How WSU’s Tyson Etienne won the chess match, and the game, against Temple’s defense
With the ball in his hands and the game on the line, Tyson Etienne wanted a screen.
Wichita State was trailing by one point in the final minute against Temple, but not for long. Morris Udeze trudged his way to the perimeter after being summoned for the pick, but before he could even set his feet Etienne had taken off. He exploded past his defender on his way to the rim, absorbed contact from the beaten defender, then expertly scored over and around another defender.
Etienne’s go-ahead, three-point play with 42 seconds remaining was the defining moment of WSU’s 70-67 win over the Temple Owls on Sunday at Koch Arena. It also concluded a thrilling, 40-minute-long chess match — the game-within-the-game, if you will — that pitted the Shockers’ star player against the Temple defense.
“Just had to find a way to get a bucket there at the end,” Etienne said.
To fully understand the brilliance of just how Etienne got that bucket, the previous 39 minutes is needed for context.
Temple’s game plan was to be ultra aggressive any time Etienne used a ball screen — attempt to force him into passing more than shooting. To accomplish this, Temple employed a “hard hedge” defense against Etienne — meaning the defender of whoever sets the screen for Etienne comes all the way out to corral Etienne to essentially create a momentary double team.
The Owls were willing to leave themselves exposed on defense if it meant forcing the ball out of Etienne’s hands, an understandable gamble going up against the AAC’s leading scorer.
For much of the game, Temple did exactly what it wanted to do: turn Etienne into a passer. The 6-foot-2 sophomore attempted just 12 field goals, the second-fewest for him during WSU’s 7-2 start in the AAC.
The problem for Temple (and the rest of the American) is that Etienne proved on Sunday he can beat defenses in more ways than just his scoring. When Temple cranked up the pressure on him on ball screens, Etienne was superb at quickly identifying where the defense was vulnerable and whipping the ball there.
Whether that meant him dragging the defense out of position so he could slot nifty passes to WSU’s rolling big men for easy baskets or zipping overhead skip passes to a shooter in the corner, Etienne was up for the challenge and finished with a career-high five assists.
“Their other players outside of Etienne stepped up and made plays for them, made shots for them,” Temple coach Aaron McKie said. “That’s all it boils down to. We wanted to slow him down, but guys like Trey Wade stepped up and made some plays. That’s basketball. We have to get more of that from our guys.”
To pull of its aggressive ball-screen defense against Etienne, Temple’s help defense had to scramble to rotate to the paint in order to take away the pass to WSU’s rolling big man toward the basket. Etienne burned Temple twice on this earlier in the game, which is important to note because he then exploited the Owls when they tried to take that away.
With WSU up one and three minutes left, Etienne knew the hard hedge from Temple was coming and took a big dribble backward to force Temple’s hedging defender to come even further away from the basket. As a result, Temple’s help defense was forced to stick a second longer with Udeze rolling down the paint, which bought Etienne all the time he needed to flip a pass to Dexter Dennis on the wing where Temple’s help defense had vacated to cover Udeze. Temple’s defense was a step slow and the contest was late, as Dennis made Temple pay with a three.
“It’s a small window for error in the last four minutes of a game,” Etienne said. “You really got to be on point. I see different defenses, but we have great coaches, we have great players and we come up with the right ways to attack.”
Etienne did the same trick two possessions later with WSU down one in the final two minutes. This time he nearly dribbled back to half-court to stretch Temple’s defense even further out and force it to cover even more ground. Sure enough, Temple’s hedging defender was too far away from the basket to recover in time to guard Udeze, which forced a help defender to again leave Dennis on the wing. This time when Etienne found Dennis, he blew past the late close-out and drew a foul for two free throws that put WSU back in the lead.
“What he’s been doing has been incredible,” said WSU junior Dexter Dennis of Etienne, who has scored at least 20 points in seven of his last 10 games. “It’s amazing just to be able to witness it. I’m not really shocked at all. I’m just glad to be on the ride with him.”
Etienne saved perhaps his most incredible play for the end, the and-one bucket that put the Shockers in front for good with 42 seconds left.
As detailed above, Temple successfully turned Etienne into a passer out of pick-and-rolls for the first 39 minutes of the game and Etienne successfully rose to the challenge for WSU.
But Etienne wasn’t passing when the ball found his hands in the final minute with the game on the line. So how do you attack a defense hellbent on making you pass all game long? By doing something you hadn’t done all game long.
For 39 minutes, every time WSU set a ball screen for Etienne he dribbled around and used it to try to go to the middle of the floor. That’s very clearly what Temple expected again when Udeze went up to set Etienne a ball screen on the left wing.
But before Udeze could position himself with his feet facing the sideline in an attempt to spring Etienne toward the middle, Etienne stunned Temple by rejecting the screen and darting down the left sideline. For the first time all game, the corner was empty — meaning no help defense — and Etienne caught Udeze’s defender off guard, which is why he was late to contain Etienne’s dribble penetration. Instead, the WSU star carved out his own late straight to the rim, where he finished through contact for the game’s biggest play.
After playing an expert game of chess for 40 minutes, in the end Etienne delivered the checkmate.
“I just knew the way they were guarding me on ball screens,” Etienne said. “They were hedging me hard. Just being patient, reading the floor and seeing where they were at and seeing that nobody was in my corner. I knew I would be able to get by my man and once I got to the rim, I just put the ball up and it went in.”
This story was originally published February 8, 2021 at 8:08 AM.
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