Five plays that helped Wichita State basketball rally late for road win at Richmond
Craig Porter was done, or at least so he thought.
When an inadvertent elbow connected with his mouth with such force that it caused him to bite through his upper lip and sliced open his bottom lip, Wichita State’s star point guard thought he was finished in Thursday’s game at Richmond just 30 seconds into the second half.
“I honestly thought I was out for the count,” Porter said. “I thought my tooth was missing at first. Then I used my tongue and felt my tooth. But then I saw the blood. I didn’t realize how bad it was until everybody was looking at me. I couldn’t even feel nothing on my face.”
As he sat at the end of the bench while trainer Todd Fagan did his best to patch up the wounds, Porter’s mind wandered back to the practice gym at Koch Arena, where the theme in practice all week leading up to Thursday’s game was for the team to return to Wichita State’s MTXE roots after an embarrassing home loss to Alcorn State.
WSU head coach Isaac Brown had invited Shocker legend Cheese Johnson to speak with the team on Tuesday about the importance of upholding that tradition and those words echoed in Porter’s head.
“The coaching staff has been preaching to us MTXE all week,” Porter said. “It’s all about giving that extra effort and giving up your body for your teammates. No man is above the group. We wanted to show that we believe in what Wichita State is all about.”
The rest is history: Porter navigated the rest of the game playing with four fouls (and a bandaged lip) to deliver three critical baskets down the stretch of Wichita State’s 56-53 road win over Richmond at the Robins Center.
Porter’s heroics came in the Shockers’ time of biggest need, desperate to halt a 19-4 run by Richmond that had incinerated their nine-point halftime lead and staked the Spiders to a 45-39 lead and 85% win probability with 9:35 to play.
Here’s a closer look at the five baskets scored by Wichita State, featuring three from Porter, during the game-defining 12-2 run the Shockers used to answer back and take the lead once and for all.
1. Porter steadies the Shockers with an iso jumper
With WSU still reeling and in the midst of a five-minute field goal drought, Porter took it upon himself to make something happen.
With eight seconds left on the shot clock, Porter waved off a ball screen from Kenny Pohto to isolate Richmond defender Jason Roche.
All it took was a crossover, one hard dribble toward the basket and a quick stop at the elbow to create all the separation Porter needed to drill a jumper to finally supply some momentum WSU’s way — and trim Richmond’s lead to 45-42.
“That man is a warrior,” WSU senior James Rojas said of Porter. “His tooth was through his lip, but he still wanted to play. He doesn’t let anything affect him. Not the injury, not the foul trouble. He controls our offense and we go through him for a reason.”
2. WSU draws up a winning play for a Porter layup
After a defensive stand gave WSU a chance to cut into Richmond’s lead further, the Shockers didn’t let the opportunity pass without turning to one of their favorite go-to plays.
It’s a misdirection play that almost always lulls the defense to sleep and produces an open shot for WSU.
The play begins with Porter starting out front and passing to the right wing, this time to Jaron Pierre. The center, in this case Pohto, pretends to come over to set a ball screen, only to veer off at the last second and set an off-ball screen for Porter at the top of the perimeter.
Pierre successfully did his job, which was to collapse the defense with dribble penetration. He forced the center’s defender to slide over to the baseline to help defend the drive.
That set into motion the misdirection: Now Pohto’s defender wasn’t there to help on Porter coming off the screen when Pierre threw the ball back to Porter. Pierre cleared out, taking his defender with him, and Pohto’s defender scampered back to him at the top of the key.
So when Porter caught the pass from Pierre, not only did he have a step advantage on his defender, but now the help defense had vacated the lane and their attention was occupied. That’s how WSU manufactured a free runway for its star guard, as Porter used his hops and finishing skills in the air to score and trim Richmond’s lead to 45-44 with 7:35 left.
“Really, at that point, I was just trying to get the win,” Porter said. “I realized what I had to do to get us back in the game. Scoring, I’m going to do it.”
3. Shockers go back to the well right away
Give Isaac Brown credit: Once the head coach finds an action that works, he keeps going back to it until the defense stops it.
After another stop gave WSU the chance to take back the lead, Brown dialed up the same play he did the previous possession that resulted in a Porter lay-up.
This time, the Shockers showed the play doesn’t always have to go to Porter to produce an easy shot at the rim.
The play is identical: Porter passed the ball to the right wing to Pierre, Pohto faked the ball screen to set one for Porter instead and Pierre attacked the baseline with a dribble drive.
The difference this time was Pierre gained separation from his defender, who gave up pursuit to allow the help defender to defend the drive and turned his head anticipating the throw-back pass to Porter — like WSU had done on the previous trip down.
Without a second defender on him this time, Pierre engaged in attack mode against a wrong-footed Jason Roche, Richmond’s weakest defender. A rip-through move by Pierre left Roche grasping at air and allowed the Southern Miss transfer to smoothly finger-roll a layup in and give WSU a 46-45 lead with 6:56 remaining.
“That’s something that I do every day,” Pierre said of the rip-through move. “We kept our composure, stayed as a team. Everybody locked in as a whole. There was nothing about that. We knew we were still going to win.”
4. Walton is rewarded for crashing the glass
One of the players that Brown really harped on during film review from the Alcorn State loss was Jaykwon Walton, the 6-foot-6 rangy junior wing who had too much potential to not use it crashing the glass.
Walton was forced to watch clip after clip of himself standing on the perimeter without pursuing rebounds, something that Brown said was unacceptable for a small forward in WSU’s system to do.
“That was definitely a wake-up call for me,” Walton said. “He got on me pretty bad in film. I told him, ‘I got you next game.’”
When Craig Porter let a three-pointer fly from the right wing, Walton was standing outside of the arc on the opposite side of the floor. There were multiple instances last game of him standing in cement, ball-watching from that exact spot when shots went up.
This game, true to his word, Walton crashed the glass. Even though he didn’t grab the offensive rebound, Porter did. And because Walton had cut underneath the basket, Porter was able to find him for an easy layup and foul for a three-point play to put WSU ahead 49-47 with 6:11 left.
It wasn’t the most flashy play in Walton’s career-high 20-point scoring performance, but it’s likely the play that will make Brown the happiest on film review.
“We talked to Jaykwon about having a high-level effort because I thought our whole team didn’t have good effort last game,” Brown said. “I didn’t think tonight’s game came down to making shots, missing shots; it came down to extra effort like that play by Jaykwon. We played like our hair was on fire, defended, rebounded and got back to playing Shocker basketball.”
5. Porter navigates four fouls with pull-up game brilliance
It’s easy to forget that Craig Porter navigated the final 10 minutes of the game while playing with four fouls.
WSU was able to play zone defense to limit Porter’s exposure on defense, but there was also the risk of him being whistled for a charge on the offensive end and fouling out.
A more reckless player than Porter very well could have done just that on an isolation play that the Shockers used to feed their star player the ball in the left corner with the floor spaced out.
While three WSU players were above the break, another was in the opposite corner, and Richmond’s Tyler Burton showed tremendous discipline as the help-side defender to camp out in the paint underneath the basket when Porter received the pass.
Porter executed his favorite spin move out of the post-up to gain the advantage on his defender along the baseline, but Burton was ready with the help defense. Porter could have tried to attack the basket, but he would have risked being called for an offensive foul.
Instead, Porter immediately identified the help defense on its way after the spin move and elevated just outside of the lane for a short jumper he swished with a high arc to stake the Shockers to a 51-47 lead with 4:45 to play.
The play capped a 12-2 rally by WSU in which it scored 12 points during a seven-possession span — to not only halt Richmond’s momentum, but to reverse it entirely and come away with the road win.
“Coach knew having me out on the court, my presence alone would help the guys and give us confidence,” Porter said. “Putting me back out there with four fouls gave us confidence and let us put that game away.”
This story was originally published November 18, 2022 at 5:51 AM.
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