per KenPom. The Tigers have a top-notch scorer in 6-foot-2 guard Xavier Pinson (19.5 points), a top-notch shooter in Mark Smith (16.5 points, 3.5 threes per game) and a top-notch big man in 6-foot-10, 260-pound Jeremiah Tilmon (9.5 points, 10.5 rebounds).

“The No. 1 thing for us is we’re going to have to play smart,” Brown said. “We cannot turn the ball over and I told the guys that taking a bad shot is like a turnover. We’ve got to make sure we get back in transition because they’re going to be looking to push hard. And then we’ve got to rebound better. We gave up 18 offensive rebounds (to Oral Roberts) and this team is more athletic, so we’ve got to do a better job there. We’ve got to be the harder-playing team this game.”

WSU will be undersized and undermanned, so an improved rebounding effort will need to be spearheaded by its two available centers in Morris Udeze and Isaiah Poor Bear-Chandler.

Brown said expect to see more Poor Bear-Chandler in Sunday’s game after the junior played just 1:42 in the second half of Wednesday’s game. The coach said it was his mistake why Poor Bear-Chandler played so few minutes in the second half, despite scoring seven points in the first half.

“It was just one of those games,” Brown said. “I’m going to get him in more because he earned more minutes (Wednesday). I think his minutes will continue to go up.”

Despite WSU scoring 85 points in an efficient manner (1.20 points per possession), Brown said there were plenty of learning lessons for the team watching the performance on film.

Brown would like to see better half-court execution and thinks improvement in that area will be a must to beat Missouri in the first meeting between the two teams since 1951 on Sunday. The Shockers have won four straight against SEC foes in Wichita and four straight against “Power 5” conference teams at Koch Arena, dating back to a 85-85 win over Texas Tech in 2009.

“When you play these better teams, you can’t beat those guys playing 1-on-1,” Brown said. “We’re going to need to be able to execute better. So we’ve been showing them the plays where they did execute (Wednesday) and we’ve been working on that a lot more in practice, really focusing on taking good shots.”

An encouraging sign to Brown was that WSU managed to score as well as it did with three starters — Dexter Dennis, Trey Wade and Udeze — combining for just 19 points on 25 shots. WSU was carried by a combined 44 points from its backcourt of Tyson Etienne (career-high 26 points) and Alterique Gilbert.

Brown expects improvement from the other three starters on Sunday, especially from Dennis, who played a game-high 35 minutes but finished 1 of 6 from the field and with just two points against Oral Roberts.

“I just told Dex, ‘Don’t think twice, take the wide-open jumpers. You’re a high-level shooter,’” Brown said. “And if he’s not making shots, then try to get out in transition and get some easy baskets or get to the foul line. Even when he’s not scoring, he can still do stuff he’s always done and that’s defend at a high level and rebound. He knows we need his scoring. You can’t make every shot, but you’ve got to be able to come back the next game and bounce back.”

MISSOURI (2-0) AT WICHITA STATE (1-0)

When: 1 p.m. Sunday

Where: Koch Arena (no fans allowed)

TV: ESPN2

Radio: KEYN, 103.7-FM

Projected starting lineups

Head coach: Isaac Brown, first season, 1-0

Head coach: Cuonzo Martin, fourth season, 52-46

This story was originally published December 5, 2020 at 12:33 PM.

Taylor Eldridge

The Wichita Eagle

316-268-6270

Wichita State athletics beat reporter. Bringing you closer to the Shockers you love and inside the sports you love to watch.