How Wichita State basketball flipped the game for first AAC home win vs. Cincinnati
There were several things that brought a grimace to the face of Cincinnati coach John Brannen upon seeing Wichita State’s final stats in the Shockers’ 82-76 victory at Koch Arena on Sunday.
52 second-half points. 13 offensive rebounds. 28 points off 15 forced turnovers. 34 free throws.
“It’s impossible to win that way,” Brannen said succinctly.
WSU had never made a Cincinnati team feel that way before Sunday since joining the American Athletic Conference and renewing the rivalry. In fact, the Shockers had lost six straight to the Bearcats, including all three games on their home court — back when 10,506 fans made Koch Arena a formidable venue.
But WSU was able to snap its losing skid to Cincinnati — without its full home-court advantage (15% capacity was allowed) — because of a prolonged 24-7 run midway through the second half that turned a 1-point deficit into a 65-49 lead with 5:33 remaining.
Four days after falling at Houston because of an 8-minute-long scoring drought in the second half, WSU reversed the roles on Sunday by holding Cincinnati to 0-for-9 shooting and seven points in 16 possessions during the 8-minute-long rally.
It was a 24-7 prolonged run, but WSU really put the game away in the final 3 minutes and 35 seconds of that rally with a 16-3 spurt. During those eight Cincinnati possessions, WSU’s defense squeezed out five turnovers and capitalized every time at the other end for 12 of its 16 points during the run-within-the-run.
Here’s a closer look at how the Shockers flipped the game and secured their first home AAC win over Cincinnati to improve to 7-3 overall and 3-1 in conference play.
A scoreless Shocker sparked the rally
Alterique Gilbert scored 0 points and missed all five of his shots on Sunday, which indicates it was his worst game yet in his brief Shocker career.
While that was true scoring-wise, the senior point guard still found a way to help the Shockers win the game. In fact, he was a pivotal figure for when the momentum of the game permanently shifted.
Here was the situation: WSU was clinging to a 49-46 lead with just over nine minutes left. The Shockers had just had three straight empty possessions on offense, including two bad traveling turnovers, and needed something positive. Right on cue, Gilbert came through with a crafty veteran move when he lunged around a ball screen and poked the ball loose from Cincinnati point guard David DeJulius.
The turnover triggered a fast break for WSU, putting Cincinnati’s defense in a situation where it has struggled all season (UC ranks No. 287 nationally in transition defensive efficiency, per Synergy). Sure enough, Cincinnati’s back-pedaling defense suffered a momentary lapse — Mika Adams-Woods dropped one step too far back inside the three-point line, giving Tyson Etienne the sliver of space he needed to drill a three-pointer.
Less than 20 seconds later, Gilbert did it again — this time as a help defender. When Cincinnati’s Keith Williams drove from the top of the key, Gilbert crashed down from the right wing to claw at the ball. Sure enough, Gilbert pried it free from Williams and knocked it straight into the hands of Ricky Council.
What happened next is perhaps the snapshot of the game — Council cruising the other way, soaring through the air, cocking the ball back behind his head and ramming it through the rim.
It’s easy to remember the dunk, but it’s not as easy to remember Gilbert played a key role in the 5-0 run that gave WSU what was then its largest lead of the game, 54-46, and forced Cincinnati to call a timeout with 8:43 remaining.
Three turnovers in 42 seconds changed the game
Taking care of the ball has been a problem all season for Cincinnati, which committed a turnover on nearly 21% of its possessions entering Sunday and ranked No. 239 in the country in turnover rate.
So it’s not entirely surprising that turnovers played a large role in Cincinnati’s collapse in the second half. As mentioned above, Cincinnati committed five turnovers in an 8-possession stretch that WSU cashed in on for 12 of its 16 points during a 16-3 spurt. And with Cincinnati unable to buy a field goal, those turnovers came at the most inopportune time.
The start of that stretch was the most jarring. After Gilbert forced turnovers on back-to-back possessions, Cincinnati called a timeout to regroup but it didn’t result in a change. In fact, after the timeout, Williams telegraphed a pass to the corner that Council read for a steal. To make matters worse, the Cincinnati senior compounded his mistake by fouling Council, which sent him to the free throw line where he made both of his free throws.
And just like that, in 42 seconds of game action, three straight Cincinnati turnovers led to seven straight WSU points and turned a 3-point deficit into a 10-point deficit for the Bearcats.
WSU wins the transition battle (when it mattered)
Perhaps the most important game-within-the-game for WSU was winning the transition battle against Cincinnati.
This meant being advantageous on fast breaks for WSU, but mostly in keeping Cincinnati from running. Because this season has proven that if you can keep the Bearcats out of transition, their offensive efficiency plummets in a half-court setting. Per Synergy, Cincinnati was generating the 36th-most transition possessions and scoring at a slightly above-average rate of 1.04 points per possession; but its half-court offense ranked in the bottom-50 of the country in scoring efficiency (0.78 PPP).
“There’s no secret,” Brannen said. “Keep Cincinnati out of transition and you have a chance to really impact the game a great deal. We have to get better in our half-court offense, but it’s difficult right now because we dig holes defensively and then we feel like we need to get it back offensively quickly.”
For the first 36 minutes, WSU won this battle. The Shockers limited Cincinnati to just nine points in 12 transition possessions, which left the Bearcats trying to pick apart WSU’s set defense time and time again. That’s a big reason why the Shockers were able to open up a 69-54 lead to essentially put the game out of reach.
It wasn’t until Cincinnati cranked up its pressure and started all-out gambling in the final four minutes that it started hurting WSU consistently in transition. After producing just 54 points in its first 61 possessions, mostly in the half-court, Cincinnati poured in 22 points in its final 13 possession, mostly in transition. The problem was that it was too late to make up the deficit.
On the flip side, WSU was opportunistic when a Cincinnati miss or turnover presented the chance to attack in transition.
Sometimes WSU didn’t even need to do much to create a fast break. Cincinnati is a relatively young team and its youthful exuberance can be its own greatest enemy at times. The younger players are prone to commit turnovers because they get sped up and they’re so eager to make a play, sometimes they don’t slow down to process what is happening in front of them.
That was the case when UC sophomore Jeremiah Davenport took a pass on the wing and blindly began throwing a reversal pass across the court until he realized no one was there. He tried to pull it back, but instead his pass went straight to Etienne and it led to an easy run-out for the WSU star.
Transition opportunities are some of the most valuable in basketball, which is why mistakes like that from Cincinnati were so costly to their chances and so crucial to WSU’s success.
“We started defending and getting out in transition,” WSU interim coach Isaac Brown said. “We didn’t have to go against a set defense. If you can not go against a set defense, you have a good chance of winning. We were able to get out in transition and get easy baskets.”
Ricky Council silently puts together strong defensive game
The career-high 23 points on a hyper-efficient 11 shots will (rightfully) draw the headlines, but the 6-foot-6 freshman from Durham, North Carolina also showed some of his most promising stretches on defense as a Shocker.
To preface, there are still occasions when Council is caught ball-watching, misses a box-out or is simply out of position on defense. And that’s understandable because he is a 19-year-old freshman after all. But Council showed glimpses on Sunday of a defensive ceiling that would truly make him a special, two-way forced for WSU some day.
And it didn’t come against Cincinnati’s third or fourth option. No, Council proved he was up for the challenge against Cincinnati’s top gunner in Williams, a 15-point-per-game scorer. On Sunday, with Council as his primary defender, Williams was 0-for-3.
Pitted against one of the most savvy scorers in the conference, Council did not back down. On the first two showdowns, Council used his athleticism to match the senior stride-for-stride on defense, kept his hands above his head to avoid a foul and used his length to extend and strongly contest the shot. The first attempt by Williams was well short; the second, along the left baseline, was contested so well that it hit off the side of the backboard.
Later, during WSU’s 8-minute stretch of dominance, Williams again tested the freshman. This time the senior took a swing pass on the left wing and immediately tried to blow past Council, except the freshman was able to shuffle his feet and wall off the drive. Williams took a retreat dribble to set up a fade-away jumper, but Council saw it coming early and a well-placed swipe at the ball jarred it loose from Williams before he was able to go in his shooting motion.
Cincinnati was 0-for-9 from the field during the 8-minute stretch and a big reason why it couldn’t make a shot was because Council was effectively taking away its top scoring threat during that span.
Council showed on Sunday he could be a big-time scorer for the Shockers. To be stay on the floor for WSU, a certain level on defense is required. And the freshman not only proved he could meet that standard, he showed he could someday be a big-time defender for the Shockers when he is locked in.
“I’m staying on him so much about defending, rebounding, and operating our system,” Brown said. “He did a better job of defending today and he was able to stay on the floor.”
Tyson Etienne found his rhythm
Remember that Etienne three-pointer in transition that started this rally? Well, that one minor mistake by Cincinnati ended up giving the WSU star the rhythm that the Bearcats had done so well to keep from him.
Cincinnati (mostly Adams-Woods) had done a stellar job on Etienne for the game’s first 31 minutes, holding him to two points on 1-for-7 shooting. But after finally seeing a jumper go through the net, Etienne made his next four shots to score 10 points during the crucial 16-3 spurt. He scored 13 of his 15 points in the final nine minutes of the game.
Evidence of Etienne’s belief he had found his range was on full display on WSU’s next possession. The sophomore looped his defender around a screen to set up a fake cut toward the basket. Instead, Etienne stopped, reversed course and sprinted back to the top of the key for a hand-off from Morris Udeze. With Adams-Woods draped on his left side and 7-foot-1 Chris Vogt challenging directly in front of him, Etienne planted his feet, elevated and smoothly stroked in the jumper over both of them.
It was only fitting for Etienne to finish the run with a three-pointer after beginning it with one. Following yet another Cincinnati turnover, the Bearcats dropped back in a zone defense and rolled the dice that they could locate Etienne. But the sophomore sharpshooter is superb at off-ball movement, evident by his work done when Alterique Gilbert penetrated the zone and jumped in the air looking to make the cross-court pass to Etienne on the other side of the zone.
When Gilbert jumped, Etienne was spotted up a few feet behind the three-point arc on the right wing. But Etienne recognized that the head of Cincinnati’s responsible zone defender was turned watching the ball, so he darted down to the right corner. When Gilbert made the pass, the defender blindly turned to close out the shot on the wing where he thought Etienne was. That extra split-second earned Etienne a clean look on a three-pointer that barely moved the net.
The shot gave WSU a 65-49 lead with 5:33 remaining, effectively putting Cincinnati out of reach and securing a morale-boosting win for the Shockers to further solidify them as a contender early in the conference season.
“To pull out a win against them was a huge thing for us, especially with it being the first game during conference,” Etienne said. “It was a big statement win for us.”
This story was originally published January 11, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
.jpg)