How far can a point guard take a team? Wichita State will find out with star Craig Porter
In the game of basketball, a good point guard can change everything.
It’s the most important position on the floor for a reason: the point guard is the player who has the ball in his or her hands the most, the player who can control the game, the player who can single-handedly elevate a team.
“A good point guard can give you confidence going into games knowing that you have a guy that can control the pace and make everybody around him better,” said Wichita State assistant Tyson Waterman, a Hall of Fame point guard himself from his career at Winthrop.
“Your point guard is the quarterback of the team,” WSU player development coach Nick Jones said. “They touch the ball every play and they can control how you go. If you can trust your point guard, then you always feel like you’re in good hands.”
How far can a good point guard carry a team?
Wichita State will be an exorcise in that study this season with senior point guard Craig Porter assuming control of the team. Back for his third season with the Shockers, Porter is the lone veteran on a team of mostly newcomers.
Wichita State needs Porter to be great to have a chance to buck preseason expectations of a middling finish in the American Athletic Conference and return to the postseason. By all accounts, he has risen to the challenge ahead of the team’s season-opener on Nov. 7 against Central Arkansas at Koch Arena.
“Craig is going to be an all-conference guy, a guy that could be on the first team,” WSU head coach Isaac Brown said. “He’s going to have the opportunity to play basketball for a long time. He’s a guy you have to have in your program and I can’t wait to see him play this season.”
Wichita State needs Porter to score to be successful
Few Shockers in recent memory have been able to fill a stat sheet quite like Porter and the expectation is for him to add to those totals this season.
He’s naturally smooth in everything he does — it looks like he glides on the court — but what makes him truly stand out for his size is his explosive leaping ability. It’s the thing that makes him an elite defender, rebounder and shot-blocker (he led the country in blocks for players 6-foot-2 and under last season) for his size.
The biggest question facing Porter is not how many rebounds, assists, steals and blocks he can accumulate this season, it’s can a pass-first point guard by nature find the right balance of looking to score more and still doing what he does best, playmaking for others?
“Everybody on the team knows that I’m a pass-first guy and I know that a lot of eyes are going to be on me this year,” Porter said. “But I can get myself going, then everybody will feed off that and we’ll get things going in the right way.”
Porter has always been a capable scorer, but a reluctant one in his time at WSU. The Shockers can’t afford to have the version of Porter in the first 37 games of his career, where he averaged just 4.4 points, shot 39.2% from the field and took 3.5 shots per game. They need him to build on the player he was in the final month of the regular season when he averaged 11.6 points, shot 47.5% from the field and took 10.2 shots per game.
He doesn’t necessarily have to be Wichita State’s leading scorer, but Porter does likely need to average double-digit points for the Shockers to be successful this season.
“Craig is going to have to take on more of a scoring role for us this year,” Brown said. “He’s not going to force shots, so what I have to do is put him in situations where he can go in attack mode more. We’re going to run a lot of good stuff for him.”
A blueprint for that success could be found in the Houston game at Koch Arena from February when Porter scored 13 of his team-high 17 points during the final two minutes of regulation and two overtimes.
Porter is at his best when he’s aggressive and WSU found a way to unlock that side in him by running guard-to-guard ball screens for him, which allowed him to get downhill and attack. And when Porter recognized he had a smaller defender guarding him, he looked like a natural posting up down low and finishing over the smaller guard who was in unfamiliar territory.
“He reminds me a lot of all of those Villanova guys that can really score it on the block when he’s backing you down,” Brown said.
Porter has also been working on improving the consistency of his 3-point stroke after shooting 34.1% on 2.6 attempts per game last season. He’s focused on making defenders pay for going under on ball screens and for leaving him open when he doesn’t have the ball.
“I watched the games over from last year and saw the shots that I took and the shots that I passed up on,” Porter said. “I’ve been trying to get more comfortable shooting those shots.”
The coaching staff has been constantly harping on Porter to look to score more, even if it’s a little unnatural to him at times.
But they know if Porter is able to level up as a scorer, the Shockers can level up as a team.
“We love the ball in Craig’s hands because he makes winning plays and he’s such a selfless player,” Waterman said. “He’s probably a little too selfless. We need him to be a little more selfish because he is a hard dude to stop from getting buckets.”
How Porter is preparing for first healthy season as a Shocker
When Porter wasn’t on the floor last season, the Shockers crumbled.
They blew a double-digit lead to Kansas State when Porter had to leave the game with an injury, then lost to Cincinnati when he missed a game due to COVID-19 protocol and lost again in the AAC tournament when a fluke injury held him out of the game.
“That’s how much he affects our team with winning,” Brown said. “We need Craig on the floor as much as he can go for us to have a good year.”
In preparation for playing 30-plus minutes per game and shouldering a significant load this season, Porter has committed himself to the weight room with first-year strength and conditioning coach Ryan Horn.
After random injuries have forced him to miss time in both of his first two seasons at WSU, Porter hopes his offseason work will allow him to play his first fully healthy season. So far, so good: he hasn’t missed a practice yet this offseason.
“Craig is a guy who has such a high level of maturity and he understands that his durability is going to drive his performance,” Horn said. “He’s been really honest with himself and our staff to figure out what he needs to do to be the player he wants to be. What I’ve been most impressed about him is his consistency and his willingness to buy in to that process and trust the process. He’s done a phenomenal job of establishing a rhythm and some professional habits as far as protecting his investments.”
He’s also spent more time than ever watching film of his own game, dissecting clips of him running the pick-and-roll and identifying tiny details he can improve on this season.
The coaching staff said the improvements have already been noticeable in practices. His teams almost never lose, whether it’s in a drill or a scrimmage.
“Craig is so good at reading the defense in ball screens,” Jones said. “We call it three levels: the first level is reading his defender, the second level is reading the ball-screen defender and the third level is reading the help side and the opposite corner. Craig is always reading all three levels and he knows our system so well now that he knows where his teammates are going to be and he makes the right read just about every time.”
But Porter has had to learn tendencies of new players all around him. He’s learning where to find the shooting pockets of Colby Rogers and Jaron Pierre Jr., when to expect the sharp cuts of Gus Okafor and Jaykwon Walton for baskets and how to exploit a new pick-and-roll dimension with the above-the-rim lob threat in 7-foot sophomore transfer Quincy Ballard.
“I feel like we’re getting better every single day the more we get in game situations and having to make reactions in the moment instead of planning things out ahead of time,” Porter said. “Sometimes you don’t know a player is going to do something until they actually do it. So we’re learning how to react to each other and I would say the guys are reacting really well to everything right now.”
How Porter has become vocal leader for WSU
As the lone veteran on the team, Porter has also assumed the responsibility of becoming its undisputed leader.
He has the credentials for the role: he won a junior-college national championship at Vincennes and is the only player currently on the WSU team who was also on the Shockers’ roster when Wichita State won the AAC championship and played in the NCAA Tournament in 2021.
“The new guys listen to him because they know he’s been through it and his track record speaks for itself,” Jones said. “He has handled himself in such a mature way. He’s always on time for class, weights, practice. The other day I walked in for a workout and he was already in there at 8 a.m. The other guys see him take the time and effort to go above and beyond and they want to mimic it and they feed off of him. Craig is the engine that makes everybody else go.”
Just like looking to score, being a vocal leader isn’t natural to Porter. He’s had to work at it and while he admits it’s a work in progress, he feels like he is doing a better job in his senior year.
“It’s definitely one of those things I always have to be conscious about,” Porter said. “Sometimes I’ll catch myself letting things go with the flow and I’ll step up and say something. You can see the impact it makes because the team needs that person to step up and point people in the right direction.”
The coaching staff has been pleased to see Porter take control in practices more often.
“Just the other day in practice, we struggled in a segment and he stepped up and stopped us and spoke up and basically called everyone out,” Jones said. “He made it clear in order for us to win, we have to play harder than what we did in that drill. He told it like it was and that was good to see because I don’t think that would’ve happened his first year or maybe even last year. He’s doing everything he’s supposed to do.”
His leadership has been appreciated by the newcomers.
“Craig is just a cool cat,” said Wichita native Xavier Bell, who transferred to WSU from Drexel. “He’s someone who has been here for three years and he knows what it takes to get to the postseason here. Him being here and helping guys along has been huge.”
Porter has made it clear his goal is to play in the NCAA Tournament again. He only saw 14 minutes of action the last time the Shockers were there and he wants a chance to make a bigger impact for his team.
In order to do that, Porter will have to produce his best individual season yet. But individual accolades is the furthest thing from his mind now.
“I’m not really focused on the self-centered goals for this season,” Porter said. “I’m really more interested in getting us back to the tournament. Getting these guys that experience is my main goal. I didn’t get a chance to play in the last game last year and that upset me. I know scoring will come with it, but really I’m focused on whatever I need to do to help my team win.”
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