Bad habits end Wichita State’s season in NCAA Tournament loss to the Drake Bulldogs
In the end, the same bad habits ended the Wichita State men’s basketball team’s season.
When the Shockers needed it the most, they were unable to protect a lead, make their free throws and secure defensive rebounds.
And now WSU will be haunted by the what-ifs after letting a 12-point lead slip away in a each half of a 53-52 loss to the Drake Bulldogs in a NCAA Tournament First Four game Thursday at Mackey Arena. The Shockers led for more than 30 minutes, but it was Drake, winners in March Madness for the first time since 1971, who will play USC on Saturday in the round of 64.
For the second straight game, WSU’s opponent missed a front-end free throw in the closing seconds and senior Alterique Gilbert shot a three-pointer before time expired that would have won it for WSU. For the second straight game, the three-pointer with WSU trailing by one missed.
A 16-6 season that ended in the NCAA Tournament and with the program’s first American Athletic Conference championship will be a nice consolation down the road. But in the moment on Thursday, losing such a winnable game was crushing to the Shockers. Especially when they shot 11 of 22 from the foul line and gave up more offensive rebounds (9) than grabbed defensive rebounds (8) in the second half.
“We didn’t do a good job making free throws,” WSU coach Isaac Brown said. “And it wasn’t that we weren’t rebounding. We would get the rebound, we’d get bumped a little bit — they were the more physical team — and the ball would go out of bounds on us. We didn’t do a good job on that. We had to give up at least eight of them like that. When you give up second possessions like that, the team usually makes a basket, and they did a good job.”
It was the first time WSU played a Missouri Valley Conference team since leaving its long-time home in 2017. In some ways, Thursday’s rock fight — Drake made 37.7% of its shots, while WSU made 33.9% — felt like a throw-back to the Shockers’ old road trips in the Valley. The loss snapped WSU’s 11-game winning streak over Drake, its oldest rival.
The season ended in ugly fashion, at least for WSU’s offense, which was held under 60 points for the second straight game, both losses. On Thursday, WSU tied its season-low output of 52 points and shot 33.9% from the field (19 of 56), 16.7% on three-pointers (3 of 18) and 50% from the foul line (11 of 22).
WSU junior Morris Udeze scored a career-high 22 points on 8-of-13 shooting and put WSU in front, 47-46, with his last bucket inside with 2:49 remaining.
“I’ve been preparing for this moment my whole life,” Udeze said. “I just executed. I just want to thank coach for calling the plays for me.
“I felt like my teammates and my coaches had faith in me. They kept giving me the ball. I just tried to execute whatever was given to me. It happened in my favor today.”
But the Shockers gambled for a steal on the defensive end, which led to a wide-open three for Drake. After Udeze traveled, Drake came up with an offensive rebound at the other end that led to another basket and a 51-47 lead with 1:02 left.
The Shockers nearly completed an improbable rally, as Dexter Dennis (13 points, seven rebounds, three blocks) chased down a steal and dribbled into a three-pointer with 8.1 seconds left to cut Drake’s lead to 53-52.
When Drake’s Joseph Yesufu (21 points) missed the front-end of a bonus free throw, Gilbert had a nearly identical situation as the one he found himself in the loss to Cincinnati last weekend in Fort Worth. Brown said he again hoped WSU could reach the rim to beat the clock, but understood why Gilbert (10 points, four assists) pulled up to ensure the Shockers were able to get a shot off.
“I wanted Alterique and Tyson (Etienne) to get at each elbow at the free-throw line,” Brown said. “Whichever side it came off of, I wanted you to sprint up the court, they advance it to you, and we try to get to the rim as quickly as possible. We took a jump shot. They defended it well. Just didn’t make it. I mean, we had to get it up.”
It was a bizarre game in the fact that Etienne, WSU’s leading scorer and the AAC co-Player of the Year, was held without a field goal for the first time this season. Etienne finished with a single point, a free throw, and missed all six of his field goals, his second-fewest shot attempts in a game this season.
“They did a good job of staying with him,” Brown said. “He missed a couple of shots. We didn’t do a good job of getting him open. But we went inside to our big boy. I think the problem was in the game, again, we missed the free throws and we didn’t get those rebounds when we needed to.”
Despite Etienne’s absence from scoring, WSU still managed to turn a one-point halftime lead into a 37-25 lead halfway through the second half behind Udeze’s career-best performance. Drake had no answer for Udeze, who spun and drop-stepped and sealed his way to basket after basket to lift the Shockers.
After 30 minutes of containing Drake’s dribble-drive offense with solid perimeter defense and sure-handed rebounding, WSU couldn’t replicate that effort in the final 10 minutes to close out the game. After holding the Bulldogs to no second-chance points in the first half, Drake had seven second-chance points in the second half and five of its nine offensive rebounds were team rebounds judged off WSU out of bounds.
“We didn’t do a good job of sticking our landing on rebounds,” Brown said. “Like we would check them out, would have a good stop. And all of a sudden the ball would bounce out of bounds and it would be their ball.”
While WSU was missing free throws — it shot 9 of 16 from the line in the second half — Drake was busy staging a comeback with 5-of-11 shooting on three-pointers in the second half. That propelled Drake from down 11 midway through the second half to give it a 46-45 lead in the final four minutes.
It was a devastating loss for WSU considering it spent nearly six minutes of the game with a double-digit lead and Drake went through a nearly 10-minute stretch in the first half without a made field goal and only one point.
“All year they’ve battled back from deficits and today was no different,” Drake coach Darian DeVries said. “We continue to challenge them that they’ve been here before and just to stay with it, trust each other. And they did that. And we were able to close out both halves playing — we got our offense going and they continued to get stops while we were struggling. So just a heck of an effort by the guys.”
Just like the Shockers did with Cincinnati, they allowed Drake to stick around and eventually gave up a crushing run to end the game.
After a season of coming up with answers late in the game, WSU was unable to produce a magical moment when it needed one the most.
“We just let them hang around,” Brown said. “We just didn’t do a good job. They stepped up. They made some threes. They hit some timely baskets. And they were the better team tonight.”
This story was originally published March 18, 2021 at 7:47 PM.
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