‘It’s a good group’: Craig Porter becoming a team leader for Wichita State basketball
Stepping into a leadership role on the Wichita State men’s basketball team has Craig Porter relishing the opportunity.
Porter isn’t the only senior on the 2022-23 roster who has opted to take advantage of a fifth and final year of eligibility — he’s joined by transfers James Rojas and Gus Okafor there — but he is the only player who has two prior years of experience in the program under head coach Isaac Brown.
The returning starting point guard was already enjoying his new responsibilities welcoming the 11 newcomers to the team on Sunday at the Wichita River Festival, where the majority of the team gathered for the first time to interact with fans and sign autographs near Century II.
“We’ve got a whole new group and I’m one of the only ones who has experience here, so the load is on me,” Porter said. “I’m going to take that responsibility and do everything I can to help them and show them along the way.”
This past weekend was move-in day for the newcomers, which includes eight new scholarship players with the possibility of one more joining the squad later this summer, in preparation for the first day of WSU’s summer school on Monday.
Players will have the chance to play together in pick-up games not organized by the coaches this week, as well as spend time together at Brown’s youth basketball camp at Koch Arena this week.
The only player who will be absent this summer is sophomore center Kenny Pohto, who returned to Sweden and will train in his homeland until he rejoins the team in August.
“All of the new guys are cool. They’re not as shy as I thought they would be,” Porter said. “I would say everybody is fitting in smooth and everybody is getting along real well. I like everybody so far and this is just my first day of meeting them. I feel like I already have known them for five years. It’s a good group, I can already tell.”
Porter’s leadership style isn’t of the fiery, in-your-face, yelling variety. He has a laid back, easy going personality, but that doesn’t mean he can’t speak up forcibly when he needs to. Porter said he feels like he knows how to walk that line after seeing how Dexter Dennis and Morris Udeze operated a similar way during their time at WSU.
That duo taught Porter that there is a time to be serious when handling business and there is a time to crack jokes and have fun. And Porter wants WSU to return to playing with a chip on its collective shoulder, much like how the team did during its surprise 2021 championship run in the American Athletic Conference.
That underdog mentality shouldn’t be hard to adopt for a team that lost 82.6% of its scoring production from a 15-13 season.
“Just because almost everyone left doesn’t mean it’s going to be bad like some people think,” Porter said. “This is the time to shine (for the newcomers). We’re all basketball players. We all know what to do. It’s a whole new vibe and a whole new world now.”
It still bothers Porter “a freak accident” prevented him from playing in the AAC tournament this past spring, which played a role in WSU’s quick exit in a 73-67 opening-round loss to Tulsa. Porter said he was making a spin move during an individual workout when he felt a pop, which was ruled a groin injury serious enough to sideline him from the postseason.
The 6-foot-2 guard has also battled multiple ankle injuries during his two seasons with the Shockers.
“I’ve been laying low and not doing too much explosive stuff so far,” Porter said. “I’ve been working with a couple of trainers to help heal everything and right now I feel 150 percent. I’m ready to go.”
Porter discovered a new level of confidence down the stretch of last season when he became more aggressive looking to score and found success. In his final seven games of the 2021-22 season, Porter averaged 11.6 points, 6.0 rebounds, 4.6 assists, 1.1 blocks and 2.3 steals while shooting 47.5% from the field and 37.5% on three-pointers.
It was such an encouraging stretch because Porter had already proven he could create for his teammates and excel as one of the nation’s top rebounding and defensive players for his size. If he can become a consistent threat to score, Porter has the potential of becoming an all-conference guard for his final college basketball season.
Improving the reliability of his jump shot will go a long way in allowing him to fulfill that kind of potential, work that Porter has already begun in training sessions. But the confidence that was lacking at the start of last season? That’s already established heading into this summer.
“I felt like once I started looking to score myself that even helped everyone else out even more,” Porter said. “There were times where people weren’t really looking for me to do anything besides pass. So that was big for me to start to assert myself. I just want to fit in where I can and do whatever my team needs me to do to win.”
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