‘It’s mind-blowing’: Xavier Bell relishing homecoming with Wichita State basketball
It wasn’t that long ago when Xavier Bell was a kid showing up to Koch Arena for summer basketball camp.
It was a surreal experience for the 20-year-old Wichita native to be an actual Wichita State men’s basketball player this time around at coach Isaac Brown’s camp held at the Roundhouse earlier this month.
After years of watching Wichita State games and rooting for the Shockers, Bell, a 6-foot-3 sophomore guard who transferred to WSU after two years at Drexel, is still trying to adjust to life as a hometown player.
“It’s just mind-blowing to me still,” Bell said. “It’s crazy how it’s been a 360. It’s all come back around.”
Playing for the Shockers doesn’t mean more to Bell just because he’s from Wichita. It’s special because Xavier has a chance to follow in the footsteps of his father, Wayne, who played football for WSU and was a player on the 1986 team when the school decided to disband the program.
Even though he had eligibility remaining, Wayne decided to remain in Wichita and the St. Louis native has since built a successful career as a Wichita businessman. Now that he has a son that plays for the Shockers, it’s a big deal in the Bell household.
“He still hasn’t stopped talking about it,” Xavier said, laughing. “He’s on me every day, making sure I’m on top of my game because he knows how big this program is and how much it means to our family. He wants me to be my best here.”
Bell is one of the more intriguing first-year transfers Brown has reloaded WSU’s 2022-23 roster with. He was a starter late in the season for the Drexel team that played in the 2021 NCAA tournament, then he became a star for the Dragons this past season, averaging 11.0 points on 49.2% shooting from the field and 35.7% three-point shooting.
With only senior point guard Craig Porter and sophomore center Kenny Pohto returning from last year’s rotation, plenty of minutes are available at the shooting guard position. Bell is one of several newcomers who could fill those minutes, joining a mix of junior Colby Rogers (Sienna), junior Jaykwon Walton (Georgia) and sophomore Jaron Pierre Jr. (Southern Miss), not to mention Jalen Ricks, a redshirt freshman who has fully recovered from a meniscus injury.
“We’ve got a lot of transfers and a lot of new guys coming in, but I still think this is an older group with a lot of these guys who have done big things at their old places,” Bell said. “Right now we have everybody putting something in the pot and we’re building collectively. It’s been real cool playing pick-up with these guys and getting to know them from that aspect. The future looks real bright.”
Bell has been a smooth, left-handed scoring machine since his days as an all-state player at Andover Central, but he’s committed to becoming a more well-rounded player (he averaged just 1.4 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 0.4 steals in 26.1 minutes last season) this summer ahead of his third collegiate season.
While he connected on 37.8% of his career 90 three-point attempts at Drexel, his ability to score inside the arc was even more impressive. He made 53.9% of his two-pointers, a strong mark for a guard, and that conversion rate jumped to 61.1% at the rim when he drove off a ball screen (for 1.28 points per possession), per Synergy Sports Technology.
An encouraging statistic that could hint to a promising transition from the Colonial Athletic Association to the American Athletic Conference for Bell was his efficiency against the eight top-100 opponents Drexel faced last season: his offensive rating jumped from 105.5 to 116.2 and his effective field goal percentage increased from 53.9% to 61.1% against the better competition.
Bell is excited to take on the challenge for the team he grew up rooting for. He continues the hometown Wichita pipeline in the program, following Evan Wessel (2011-16), Conner Frankamp (2015-18), Samajae Haynes-Jones (2017-19) and Grant Sherfield (2019-20).
“It probably won’t actually sink in until the first night when the fans are here and the crowd is here and everybody I know,” Bell said. “Just being back home is real exciting and I’m excited to get started. It’s been nice this summer to be back home where everything started and where I grew up and seeing familiar faces again.”
This story was originally published June 29, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
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