Four questions Wichita State basketball team needs to answer to win the Arizona game
The Wichita State men’s basketball team will have a significant step up in competition on Friday night when the Shockers take on the undefeated Arizona Wildcats in a Roman Main Event game at 9 p.m. Central time at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The game will be broadcast on TV on ESPNU.
Here are the four questions WSU will have to answer if it is to pick up a marquee victory early in the season.
1. Can Wichita State limit Arizona in transition?
The top line on the scouting report for Wichita State will be about Arizona’s transition offense.
More than a quarter of the Wildcats’ total possessions are ending in fast breaks for the 15th-highest rate in the country, per Synergy. The 23 fast-break possessions per game is a big reason why Arizona has the fourth-shortest average length of possession (13.7 seconds) this season, per KenPom.
Whether it’s from a live-ball turnover, a blocked shot or a bad miss, Arizona loves to run following an opponent’s mistake and it’s capitalizing with its affinity for sharing the ball and its length in the open court from lanky and explosive guards like 6-foot-6 Bennedict Mathurin and 6-foot-7 Dalen Terry.
But Arizona’s best player in transition this season has actually been 6-foot-11 power forward Azuolas Tubelis, a mismatch nightmare who can run the floor, shoot it, score inside and pass it. He’s averaging a team-high 16 points with more than five points per game coming off fast breaks.
WSU’s combination of Joe Pleasant and Monzy Jackson will likely be tasked with making sure Tubelis isn’t consistently running free in transition.
“We’re the smaller team, so we should be able to get back,” Brown said. “I don’t understand how big guys can outrun small guys, so that’s what I challenged them to get back in transition defense.
“We want to make them go against a halfcourt set defense. That’s the key right there: transition defense.”
Through three games, Arizona has displayed no weakness on offense. The Wildcats lead the country in assist percentage (74%). They rarely turn the ball over, crash the glass well, draw a lot of fouls and knock down 39% of their three-point shots.
But Arizona has yet to face the quality of defense that WSU can present. The Shockers are far from perfect, but they could give themselves a chance if they can prevent Arizona from running frequently, muck it up in the halfcourt and force the Wildcats to grind it out against a set defense most times down the floor. WSU is just mediocre defending in transition, but borderline elite when it comes to guarding in the halfcourt.
Arizona has basically been able to do whatever it’s wanted on offense the first three games. How will the Wildcats respond when they meet resistance and their first and second options are taken away? That’s not to say Arizona won’t have an answer, but WSU wants to at least force the Wildcats to prove they have one.
In order to do that, the Shockers will have to cut down on the amount of careless turnovers and poor shots that have sparked fast breaks for opponents. Tarleton State might not be able to make WSU pay, but Arizona certainly can.
2. Can WSU’s Morris Udeze be a factor against Arizona 7-1 star Christian Koloko?
If WSU manages to slow Arizona down and force a halfcourt game, then expect the Wildcats to try to leverage their size advantage inside with Christian Koloko.
The 7-foot-1 center from Cameroon is a defensive monster, but he’s also scoring 14 points per game and making 76.2% of his shots near the rim. As a team, Arizona ranks third in the country in efficiency (1.46 points per possession) scoring on post-up attempts.
Koloko is near automatic with his right hook shot, meaning Udeze will have to use his lower center of gravity to his advantage and prevent Koloko from sealing him close to the basket.
While Udeze will be the one guarding Koloko, it will be a collective team effort to prevent Arizona from scoring at will down low. If Udeze fronts Koloko, the back-side help always has to be there. If Koloko does receive a post touch, WSU’s guards have to be scraping down to discourage him from dribbling.
“We’ve got to do our work early and not let the ball come inside,” Brown said. “Our guards got to do a good job of getting handsy, trying to get deflections so the ball don’t go inside. We’ve got to make sure we’re connected on defense.”
On the other end, Udeze has plenty of experience of going right at much bigger centers from playing in the American.
In some ways, Udeze is actually better equipped for success against bigger post defenders. He struggles when teams double team him and force him to pass out, but Arizona is unlikely to send a second defender his way with Koloko guarding him. That should put Udeze is 1-on-1 situations where he has shown the ability to use his quickness to score around longer defenders. It’s not always pretty and none of those defenders are as talented as Koloko, but Udeze does have a track record of doing it against 7-footers.
“He’s got to be patient,” Brown said. “Every game we’ve played this year, Morris has gotten double teamed. This game he doesn’t have to worry about getting double-teamed. It’s going to be 1-on-1 in there on the block, so he’s got to make good moves and use his quickness to try to get around (Koloko), try to get more shot fakes and get him up in the air, stuff like that.”
3. Can the Shockers avoid reckless drives to the rim?
Moussa Cisse anchoring the Memphis defense in the paint was the closest shot-blocking presence WSU has seen to Koloko.
It’s hard to understate the impact Koloko will have on the defensive end when he’s on the floor. He’s 7-1, agile and incredibly long-limbed.
Even if you manage to fool Koloko into jumping on a pump-fake, he has the absurd reach to still smother your shot from behind on his second jump. Seriously, some of his blocks are just unfair.
It’s not a coincidence that opponents have made just 30.8% of their shots near the rim against Arizona, the best mark in the country. The Wildcats also rank No. 1 nationally in two-point field goal percentage defense at 29.3%.
On paper, it’s a terrible matchup for WSU. The Shockers are still going through the growing pains of learning how to pick their spots to attack. So far, WSU ranks in the bottom-40 of the country in having two-point shots blocked. Arizona ranks No. 6 in the country in blocking them.
WSU has had too many out-of-control drives through the first three games of the season. The Shockers will have to be much more wise when deciding to drive, while Udeze will also need to pick his spots to go at Koloko. If WSU isn’t careful, it could become a block party that leads to fast-break dunks at the other end for Arizona.
One possible wrinkle WSU could throw at Arizona is playing more of 6-11 freshman Kenny Pohto, who could force Koloko away from the paint, open up driving lanes for WSU’s guards and make him guard out to the three-point line. Pohto has a good three-point stroke, but is 0-for-5 beyond the arc this season. Pohto will have to make one and likely two threes likely to persuade Koloko to vacate his spot next to the rim and guard out to the perimeter.
4. Can WSU make enough outside shots to hang?
So you may be asking, ‘How the heck are the Shockers supposed to score against Arizona?’
Any version of a WSU win almost has to include a hot shooting game from the outside. The Shockers made nine three-pointers on 42.9% shooting last game and that total might have to creep into double-digits with near the same level of accuracy.
It won’t be easy. Arizona’s guards know they have a human eraser behind them in Koloko and it gives them more confidence to be more aggressive on the perimeter. Arizona’s trio of Kerr Kriisa (6-3), Bennedict Mathurin (6-6) and Dalen Terry (6-7) are long and athletic, a tough combination to crack.
But WSU has the ball handlers in Qua Grant, Tyson Etienne, Craig Porter and Ricky Council IV capable of breaking down a defender and collapsing the defense. The key for WSU is in the decision-making once the advantage is gained at the point of attack.
“We want to create the help situation and then kick it out tot he open guy or dump it down to the big guys for easy baskets,” Brown said. “We definitely have to make the extra pass because they have great size, athleticism, speed and quickness, so we’ve got to do a good job of being able to get good shots.”
Like any game, how good WSU’s offense looks will come down to how many open shots it can make along the perimeter. WSU is confident it has the shooters to make double-digit triples, but those explosions have been a rarity for the Shockers in recent history.
But half the battle for WSU will be producing wide-open shots and that’s going to take a team-wide drive-to-kick mentality. Every one of WSU’s ball handlers have forced bad shots over tough contests, rather than looking to see where the open shooter is spotted up. Grant, Porter and Council all showed progress last game with at least one assist when they broke their defender down, collapsed the defense and made the right read to find the open shooter for a made three. Grant was particularly excellent at that and appears early in the season to be WSU’s most consistent player in breaking down defenses. WSU will need a heavy dose of that on Friday.
There were also a handful of promising possessions where WSU whipped the ball around the perimeter, making the extra pass and right read to find a teammate wide open for a shot. There were three instances where WSU produced a wide-open three that didn’t fall, but those shots are bound to fall at a higher clip. Repeating that against Arizona will be difficult, but those hockey-assist passes are worth monitoring.
The return of Etienne also adds an unknown into the fold. After two sub-par games by his standards, Etienne will likely be looking for his breakout performance of this season on a national stage against a blue blood like Arizona. With an outside shot like his, Etienne is always capable of catching fire.
Arizona plays a drop coverage in ball screens involving Koloko, which could make Udeze screens a tantalizing option for Etienne. The preseason AAC Player of the Year showed how deep his range goes in the first game of the season and if he’s feeling it, he could burn Arizona from his preferred launching range of a few feet behind the arc if Koloko is slow to step out.
And if Arizona decides to switch up its coverages and double or blitz Etienne, then he has shown the ability in the past to make defenses pay. In limited action on the ball last season, Etienne showed flashes of hitting the roller, finding the open shooter on the wing or making the skip pass to the corner. After an entire summer of training that specific skill, Etienne should be even better at making those reads this season.
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