‘Heart of a lion’: Wichita State basketball walk-on sensation Melvion Flanagan is no fluke
It’s ordinary for college athletes to be conditioned to cut out the extreme ends of emotion.
Don’t let yourself get too high in the best of times or too low in the worst of times, the saying goes.
It’s hard for Melvion Flanagan to subscribe to that trope, maybe because what he is doing right now for the Wichita State men’s basketball team is anything but ordinary.
The past month has seen Flanagan go from the end of the bench to a fixture in crunch time, from imitating scorers on the scout team in practice to blossoming into a leading scorer for the Shockers, from an undersized, under-recruited walk-on to the heart and soul of the third-largest comeback road win in program history.
For Sunday afternoon, at least, Flanagan took a moment to soak it all in after the walk-on sensation delivered the latest chapter in his improbable success story, scoring a team-high 16 points to help Wichita State rally from a 14-point second-half deficit to register its first American Athletic Conference win in a 70-66 victory at South Florida.
After a performance like that, how was Flanagan supposed to stay even-keeled?
“It’s really hard,” Flanagan said, laughing after a pause as if he had just processed the absurdity of the past month. “It’s really hard. It is.”
When Wichita State was imploding at the start of the second half, as USF stretched its lead to double-digits, it was telling that WSU head coach Isaac Brown turned to Flanagan to try to reverse the game’s momentum.
The 5-foot-10 sophomore proved to be the solution, making all four of his shots and scoring 13 of his 16 points in the second half. He was the engine that brought the Shockers back to life, as his biggest contributions came in the final five minutes when his unorthodox shot — legs flailing, flat arc with a hitch on the release — buried two straight three-pointers less than a minute apart to spearhead WSU’s comeback.
“He’s fearless, man,” Brown said. “He’s got the heart of a lion.”
What makes Flanagan so endearing to teammates is that he’s carried himself with the same self-confidence since arriving in Wichita this summer.
Even when he was relegated to WSU’s scout team, Flanagan practiced like he was a supreme scorer. It wasn’t too difficult of an act, given he was a supreme scorer at his high school in Alexandria, Louisiana, and at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.
“It’s not a surprise because he does this in practice every day,” WSU sophomore center Kenny Pohto said of Flanagan. “He’s a dog.”
“Mel comes in every single day and puts in the work,” WSU senior James Rojas added. “He’s a scorer, even for how little he is. He does what he does.”
Flanagan won’t be able to top Ron Baker as the program’s most famous walk-on, but Baker paid his own way his first year with the understanding he would be on scholarship for the rest of his career. Flanagan is in a different category because he came to the Shockers with no promise of a scholarship or his future.
Brown told The Eagle following Sunday’s game that WSU does not have a scholarship available to give to Flanagan in the second semester. Still, Flanagan brings the same level of energy, effort and intensity to the team every single day, a quality that has won over the coaching staff.
“Melvion is a great story because so many players in today’s age have that entitlement mentality,” WSU assistant coach Tyson Waterman said. “This is a young man who came to work every single day not expecting to be given anything. And he continued to work, work, work and trusted the process and now the Basketball Gods are leading his way right now and rewarding him. I don’t think he’ll be a secret too much longer.”
Since earning a spot in WSU’s rotation, Flanagan has averaged 10.3 points in his last seven games. Any questions of if he would fizzle out against elevated competition have been squashed, as Flanagan has scored 38 points in his three games in the American.
A player who wasn’t even on the scouting report a month ago has already started to earn the respect of AAC coaches.
“He’s a really talented player and he has to be one of the better walk-ons in the country,” UCF coach Johnny Dawkins said. “He’s crafty with the basketball and he can finish around the basket and he’s a really good shooter. That’s a pretty good combination. He’s going to have a good year for them and continue to help as he continues to emerge like he did (against UCF).”
But what makes Flanagan’s scoring outbursts almost unparalleled for a walk-on is his efficiency. It’s a small sample size, but his shooting numbers are truly elite: 50% from the field, 48% on three-pointers and 90% from the foul line. His offensive rating (129.9), effective field goal percentage (67.9) and true shooting percentage (72.5) are in another stratosphere from any WSU guard in the past decade.
“He’s playing at a real high level right now and he’s shooting the ball really well, but that’s what I expect and I know that’s what he expects,” Melvin Flanagan, his father, told The Eagle in a phone interview. “And if he continues to get the opportunity, I think he’s going to continue to show what he can do. The more he plays, the more they’ll find out.”
For Melvion, he’s doing his best to just live in the moment and not become caught up in the whirlwind.
“It feels really good, you know, coming in and not playing and now I’m one of the guys that’s leading the team in scoring,” Flanagan said. “It’s amazing, man. It really is crazy. I’m cool and all, but we’ve still got more games to win. We can’t just celebrate this one. We got more coming.”
This story was originally published January 9, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
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