Breaking down WSU’s breakout star: Trainer takes you inside the game of Tyson Etienne
Before the career-high scoring binges, burying 26-footers over exasperated defenders and dunking his way to SportsCenter-worthy highlights, Tyson Etienne worked alone in a New York City gymnasium with a basketball, a goal and his trainer.
Everyone can now marvel at the breakout sophomore season of the 6-foot-2, 200-pound guard — Etienne is averaging 17.0 points, including 2.8 made three-pointers per game on a 37% shooting clip, and his offensive rating of 131.1 would be the best mark of any Shocker in the last three decades. More importantly, he is the main reason why Wichita State is off to a surprising 6-2 start under interim coach Isaac Brown and the last unbeaten team, at 2-0, in the American Athletic Conference entering Wednesday’s 7 p.m. road showdown at No. 11 Houston streaming on ESPN+.
But no one — other than his trainer, John Hawthorne — was in the audience for the countless hours of preparation Etienne invested in this off-season. And the man who has worked with NBA pros and witnessed the work Etienne did told The Eagle it was inevitable that he would flourish in his second season with the Shockers.
“I’m not surprised at all because I’ve seen the work he’s put in, even dating back to last season,” Hawthorne said. “You didn’t see a lot of this last year because that wasn’t his role based upon the chemistry of the team and what the coach wanted. Addition by subtraction has been a blessing for (WSU fans) to see how good he really is. And he’s getting better. He continues to have a career night pretty much every week it seems and he’s just going to keep doing it.”
Speak with long-standing members within the WSU program and they will tell you they’ve rarely seen a college kid like Etienne. He’s meticulous in his routine. He meditates religiously and carves out time every day for self-care. He takes superb care of his body, from yoga exercises to carefully monitoring what he consumes. WSU strength and conditioning coach Kerry Rosenboom said when Etienne arrived last summer his body looked like he had already spent years in a college weight-lifting program, not an 18-year-old kid fresh out of prep school. The coaches confirm Etienne’s work ethic has been second-to-none since he first stepped foot inside Koch Arena.
Simply put, Etienne does not think, act or talk like a typical sophomore in college. When looking at how Etienne made his sophomore leap this season, Hawthorne says this is the place where Etienne separates himself from others.
“The No. 1 thing we do is self-critique, which is the most difficult thing to do for a lot of athletes,” Hawthorne said. “You have to be honest with yourself. With a lot of players, the self-evaluation process is the most difficult because they’re not able to receive the message of what they’re failing at, which hinders them from getting better. I’ve never had that problem with Tyson.
“No one can be motivated more than they want to. All of the credit goes to Tyson because he wants to be great. It’s not just lip service. He truly believes he can be that caliber of player, so the only thing left to do is go out and work on everything he needs to work on to be successful.”
Finishing through contact
Etienne was an excellent spot-up shooter for WSU last season, averaging 9.4 points and making 38.8% of his three-pointers, but a spot-up shooter was all that he was viewed as. Etienne, of course, had grander plans for himself.
He did explosive speed exercises with the focus this off-season on improving his first step on drives. Being a relative diminutive guard, he struggled to finish over taller defenders at the rim last season, so Etienne added 10 pounds of muscle in the weight room. A stronger, more explosive athlete is the result.
Not only has Etienne tripled the amount of attempts he’s taking at the rim, but he’s producing more points there this season — 1.26 points per possession, up from 0.92 PPP from last season. It’s not a coincidence that Etienne is now shooting 5.8 free throws per game — more than double (2.4) how many he shot last season — and drawing 6.1 fouls per 40 minutes, which is the fourth-best rate in the AAC. That’s allowed Etienne, who is shooting 85.4% from the foul line this season, to cash in on more easy points on free throws.
“He had to take care of his body and then go back over the process of how to jump and how to attack in the air,” Hawthorne said. “We got in the gym and actually had him see it go in through rep after rep after rep.”
The move that encapsulates all of Etienne’s off-season work is a rip-through move he uses frequently. It’s become his go-to move on the perimeter and it’s even more effective this season because of Etienne’s improved first step, vertical leap and bulk that allows him to absorb contact and finish at the rim. This was the move he used two weeks ago in Tampa for his SportsCenter-worthy dunk over two USF defenders.
“You put in the hours of practices and workouts and all of the stuff that I do off the floor to prepare myself for moments like that,” Etienne said. “So when you get in the game, that’s when you just let it flow.”
A sign of Etienne’s impressive maturation is how quickly he was able to develop a counter when a defense tried to take this move away. Just last weekend, Ole Miss had Etienne scouted well and sent another defender as soon as he did the rip-through move, cutting off his path to the basket along the right baseline. But Etienne proved savvy by his use of a hesitation dribble, which relaxed both Ole Miss defenders because they thought he was headed the other way, only for Etienne to burst past both of them along the baseline for a layup.
“(Ole Miss) scouted us and broke down some of our sets, but Tyson was still able to get it and create off the bounce,” WSU interim coach Isaac Brown said. “I’m so proud of him because he worked on his game. That’s what the great players do. Last year he was more of a catch-and-shoot guy for us. This year he can still catch and shoot it, but he can also create off the bounce.”
Creating out of the pick and roll
There wasn’t much of an opportunity last season for Etienne to showcase his handle of the pick-and-roll game. After WSU lost three high-usage players to the transfer market, Etienne knew his playmaking would see an increase this season.
But even WSU is a little surprised with just how well Etienne is creating out of the pick-and-roll this season. After rarely being used as a creative ball handler last season, Etienne is now seeing 4.5 possessions per game end with his shot or pass out of the pick and roll. When the pick and roll ends with Etienne shooting, he has scored 1.09 PPP to rank in the 91st percentile nationally, per Synergy.
Thanks to his work this summer, Etienne now has an answer for every pick-and-roll coverage a defense could throw at him. If the big man doesn’t step all the way up, Etienne can dribble into a three-pointer. If the big man does step up all the way, Etienne can dribble around him and attack the now-vacated lane. If Etienne’s man fights over the screen and is on his back hip, Etienne has shown the ability to wall off that defender and attack the paint to draw a foul.
“This summer Tyson was really diligent about working on the things that he thought he needed to work on after his freshman campaign,” said Drew Metz, who coached Etienne in high school and still works with him in the summers. “He’s stronger. He’s more athletic. He’s in the best shape of his life. And he’s just playing with way more confidence. He knows the work that he put in and now the rest of the country is seeing it on the court.”
Etienne puts so much pressure on opposing defenses in the action because he is a threat to shoot a three-pointer, pull up for a mid-range jumper or attack the basket. And when help defenders over-play to stop Etienne, he has proven to be a willing and intuitive passer. Etienne is producing a number of clean catch-and-shoot opportunities every game, but he’s missing out on should-be assists because WSU shooters not named Etienne are making just 30.1% of their three-pointers this season.
It also helps that Etienne almost never makes a mistake with the ball. He has committed just eight turnovers this season in 243 minutes and his minuscule turnover rate of 3.8% ranks fourth in the country for high-usage (20% usage rate) players and first in the AAC. For reference, the lowest turnover rate for an entire season by a Shocker with high usage in the Gregg Marshall era was Ron Baker’s 10.1% mark in the 2014-15 season.
Extending his three-point range
It shouldn’t come as a surprise who Etienne’s favorite NBA player is to anyone who watched his career-high, 29-point outburst at Ole Miss last weekend. Standing 6-2 just like his NBA idol, Etienne has modeled his game after Damian Lillard — right down to draining shots with his feet touching the half-court logo that leave defenders throwing their hands up in the air in exasperation.
Etienne had plenty of Lillard-like moments against Ole Miss and that’s because he actually had a drill this summer where he would camp out three feet beyond the college three-point line, some 25 feet away, and practice what him and his trainer would call “Damian Lillard shots.”
“It’s not surprising to me seeing him hit from that far out because I watched him work on those shots this whole summer with his trainer,” Metz said. “When he shoots them, I know they’re going in and Tyson knows they’re going in because he’s put in countless hours this summer working on those super-deep, long-range threes. That’s just part of his game now.”
After Etienne unleashed his range with three 25-footers against Ole Miss, WSU graduate transfer Alterique Gilbert shared what must have been a terrifying thought for opposing defenses after the game.
“He shoots it deeper in practice, to be honest,” Gilbert said with a sly grin. “When he gets hot like that, we’re not surprised. At all.”
While the deep threes count the same as when Etienne toes the line, he believes it can be psychologically damaging for defenders to have their feet outside the three-point arc, feel like they’re playing great defense, sure that Etienne is too far from the basket to be in striking range, only to watch him elevate, flick his wrist and turn and watch the ball swish through the net.
“You play great defense and keep somebody off the three-point line and push them out, then somebody hits a three from that far out and it’s kind of back-breaking,” Etienne said. “It’s unexpected. But that’s just part of my skill set.”
Most shooters look to toe the line when they spot up from the perimeter. Not Etienne this season. Watch him space the floor and even when he’s wide open, he tends to stand at least a foot back from the three-point line. That’s where he feels comfortable and WSU coach Isaac Brown has given him permission to pull from just about anywhere on the court.
“He has the green light because Tyson makes those shots in practice,” Brown said. “I wouldn’t allow him to take shots in the game that he didn’t take in practice. I see him every day in practice make those shots. So there’s no need for me to change it in a game. I just keep telling him to take wide-open shots, I’m not really concerned about how far out they are.”
Etienne’s three-pointers are coming from further away and more frequently further away this season, which might explain why his catch-and-shoot production has taken a slight dip (from 1.09 PPP last season to 0.97 PPP so far this season). He’s still a sniper from the corners, but a bigger bulk of his three-pointers are coming above the break because he is spotting up further away from the basket. An Eagle study showed that 12 of Etienne’s 22 triples this season have come from at least one foot behind the three-point line.
Etienne believes he is giving himself an advantage spotting up further away from the basket. Because most shooters typically toe the line for their three-pointers, college defenders are used to playing defense at that level to challenge shots. What Etienne is doing is trading an extra foot or two of space beyond that distance in exchange for cleaner shooting windows. It’s not likely going to happen much the rest of the season, but Etienne has caught a number of defenders off-guard with how far he’s willing to pull up from beyond the arc.
“I knew this season that his team was going to need him to be a dynamic scorer,” Hawthorne said. “If the defense doesn’t get up on him from 25 feet out, he’s well within range to shoot it. We’ve practiced that time and time again. It’s part of everything we do. We really took the off-season to hammer away at the details.”
Defenses are sure to adapt quickly to Etienne’s hot start to the season and Ole Miss likely showed the adjustment late in the second half of last Saturday’s game when it began having its defender pick Etienne up 30 feet from the basket to prevent giving him the space he loves to fire away from deep.
Even then, Etienne showed how much he has leveled up his game this off-season when Ole Miss switched up its defense. When his defender picked him up that far away from the basket, Etienne easily dribbled past him, exploded down the lane, absorbed contact from a 6-foot-8, 235-pound senior and finished at the rim for a three-point play.
WSU junior Dexter Dennis put it best after the game.
“What can you do?” pondered Dennis. “He’s shooting it from five feet behind the line. He’s going in the lane and finishing. What do you do?”
If defenses don’t pick Etienne up from 25 feet away, he’s a danger for popping off for 20-plus points. If defenses do pick him up that far out, Etienne has shown his ability as a driver and a passer and his gravity around the perimeter — meaning his man won’t ever help off of him — should create extra-wide driving lanes with no help defense for WSU’s other guards. Simply, defenses are left with only bad options when dealing with Etienne.
Typically, when usage increases, efficiency decreases. Not with Etienne. He has been a rare case where he has maintained his efficiency with an increased workload. After posting a team-best 114.0 offensive rating last season, Etienne’s offensive rating has ballooned to 131.1 this season as his effective field goal percentage (53.2%) and true shooting percentage (60.6%) have both risen. He ranks third in the AAC in offensive rating, just behind Player of the Year candidates in UCF’s Brandon Mahan (131.8) and SMU’s Kendric Davis (131.5).
For those who work closest with Etienne, this season has been a long time coming. There’s still more to come, but his inner circle is happy that Etienne is starting to receive the praise that his work ethic deserves.
“It’s a beautiful thing to see,” Metz said. “I know Tyson doesn’t really get the opportunity to smell the flowers, but I’m going to tell him to appreciate his work and the game he’s been playing. He’s still got a lot of goals ahead of him. He wants to keep going. He has really high goals for himself and the most important one is to keep winning basketball games and winning with these guys he’s playing with right now. He loves this team and they’ve been through a lot, so I think him and the rest of the team want to go out there and prove themselves.”
This story was originally published January 5, 2021 at 6:21 AM.
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