Missouri overwhelms Wichita State basketball to hand Shockers a loss at Koch Arena
Missouri was too big, too athletic, too deep and too good for Wichita State in Sunday afternoon’s men’s basketball game at Koch Arena.
Besides an occasional burst, WSU was not able to put up much resistance against a quality, veteran Missouri team that improved to 3-0 this season with a 72-62 victory over the Shockers. WSU fell to 1-1.
WSU had a miserable shooting performance from all areas on the court, as it shot 33.3% from the field (22 of 66), 28% on three-pointers (7 of 25) and 61.1% from the foul line (11 of 18). Paired with 10 turnovers and WSU’s offense produced just 0.87 points per possession.
It was the second straight game WSU has played without its full compliment of players due to COVID-19 restrictions. The Shockers played with nine of 13 scholarship players against Missouri on Sunday, but should have their full team for next Saturday against Oklahoma State.
“Missouri is a good, older basketball team and they took us out of a lot of our stuff early and we couldn’t make shots,” WSU interim coach Isaac Brown said.
“We can learn a lot from this game. We’re going to go back and clean up our mistakes and we’ll come out and play better the next game.”
Clarence Jackson (14 points, 7 rebounds) once again was a positive off the bench for WSU, while Tyson Etienne (14 points) and Alterique Gilbert (13 points, 6 assists) again led the Shockers in scoring, but did so on a combined 8 of 28 shooting. Dexter Dennis scored nine points on 3 of 11 shooting and grabbed seven rebounds.
Meanwhile, Missouri shot a tidy 48.1% from the field and had three scorers in double-figures with Mark Smith (19 points), Dru Smith (14) and Kobe Brown (14). WSU held Mizzou’s leading scorer Xavier Pinson to just three points on 1 of 13 shooting, but could not take advantage of his poor shooting performance.
“I think we can be really good,” Dennis said. “It’s early on. We just have to get our chemistry down. This is our second game playing with a lot of new guys. And we’re still getting some guys back in practice. Once we get our whole team back in and we get some game experience and a lot more practice experience, I think we’ll be that much better.”
WSU struggled to generate clean offense against a tenacious Missouri team that appears to be well-equipped to do that against most offenses. Missouri had the athletes up front to defend the ball aggressively and the athletes in the back to protect the rim and prevent WSU’s guards from penetrating to the paint.
The end result was a lot of isolation play by the Shockers, who were left launching jump shots at the end of the shot clock too frequently for effective offense. WSU finished with just eights assists on 22 made baskets.
That’s what plagued the Shockers coming out of halftime, when they only trailed by four. But WSU misfired on 10 of its first 11 shots in the second half and Missouri reeled off an 11-0 run to establish a 49-33 lead with 14:09 remaining and put WSU in a double-digit hole that it never recovered from.
“We were definitely stagnant,” Gilbert said. “I think we can get more ball movement. We could have made them work a lot more on the defensive end. We took some bad shots. We’re still learning how to play with each other, so it’s all a learning experience. I think we’ll learn from this and we’ll pick it right back up.”
Good offensive stretches were so precious on Sunday, which made WSU’s struggles with its transition defense fatal. It seemed like every time the Shockers would make a push with a string of baskets, their work would be undone by their failures in transition defense.
After a miserable shooting start that put WSU in a 15-6 hole after 11 minutes, the Shockers trimmed the deficit to three points with six straight points from Jackson. But after Jackson’s last bucket, Mizzou sprinted the court and Mark Smith scored on a layup at the other end less than five seconds after the Tigers grabbed the ball through the net.
When WSU trimmed Missouri’s lead to 22-19 on a three-pointer by Gilbert with 4:37 remaining, Missouri again beat the Shockers down the court and Parker Braun finished an alley-oop to extend the lead.
The box score awarded Missouri 15 fast break points, although it felt double that for WSU.
“The plan was after we scored to jump in our 2-2-1 pressure and get to our zone defense,” Brown said. “But we weren’t able to get back. They pushed it hard in transition and that was the biggest adjustment to the game. Our transition defense wasn’t very good.”
“Effort,” Dennis said when asked what had to improve for WSU’s transition defense. “Game shape is different than practice shape. There’s a lot of stopping in practices, but sometimes in a game you might be playing for five, six minutes straight with no fouls. Once we get in better game shape, I think we’ll be fine.”
WSU used a 7-1 run in the final 90 seconds of the first half, capped by Gilbert splitting two defenders at the t op of the key and smoothly scooping the ball in with his left hand, to trim Missouri’s halftime advantage to 34-30.
But the Shockers were unable to capitalize on sticking around, as Missouri led by double-digits for the final 15:32 of the game.
Sunday’s matchup against Missouri was the first time the two teams have played since 1951 and the first time the Tigers have played WSU in Wichita. The Shockers will make a return trip to Columbia, Mo. next season.
This story was originally published December 6, 2020 at 3:06 PM.
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