Wichita State basketball survives scare from South Florida for 4th straight home win
At the end of the season, all wins count the same.
At least that’s the prevailing thought from the Wichita State men’s basketball team after a sometimes lethargic effort required a late rally to beat a cellar-dweller in a 73-69 win over South Florida at Koch Arena on Saturday.
“A win is better than a loss, especially at this point in our season,” WSU junior Dexter Dennis said. “I’m glad we won. At this point, we’ll take it. We still have to learn and get better at a lot of things. We really didn’t play well tonight, but we still won and that’s a positive.”
A coach would argue winning in game in the American Athletic Conference is tough, regardless of the opponent. A fan would say it’s disappointing the Shockers needed to rally from seven down late in the second half to beat a USF team that was 0-5 on the road in conference and being annihilated by an average of 19 points.
Regardless of where you stand, the facts are Wichita State won its fourth straight game at Koch Arena to improve to 13-9 overall and 4-6 in AAC play, inching closer to the crowd battling for fifth place in the conference behind Cincinnati (16-8, 6-5 AAC), Temple (13-9, 6-5 AAC) and UCF (14-8, 6-6 AAC).
“You have to play so hard and with such high intensity just to compete in this league,” said USF coach Brian Gregory, whose team dropped to 7-16 overall and 2-9 in AAC play. “This league is a monster. If you don’t, then you have no chance.”
The Shockers seemed to be hurtling toward rock-bottom when USF, a team that had lost by an average of 21.7 points in its first three trips to Koch Arena, reeled off a 7-0 run for a 53-46 lead with 7:19 remaining to stun the home crowd of 8,312.
It took a disaster scenario like that to finally snap WSU out of its funk and impose its will on USF for the final seven minutes.
Dennis (14 points, four rebounds, three assists, a steal and a block) proved to be the spark for the Shockers, while freshman Ricky Council IV (game-high 18 points off the bench) once again delivered the crucial points for the team in the closing moments.
“You want to have great quality, but sometimes you’re going to win ugly and I’d rather win ugly than take a loss,” said WSU star Tyson Etienne, who scored 12 points on 3-of-12 shooting. “I know there’s a lot of things we need to work on and fix, I’m just glad we’re able to fix them from a plus in the win column.”
There was a tremendous sense of relief not only from Dennis, but from his coach and teammates to see him finally start to connect with his three-point shot. Before the last two games, Dennis had been mired in the worst shooting season of his career at 27% accuracy from beyond the arc.
After making all three of his attempts from deep last game against UCF, Dennis made 4-of-7 three-pointers on Saturday, including one to stop USF’s 7-0 run and another crucial one to break a 59-all tie and put the Shockers in front for good with his triple with 2:39 remaining.
“So excited for Dexter,” WSU coach Isaac Brown said. “He’s had these moments before and he made that wide-open shot (late) and that will probably give him a lot of confidence the rest of the way.
“I think he was asking for the basketball in transition. In order to be a guy that makes shots, you’ve got to have confidence in yourself. He stepped up tonight and made some big ones.”
After WSU fell behind by seven, Dennis drilled a momentum-turning three and immediately followed that up with a hustle play near the sideline to save a deflection by diving over the scorer’s table that turned into a steal and run-out for Council. (“I’m kind of tired hitting the scoreboard, for real,” Dennis said afterward. “It hurts.”)
USF turned the ball over again right after that, which led to free throws to cap a 6-0 run in 43 seconds that revitalized the Shockers.
“I’ve got to do a better job at home with this great crowd we had, instead of playing half-court defense, we went to our full-court defense and the energy in the building changed,” Brown said. “Our guys started to battle.”
With WSU clinging to a 62-61 lead approaching the final two minutes, Council once again took over.
USF had switched to a zone defense to try to slow WSU down and Council caught a pass on the right baseline matched up against USF 7-foot center Russel Tchewa, who is not used to guarding the perimeter. Council took two unsuspecting dribbles out to the three-point line to lull Tchewa to sleep and triggered his favorite move, the step-back jumper. Tchewa’s contest was a second too late and Council’s rainbow had the perfect arc and perfect touch to splash through the net for the purest of swishes.
“My shot is kind of weird,” Council said. “I like to shoot falling back. It just feels comfortable to me. I’ve always liked doing step-backs.
“I was just happy I hit one. I had a wide-open catch-and-shoot right before that I hit off the backboard. So I’m just happy that one went in.”
On the next possession, Etienne caught USF’s zone out of shape and whipped the ball to the wing where Council attacked a late close-out, drove baseline, spun back to the middle of the paint and twisted in the air while calmly kissing his shot high off the glass to cap off a personal 5-0 run that had staked WSU to a 67-61 lead with 1:13 remaining.
“Ricky puts a lot of pressure on the defense,” Dennis said. “He hits tough shots and he has a very quick first step, so he can get to the hole and draw fouls constantly. He keeps the defense on its toes. If you close out too long, then it’s a lay-up or a foul going to the rim. If you’re short, then it’s an open three. He’s always putting pressure on the defense.”
WSU is 7-1 this season when Council scores at least 12 points.
“When he has big games like this and he steps up, we usually come out successful,” Etienne said. “He can score the basketball with the best of them.”
For a game where WSU made 42.4% of its shots and 11 three-pointers — both among its best shooting marks of the season — the performance felt oddly lacking.
Perhaps it was because while the Shockers were finally knocking down three-pointers at a 39.3% rate, many of them were bailing out the offense when play had broken down and the team needed to beat the shot clock. A mixture of poor shot selection, lack of urgency and defensive lapses played a role in WSU allowing a four-point halftime lead to turn into a five-point deficit within the first six minutes of the second half.
In another bizarre twist of opponents having season-best performances in some aspect against WSU at Koch Arena, South Florida — a team that ranked dead-last out of 358 Division I teams in the country in three-point shooting percentage at 23.5% — made 7-of-12 three-pointers to start the game. While USF missed its final six attempts beyond the arc, it still shot a season-best 38.9% on three-pointers.
“Give them credit, those guys stepped up and made shots,” Brown said. “They weren’t a great three-point shooting team, but I felt like our defense was not being handsy enough. Every time their guard would come off the ball screen, we didn’t have our hands up and they were throwing darts to guys who could make stationary threes. A lot of that had to do with our defense.”
After falling behind by seven, WSU’s defense forced five turnovers in the next eight possessions to spark its comeback. It was a timely effort, but not a quality one from WSU’s defense, which allowed the conference’s worst offense to score 1.03 points per possession.
Although four turnovers were blemishes, WSU starting point guard Craig Porter played another brilliant floor game with 11 points, a team-high seven rebounds, a team-high six assists, a block and two steals. Morris Udeze chipped in with six points, five rebounds and a career-high four assists — a third of the total assists he’s made for the entire season.
After winning four straight at home, WSU is still in search of its first conference road victory, which it will look to capture next Thursday when the Shockers travel to face Cincinnati.
“I’d rather win ugly 1000% than lose playing a good game, like some of the games we’ve had this season,” Council said. “I’m just glad we got this win.”
Wichita State 73, South Florida 69 basketball box score
This story was originally published February 12, 2022 at 9:18 PM.
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