Film reveals six problems from Wichita State men’s basketball team’s loss to Cincinnati
Here are six takeaways from the Wichita State men’s basketball team’s 61-57 loss to the Cincinnati Bearcats on Sunday at Koch Arena.
1. Shockers’ offense sputters down the stretch
Whenever a team loses a close game and struggles to score down the stretch, the offensive miscues are always going to be magnified.
Wichita State could only muster eight points (all from Tyson Etienne) on its final 11 possessions during the last eight minutes of the game on Sunday, failing to keep up with a Cincinnati team that had multiple players (Mika Adams-Woods, Jeremiah Davenport, Hayden Koval, David DeJulius) step up down the stretch.
The struggles were almost identical to Wednesday’s loss to Tulane at home, in a game where WSU managed just eight points on its final 12 possessions during the last eight minutes of a 68-67 loss.
“The team is definitely frustrated losing a lot of close games where we had an opportunity to win,” WSU coach Isaac Brown said. “We’ve got to figure out how to win a game late. I’ve got to do a better job of putting them in the right positions and we’ve got to step up and defend and make some wide-open shots when we need them.”
While WSU’s struggles to score were more pronounced late, the truth was WSU never did score well against Cincinnati in the halfcourt. It was an above-average day in transition (16 points in 11 possessions) that masked the deficiencies of the offense and when the fast breaks dried up (WSU didn’t log a transition possession in the final 12 minutes), so did the easy chances for WSU to score.
The season-long question for Brown and his staff is deciding how to use Etienne as a weapon down the stretch. Is he more effective with the ball in his hands creating out of a high ball screen? Or is he more dangerous running off screens where WSU can use his shooting gravity to its advantage?
For this game, Brown decided to put the ball in Etienne’s hands and go almost exclusively to WSU’s ball-screen offense for the final eight minutes. And the WSU star delivered on a handful of difficult baskets down the stretch, a pair of pull-up jumpers and a tough layup that briefly put WSU ahead 57-56 with 2:32 remaining.
Etienne finished 4-of-8 shooting with all eight of WSU’s points in the final eight minutes, but missed his final two shots in the final two minutes with WSU trailing. The Shockers scored just two points on their final seven possessions.
“Anybody in my situation knows I’m not going to get clean looks,” Etienne said. “I’m going to have to take contested shots because those are the options I’m getting. That’s the whole objective of the scouting report is to make sure I don’t get anything easy. I made some tough shots and I missed some down the stretch, but I felt like for the most part I did well on my tough shots. I don’t really expect to get anything easy. That’s just the nature of being who I am.”
Etienne made his fair share of tough shots last year in his breakout season, which won him a share of the AAC player of the year award, but the secret sauce to his success was the amount of open threes WSU was able to generate. Those same open looks have largely not been there this season for Etienne, a combination of increased focus by opposing defenses and a failure of WSU’s offense with its passing, screening and lack of other shooting options. Simply put, the degree of difficulty for Etienne has skyrocketed this season — some by his own shot selection and some by his surroundings.
Figuring out the right way to deploy Etienne and produce better looks on offense down the stretch of games continues to be a challenge this season for Brown and the coaching staff. WSU squandered two golden chances down the stretch, failing to make three shots right at the rim.
“We’ve just got to keep battling,” Brown said. “We’re not making enough plays down the stretch in order to win these games. We’re right there. We just didn’t make enough plays late.”
Brown showed the creativity is there with a final set play called “Panther” with WSU trailing by three points in the final 20 seconds, as he dialed up a screen-the-screener action with Etienne coming off a high ball screen from center Morris Udeze, Dexter Dennis screening Udeze’s defender, then popping to the three-point line to receive the pass from Etienne. The execution was pinpoint, as Udeze’s defender was worried about Etienne and was late to step up on the screen up top for Dennis, which left Dennis wide open to fire straight on from the basket. The potential game-tying shot missed, but it was as clean of a look as a team could hope for in that situation.
“I got a good look, I just didn’t make it,” Dennis said. “It felt good, but it didn’t go in.”
“I’ll take Dex shooting that every time,” Etienne said. “He’s going to make it.”
With the success of running a set play with motion, Brown will have to decide if he still wants to turn to the ball-screen offense down the stretch of close games — putting the ball in his best player’s hands, but choosing an offense that doesn’t encourage much movement.
“I’ve got to get better,” Brown said. “We’ve got to be better down the stretch. I’ve got to help will these guys to wins.”
2. WSU comes up empty too many times at rim
The biggest regret WSU will have after watching film is how many times it failed to cash in right next to the basket.
On the surface level, it makes sense why WSU would struggle to score at the rim against Cincinnati. The Shockers are a below-average shooting team close to the basket and the Bearcats always have at least one 7-foot, elite rim protector on the floor — a big reason why they’re No. 3 in the country in two-point defense.
It’s hard to score inside against Cincinnati, but WSU generated the looks to do it. The Shockers finished just 16 of 37 chances, a season-high in attempts at the rim with the 43.2% conversion rate the third-worst on the season. The league average at finishing at the rim is at 54.1% this season.
“We’re missing too many layups at the rim,” said WSU coach Isaac Brown, who estimated his team blew “five to 10 point-blank layups.”
“We’ve got to stick the layups. We had a couple offensive rebounds and a couple shots right at the rim and for whatever reason, we’re just not making those shots.”
Brown’s estimate wasn’t far off from a film review by The Eagle, which counted eight missed golden opportunities for WSU close to the basket.
Many of those close misses belonged to center Morris Udeze, who returned from a one-game absence due to COVID-19 health and safety protocols. Udeze finished with 12 points, but shot just 4 of 14 on two-pointers.
“I missed a whole bunch of layups today that I usually don’t miss,” Udeze said. “I was trying to get my legs under me and get the feel of the game, which I kind of got mid-game, but it obviously wasn’t enough for us to get the win.
“I usually make those, I don’t know, man. They kept circling the rim. I’m just like, ‘Next play, next play. It’s going to fall.’”
WSU did well to dominate the points in the paint, out-scoring UC 32-12, but it was an advantage that probably should have been even greater. And it wasn’t only Udeze missing bunnies; Tyson Etienne and Dexter Dennis botched wide-open layups, while Joe Pleasant failed to convert a put-back attempt following an offensive rebound.
3. Yet another role player goes off against the Shockers
It seems to be a nightly occurrence this season for a role player to deliver their best game of the season against the Shockers.
It was Josh Minott (career-high 15 points) with Memphis, Taze Moore (season-high 17 points) with Houston, DeVon Baker (season-high 10 points) with Tulane and Hayden Koval (season-high 13 points) with Cincinnati.
In his first 16 games at Cincinnati, the 7-foot-1 center was averaging 3.6 points and had yet to crack double-digit scoring. In fact, he was mostly out of the rotation for Wes Miller in the first four AAC games, posting 11 points in 26 minutes.
But against WSU, Koval drilled three three-pointers — he had six total in 16 games before that — including a crucial one on a pick-and-pop action to put Cincinnati ahead 56-55 with 3:07 remaining.
“Our guys just made plays when the chips were down,” UC coach Wes Miller said. “A lot of it was just guys stepping up and making plays.”
Koval wasn’t the only Cincinnati player to buck the scouting report. David DeJulius, who has shot 22.8% on 149 three-point attempts while at UC, made 3 of 4 three-pointers, while John Newman, a career 29.9% three-point shooter on 184 attempts, made 2 of 3 three-pointers.
The trio, which had combined to shoot 30.7% on three-pointers in their career before Sunday, teamed up to make 8 of 12 three-pointers against the Shockers.
“I feel like those were the shots the scouting report wanted them to take, but they stepped up and made some threes,” WSU junior Dexter Dennis said. “I think that’s how we wanted to play it, in my opinion.”
4. WSU posts lowest three-point rate in 275 games
In a bizarre twist, a Wichita State team that had probably been a little too trigger-happy on three-pointers attempted just 10 of its 59 field goals beyond the arc against Cincinnati.
About half of the Shockers’ shots were coming on three-pointers in their first three AAC games, but their three-point rate plummeted to 16.9% against Cincinnati. WSU was out-scored on the three-point line 30-9, as Cincinnati made as many triples as WSU attempted and shot its third-best percentage (38.5%) of the season.
That’s the lowest three-point rate for a WSU team in a stretch of 275 games, dating back to a 90-72 win over DePaul on November 25, 2013 when WSU shot just eight three-pointers for a 15.4% three-point rate.
The 10 three-point attempts stunned WSU’s Tyson Etienne when he was perusing the box score during his post-game press conference.
“With Mo being back, we wanted to get the basketball inside more,” Etienne said. “But I feel like 10 threes is an extremely low number. I’m used to shooting 10 threes myself. To see the team only shoot 10 threes is kind of crazy. Looking at our 10 compared to their 26 attempts, it’s almost to the point where we didn’t even give ourselves a chance because we didn’t shoot the ball from three that much.”
But after watching WSU shoot 26.7% on 28.9 three-pointers per game — many of them wide open — in the team’s first three AAC games, WSU coach Isaac Brown was glad to see the Shockers cut down on their deep shots.
“We took 10 and I’m glad we didn’t take 20 based on our percentages right now,” Brown said. “We can’t shoot 20 threes in a game right now. We need to have less threes.”
WSU certainly could use some re-calibration on its shot selection, but it still needs to use the three-point line more often than it did against Cincinnati. While Wes Miller’s defense at UC excels at running shooters off the three-point line, the Shockers shot too many two-point jumpers (3 of 12, the third-highest attempts on mid-range shots this season) and too many dribble jumpers (5 of 18, compared to 3 of 7 catch-and-shoot jumpers) against the Bearcats.
“We’re just not making shots,” Brown said. “We’re missing too many layups at the rim and we’re missing too many wide-open jump shots. We’re getting good looks, we just got to start scoring the basketball and guys have got to step up and make shots with confidence.”
5. The benefits of the Tyson Etienne point guard experiment
Without starting point guard Craig Porter, who missed the game due to COVID-19 health and safety protocol, Wichita State opted to put the ball in the hands of Etienne even more as the team’s point guard on the majority of possessions.
The biggest difference with Etienne running the show seemed to be WSU’s effectiveness in transition, which has been a bugaboo for the team almost all season. But against Cincinnati, the Shockers scored 16 points on 11 possessions when they pushed the pace.
Etienne was the engine on several of those fast breaks, finishing with five of his team-high six assists in transition. He was quick in identifying cracks in the defense, passing ahead to Ricky Council IV twice and letting the 6-foot-6 freshman do the rest. He found his center, Kenny Pohto and Morris Udeze, twice for easy scores. And because he pushed the pace, he was able to find the angle to feed Udeze in the post for two points.
But WSU certainly missed Porter when it came to halfcourt offense, as the Shockers bogged down against Cincinnati’s elite defense. WSU shot just 30.6% from the field in the halfcourt setting, compared to 70.0% in transition.
6. Dexter Dennis returns to elite defensive ways
The potential game-tying three-pointer missed in the closing seconds may have been the most memorable play of the game featuring Dennis, but the WSU junior turned in another superb defensive performance.
Dennis didn’t allow a single point as the primary defender, as Cincinnati shooters finished 0-for-6 against him. He was particularly good against Cincinnati’s leading scorer Jeremiah Davenport, who finished with two points on 1-of-8 shooting, smothering one of his attempts and preventing him from firing altogether on multiple occasions with his on-ball defense.
“I thought they guarded Jeremiah Davenport extremely well,” UC coach Wes Miller said. “He got some clips off, but they weren’t clean. They did a good job of guarding us.”
When Cincinnati went on its second-half scoring binge, the Bearcats were capitalizing on the other WSU guards on the floor — rarely going against Dennis 1-on-1 down the stretch.
This story was originally published January 17, 2022 at 6:02 AM.
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