‘A hell of a game’: Inside the frantic finish of Wichita State’s classic vs. Houston
At its finest, Shocker basketball at Koch Arena can be something close to a religious experience.
Fans from all different walks of life around Wichita unite in one place to cheer for their common love. And on Sunday, Wichita State’s congregation of “10,000 screaming idiots,” as ESPN’s Mark Adams dotingly nicknamed them, came together to produce magic in the Roundhouse.
This season has not been the storybook follow-up to last season’s American Athletic Conference championship. The Shockers have coughed up more games at home than they have in decades and find themselves closer to the bottom of the standings than the top. The “Play Angry” mantra that had been the program’s calling card had seemingly exited with its former coach.
But the way Wichita State played on Sunday against No. 14 Houston was everything fans have loved about Shocker men’s basketball the past decade: a rugged blend of tenacity and resilience.
Usually, that combination is good enough for the Shockers to win at Koch Arena. Since the turn of the century, WSU has turned back nine of 11 opponents who entered Koch Arena with a top-25 ranking. But not Sunday, as Houston absorbed Wichita State’s best blows and still managed to escape with a 76-74 win in double overtime.
“It was a hell of a game,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson summarized. “Either team could have won the game, very similar to the game that was played here last year.
“I can’t say enough about Wichita State’s kids. One team walked away happy, but their kids fought their hearts out, man.”
It was an especially cruel ending to a WSU team that turned the improbable into reality time and time again, erasing a six-point deficit in the final four minutes of regulation, then again in the final three minutes of the first overtime.
And just when it seemed inconceivable WSU could find yet another response in distress when Houston took a three-point lead with 13 seconds remaining in double overtime, Craig Porter shook a defender and drained the game-tying, step-back three-pointer with 5.4 seconds remaining.
“I just felt good in that situation. It felt like a shot I could hit,” said Porter, who scored 13 of his team-high 17 points during the final two minutes of regulation and on.
“Whether it’s scoring, defending, rebounding, anything I can do to help my team fight and win, I’m going to always do it.”
The Roundhouse was reverberating like it was 2014 all over again, but the delirium would only last mere seconds.
Porter’s made basket rolled up the court, which took time to retrieve and gave Houston’s players a moment to collect themselves. Jamal Shead’s mind was racing to three months ago when he found himself in an almost identical situation: needing a basket with the length of the floor to go and five seconds on the clock. The last time that happened, Shead took one too many dribbles before making a pass as time expired in a 65-63 loss to Wisconsin at the Maui Invitational.
“When we got back to Houston, we went through that again and kept putting five seconds on the clock,” Sampson said. “So he could get a feel for how much he can do.
“We talk to our kids about adversity and not being afraid of failure. That failure he had against Wisconsin was good for him. Usually that’s the first step on the ladder to success is some kind of failure. Immature people, irresponsible people don’t know how to handle failure. But we’ve got a bunch of tough kids.”
Given a second chance, Shead knew exactly what pace he needed to be moving to make a play. His second dribble carried him past halfcourt, then a screen shed him of his on-ball defender, sending him through for a 1-on-1 with WSU center Kenny Pohto with all the space he needed to dribble around him.
In just four dribbles, Shead had cracked WSU’s last line of defense with plenty of time to spare. And instead of taking that extra dribble this time, Shead took advantage of the attention on him by shoveling a pass to J’Wan Roberts wide open underneath the basket for the game-winning dunk with 1.2 seconds left.
“It was a big-time play by a big-time player,” WSU coach Isaac Brown said of Shead, who played 50 minutes and finished with 13 points and nine assists.
It was an abrupt ending that came to a stunning conclusion when neither head coach decided to call their final timeout following Porter’s dramatic make.
“After I made it, I think we got a little comfortable,” Porter said.
Losing a game on a last-second play will always draw more scrutiny and there’s no doubt Ricky Council IV was caught ball-watching and out of position on the game’s decisive play.
It was a devastating ending for WSU’s blossoming star, who finished with 17 points and 10 rebounds in his fifth start of the season. WSU wouldn’t have extended the game as far as it did without him, as he drained four straight clutch free throws late in regulation and also scored a key bucket late in the first overtime.
“I think I had a pretty decent start, a bad finish, just made a mistake,” Council said.
For 50 minutes, Wichita State went to war with one of the nation’s best offensive rebounding teams. Going up against one of the best seemed to bring out the best in the Shockers, who scrapped and clawed and held their own on the boards for the majority of the game.
“We rebounded well, we competed, we just came up short,” said Brown, whose Shockers technically grabbed more rebounds (43-42) but were slightly out-rebounded on percentages by Houston.
The thing about the Cougars is they keep coming in waves on the offensive glass. Houston eventually wore down WSU in the overtime segments, grabbing seven offensive rebounds in the 10 extra minutes.
A defining sequence played out in the final minute of double overtime when Houston’s Josh Carlton (game-high 23 points, 11 rebounds) missed a bunny and the war began. Houston was first off the floor, but missed the tip-in and the deflection for the rebound shot the ball out to the three-point line equally in the middle of WSU’s Tyson Etienne and Houston’s Ramon Walker. Both players dove for the ball, but Walker was lower to the ground and won the 50-50 ball — straight out of the “Play Angry” hand book.
Walker flipped the ball to a teammate and seconds later, Carlton was finishing a layup and being fouled on the scramble for a go-ahead three-point play.
“We made some hustle plays, some toughness plays,” Sampson said. “I thought our culture really helped us as the game wore on.”
While WSU managed to tie the game again on Porter’s step-back triple, it’s hard not to wonder if the same shot could have been held for the game-winner at the buzzer if the Shockers had been able to come up with the 50-50 ball.
“We were right there,” Brown said. “We dove too, but they came up with it and we just came up a little short.”
The loss all but sealed the first losing conference season for Wichita State (13-11, 4-8 AAC) since 2009 and marked the sixth loss at home for the Shockers, the most in more than two decades.
Hopes of an NCAA Tournament at-large bid and repeat AAC championship are long gone, as the team is now focused on playing its best basketball in March to try to advance to March Madness through winning the conference tournament in Fort Worth.
“If you take a team like Houston to double OT, I don’t think that’s an accident,” Etienne said. “It’s more of a confidence-builder than anything. Obviously we want to come out victorious, you never want to lose. But this gives us a lot of confidence.
“We’ve just got to continue to pound the stone, chop wood and carry water every day. And we’ve been doing that. It might not show up in the win-loss column the way we want it to, but I know we’re attacking the grind and trusting the process.”
By every measure other than the final result, Wichita State improved on Sunday. The Shockers have shown in the last month, beating SMU by 15 points and taking Houston to a second overtime, that they can challenge the league’s best. But coming up on the short end of so many heartbreaks — Sunday was the fifth AAC game WSU has lost by five points or less — will test this team’s resolve.
“When we go to Memphis, nothing we did against Houston is going to matter,” Brown said. “We’ve got to go out and compete like we did (Sunday). I thought we competed at a very high level.”
This story was originally published February 21, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
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