WSU Shockers in for a sweaty Selection Sunday after AAC Tournament loss to Cincinnati
Selection Sunday will now be a sweaty one for the Wichita State men’s basketball team.
Will a 16-5 record that includes an outright American Athletic Conference regular-season championship, a top-10 win over Houston and a trip to the conference tournament semifinals be good enough for the Shockers to earn an at-large selection to the NCAA Tournament field?
Or will Saturday’s 60-59 loss to the Cincinnati Bearcats at Dickies Arena — WSU’s first Quad 3 loss of the season — and a pedestrian No. 64 NET ranking be enough to push WSU off the March Madness bubble?
Instead of securing their fate on Saturday, the Shockers will now nervously wait until the 5 p.m. Selection Sunday show to find out what postseason tournament they’ll be playing in.
“You have to have faith, got to trust,” WSU star Tyson Etienne said. “It’s out of our hands. We built our resume. The committee is going to make their decision, and whatever decision they make is the decision they make. I believe we have earned a spot in the tournament, but we don’t make the final decision. I trust that good energy will come back to us. We put it out all year, and I believe we deserve it and I believe it will come back to us.”
Saturday’s loss stings not only because it sullies WSU’s previously squeaky-clean NET resume, but also because it allowed a six-point lead slip away in the second half against a team that played shorthanded with its star player, Keith Williams, out with an injury for the final 23 minutes.
WSU had a shot in the air as time expired that would have won the game, but a relatively good three-point look from Alterique Gilbert rimmed in and out.
After a season’s worth of games playing with fire and emerging untouched almost every time, WSU was finally burned in the end. It was just the second loss this season (9-2 record) for WSU in games decided by five points or less.
“I was thinking in my head, ‘That’s game. He’s going to make that,’” said WSU junior Morris Udeze, who had 11 points and seven rebounds. “When it went in and out, I don’t know, it was a weird moment. It was a really weird moment.”
There will be plenty of what-if questions about the final 13 seconds for WSU.
The Shockers thought they had the ball back when they felt like Dexter Dennis lunged for a steal and deflected it off the fingertips of Cincinnati’s Mason Madsen. But officials ruled it was Cincinnati’s ball after a review.
WSU cost itself more than two seconds on its final chance because it could not secure a defensive rebound when Cincinnati freshman Tari Eason missed the front-end of a bonus free throw with 10.9 seconds left.
When Jeremiah Davenport kept the door open for WSU with his own free throw miss with 8.5 seconds left, Udeze grabbed the board and threw an outlet to WSU junior Dexter Dennis. Instead of attacking in transition, Dennis waited to hand off to Gilbert, who scored a team-high 14 points on 6-of-16 shooting and handed out five assists. By the time Gilbert was handed the ball, 4.8 seconds remained on the clock.
Gilbert released his three-pointer with two seconds still on the clock, but Cincinnati’s defense had walled up around the perimeter and left him few options.
“We were hoping we could get to the rim,” WSU coach Isaac Brown said. “We wanted to get it up court, but we couldn’t get to the rim because it was a short clock. I wish we could have brought it up quicker, but the shot was in and out and that’s a shot he normally makes. He just didn’t make it tonight.”
In such a tight game, WSU had several things it can look to for blame. For the second straight game, WSU fell in a halftime hole due to mental mistakes. The Shockers were also once again out-rebounded, this time 40-31, and the thing that bugged Brown the most was 50% shooting (6 of 12) at the foul line.
“We can talk about all of the plays, but the fact is we were 6 for 12 from the foul line and we lost by one,” Brown said. “That’s the game right there.”
“It’s a heartbreaker,” Etienne said. “You never want the game to come down to the last possession like that, but today that was reality. We didn’t come up with the victory. Stuff like that happens.”
WSU led by six points with 8:34 remaining in the game, but Cincinnati proved resilient. The Shockers once again suffered through ice-cold shooting to close out a game. After going the final five minutes without a field goal in Friday’s win, WSU was just 2-for-11 in the final six minutes of Saturday’s loss.
WSU had a chance to tie after forcing a turnover on its full-court press, but Gilbert missed a layup. After another Cincinnati turnover, Etienne (13 points) had a driving look just outside of the paint for a potential tie but it also rimmed out.
WSU forced 16 turnovers, but was only able to turn those into six points, while Cincinnati scored 10 points off of 14 WSU turnovers.
“They did what we do,” Etienne said. “They didn’t go away. They kept fighting and made some big shots and some big plays. We still had a chance in those last eight seconds, but it didn’t bounce our way. You’re not going to win every single time. Sometimes it doesn’t happen and you have to learn from it. Hopefully we get a chance to redeem ourselves next week.”
For the third straight trip to the conference tournament, the Shockers lost in the semifinals — twice now against Cincinnati. This was the sixth time in the seven occurrences WSU has earned a No. 1 seed in its conference tournament that the Shockers have failed to reach the tournament final.
Cincinnati will play the winner of Houston and Memphis in Sunday’s 2:30 p.m. championship game broadcast on ESPN.
This story was originally published March 13, 2021 at 4:19 PM.
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