Shockers concerned identity is ‘getting lost’ as losses mount for Wichita State basketball
The championship confetti that fell from the Koch Arena rafters feels like a lot longer than two years ago right now for the Wichita State men’s basketball team.
Craig Porter remembers the exhilaration of winning an American Athletic Conference championship, of cutting down nets, of playing in the NCAA Tournament, past triumphs that only make the current troubles of the Shockers even more frustrating.
After WSU’s lackluster season faced its latest disappointment with a 70-61 loss to Cincinnati on Thursday, the senior point guard voiced concerns about the team losing its identity after WSU fell to 7-8 overall and 0-3 in conference play.
“Really, it’s just about wanting to play hard. You don’t got to be the best scorer, you don’t got to be the most talented. Guys that have come through here, they haven’t necessarily been the highest-recruited,” Porter said. “But there’s just a will to want to play hard and win, that’s the culture of Wichita State. I feel like that message is kind of getting lost with our team this year. The coaches and all of us players, we preach it, but I feel like we, as players, let it go in one ear and out the other. We preach it every day, so it’s just a matter of us players wanting to listen and take it serious.”
Following a 10-point loss to East Carolina at Koch Arena, marking the first time the Pirates had prevailed in the matchup’s history, WSU had three straight days of practice ahead of Thursday’s game, all of which went well, according to head coach Isaac Brown.
The emphasis each day in practice was communication on defense, which Brown believed was the source of WSU’s worst defensive performance of the season against ECU. On Thursday, the same problems persisted in WSU’s second-worst defensive performance of the season against Cincinnati.
“I’ve got to go back to practice and do the same things that I’ve been doing to get these guys to understand when you don’t defend like you need to, you’re not going to win basketball games,” Brown said. “It’s not all about your offense. You’re going to struggle a lot on offense in college basketball. Teams have scouting reports; they know what you’re going to do; they’ve got elite defenders. You’ve got to defend, you’ve got to rebound, you’ve got to play with toughness and it’s just about heart and want-to. We preach that every day in practice and we’ll continue to preach it. And we’ll find five guys that we can put on the floor that will do that.”
After a poor first half put the Shockers in what proved to be an insurmountable 17-point halftime deficit, WSU center Kenny Pohto voiced his frustrations with his team’s lack of execution.
Cincinnati led by as many as 22 points and the Shockers avoided a blowout on their home court thanks to an 11-0 run in the final minutes.
“We’re not playing hard,” Pohto said. “We’ve got to start playing hard in the beginning. We started playing the last five minutes, it’s too late. That’s what we’re going to work on, bringing it from the start and keeping it the whole game. That’s been the emphasis the whole year, to put a whole 40 minutes together, but we haven’t seemed to do that yet.”
Wichita State shot 26% from the field and finished without an assist in the first 20 minutes of the game. Brown believed his team once again let its frustrations on offense affect its play on the defensive end.
But poor shooting has been synonymous with the Shockers for the past four seasons and those teams managed to still win at a 59% clip (38-26) during that period. In fact, the program celebrated grind-it-out victories like badges of honor.
That DNA strand that was seemingly so ingrained in the program is what Porter is concerned is fraying with the current group of 14 newcomers. Brown echoed that assessment during his time on the podium, as well.
“You’ve got to be able to take coaching. You’ve got to forget about ‘I’ and you’ve got to think about the team,” Brown said. “And no matter what, when the offense is struggling, the defense can’t struggle. And our defense has struggled for the second straight game.”
It doesn’t help that WSU’s struggles on offense force the team to operate with such a small margin of error on the defensive end.
Since setting the program record with 26 three-pointers in a two-game stretch in early December, WSU has shot just 24.8% beyond the arc (25 of 101) during its 1-4 stretch in the last five games. The Shockers have only mustered an average of 0.90 points per possession during those five games, as well.
“We’re frustrated. Nobody likes to lose,” Porter said. “At the end of the day, you can’t really blame anybody besides us. We’re the ones out there playing and doing everything that makes the outcome of the game. At the end of the day, it’s up to us.”
“At some point, you’ve got to step up and make a shot,” Brown added.
There is a precedent for a turnaround from a larger hole than the one the Shockers currently find themselves in, as the 2018-19 squad bounced back from a 1-6 start in AAC play to win 14 of its final 18 games and play in the semifinals of the NIT at Madison Square Garden at the end of the season.
A turnaround of that magnitude requires buy-in, persistence and a little bit of late-game luck. WSU saw the pitfalls of a slow start when those things didn’t align just last season, as the team’s 0-4 start was a precursor to a 6-9 finish and first-round exit in the conference tournament.
There’s still two more months to the season for the Shockers to overcome their growing pains, but the next two games against winless AAC opponents — at South Florida on Sunday and at home vs. Tulsa next Saturday — feel overly important if WSU is to flip its season around.
“Tomorrow’s practice is going to be harder than it’s ever been before,” Brown said. “Every day has to be hard. We’ve got to keep making practice tough because we’re not going to let up as a coaching staff. We’re going to continue to teach, continue to coach, continue to push those guys and continue to fight.”
This story was originally published January 6, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
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