The back story of how Wichita State got Kenny Pohto to start dunking the basketball
On the day of his first Division I basketball game, Kenny Pohto woke up sick.
He felt so ill that he missed Wichita State’s shootaround on Tuesday afternoon, hours before the season was slated to tip off against Jacksonville State at Koch Arena. Pohto, who is vaccinated, even had to take a rapid COVID-19 test, which came back negative.
“We didn’t know if he was even going to be able to play,” WSU coach Isaac Brown said.
After taking some medicine, Pohto started to feel slightly better and decided he couldn’t miss the first game of the season. The night ended with the 6-foot-11 true freshman from Sweden providing some of the biggest momentum swings in WSU’s 60-57 win to begin the season 1-0.
It didn’t take long for Pohto to become a fan favorite of the more than 8,000 in attendance, as he finished with eight points, which featured three dunks, four rebounds, an assist and two steals in 18 impactful minutes off the bench.
In the end, Pohto’s first game as a Shocker proved a memorable experience. He’s hoping to feel better for WSU’s next game, 3 p.m. Saturday at Koch Arena against South Alabama, but play the same in front of the crowd.
“It was a great atmosphere,” Pohto said. “I loved it. Never seen anything like it.”
All of the things that Brown had raved about Pohto during the lead-up to the season came to fruition against a veteran opponent in Jacksonville State.
Pohto’s feel for where to be on the court, on both ends, is advanced for his age. Up against a 6-foot-10, 255-pound standout in Brandon Huffman, Pohto was able to stonewall JSU’s big man on more than one occasion and even came up with two steals in the game by reading the entry pass and jumping the passing lane.
With WSU starting center Morris Udeze (five points, five rebounds, three blocks) strapped with foul trouble, Pohto’s steady play were vital to the Shockers.
“I have all the confidence in the world in Kenny Pohto,” Brown said. “He can execute everything we run on offense. He’s a smart kid that’s played a lot of international basketball. He came from some good coaches over at Sunrise. He’s a great defender and he just executes everything we do. I love him as a player and I think he’s going to get better and better.”
When WSU was in need of a spark, it was Pohto who provided them — courtesy of a pair of rim-rattling dunks that ignited the crowd and his team.
The first came late in the first half when JSU had just taken its largest lead of the game, 27-21, and Pohto crashed from the baseline, caught Craig Porter’s miss with one hand in the air and slammed it home.
It was a proud moment for fourth-year Shocker Dexter Dennis, who has been trying to convince Pohto to dunk more since the day he arrived at WSU in August after leading Sweden’s under-20 team to a championship this summer.
“When he first got here, we were at practice and he had a play and I was like, ‘Dude, dunk it,’” Dennis said. “He was like, ‘I can’t dunk. That’s not my game.’”
Pohto’s hesitancy to dunk dated back to his three years with Sunrise at the prep school level. He fashioned himself more after Tim Duncan, who was known for kissing the ball off the glass from a myriad of ways.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t dunk. It was that he rarely had the mindset to dunk.
“It would happen randomly and it would always be unbelievably impressive,” Sunrise coach Luke Barnwell said. “But the majority of the time, he would use the glass. Every now and then, though, he would hammer one and you would go, ‘Oh my goodness, Kenny, where did that come from?’”
Brown noticed the same thing when Pohto came to WSU and since August, the coach has been working with the freshman to become more aggressive.
“I’m always telling him in order to be a guy that dunks, you’ve got to dunk it all the time in practice,” Brown said. “Instead of just laying it up, when we do drills, try to get explosive and start dunking and it will become a habit and you’ll do it in the game.”
It all came together halfway through the second half when Pohto stepped in front of another entry pass, tipping it for a steal, then running the other way on the fast break. Tyson Etienne saw him out of the corner of his eye and bounced a no-look pass to Pohto crashing from the right wing.
A year ago, Pohto might have simply laid the ball in. But armed with a new mindset and empowered by Brown, Pohto went for the kill. And that’s exactly what he delivered when he hammered home a one-handed slam over JSU’s Kayne Henry.
The normally stoic Pohto stepped out of character for just a moment to let out a scream as mayhem ensued in the Roundhouse.
“I think it was the medicine,” Pohto joked as the reason for his dunks.
“I’m gonna expect that a lot more, big fella,” Dennis said, looking across the podium at the shy big man.
It doesn’t surprise Barnwell to hear that Pohto has taken well to Brown’s coaching.
“Kenny is kind of like a robot. You punch in the numbers and he’ll do whatever you tell him to do,” Barnwell said. “He’s a coach’s dream. You always want kids that deserve the opportunity to make the most of it. You pull for kids like him. I had a feeling he would be ready to roll and it’s great to see him back it up.”
Pohto drew praise from Etienne, who hit the biggest shot of the game in the end. The star pointed out Pohto’s fast-break conversion, which tied the game at 45, as a turning point for the team.
“When you get a stop, you want to capitalize on it,” Etienne said. “You don’t want to come down and take a bad shot. You want something emphatic. You want to make them compound the mistake they just made. For him to make that dunk and at the time he did it, that’s huge. His dunk in the first half too, those were big plays. They’re worth two points, but they’re big plays.”
This story was originally published November 11, 2021 at 2:42 PM.
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