Inside the play that sealed the biggest Wichita State home comeback win in team history
Sam Griffin could not be stopped and he was letting the Wichita State men’s basketball team know about it.
The demonstrative guard was on a heater, scoring all but two of his game-high 25 points on jumpers, and was on the verge of willing Tulsa to its first victory in Wichita in 22 years in the rivalry game at Koch Arena on Saturday afternoon.
During the final media timeout of the game, WSU head coach Isaac Brown pleaded with his players one last time.
“You guys have got to have some pride. Who wants to guard this kid?” Brown recalled saying in the huddle to his team when it trailed by five points with less than four minutes remaining.
Craig Porter, a fifth-year senior and WSU’s last remaining vestige to the 2021 championship team, demanded the challenge.
The image of Griffin celebrating the demise of the Shockers after scoring 21 points to help Tulsa end WSU’s season last March has stuck with Porter, who was forced to watch helplessly from the bench due to injury.
So when Porter found himself across from Griffin, ball in hand with Tulsa clinging to a 69-68 lead in the final 90 seconds, it was the matchup both teams wanted: best scorer vs. best defender with the game on the line.
“Last year he killed us, so I had that on my mind,” Porter said. “I felt like I knew most of his moves playing against him the last two years and I studied the scouting report.”
There’s a good chance the scouting report included that more times than not, when Griffin starts to attack off the dribble, he’s going to try to pull up for a jumper. According to Synergy, more than 61% of Griffin’s drives this season have ended with a pull-up jumper.
Porter didn’t concentrate on shading Griffin one way or the other; instead, he anticipated a jump stop around the 10-foot range that would tell Porter that Griffin was about to pull the trigger.
“I just tried to make (Griffin) make a decision based on how I was going to guard,” Porter said. “He did exactly what I wanted him to do, and he went exactly where I knew he would.”
Because the play unfolded how Porter anticipated, he was stride-for-stride with Griffin and prepared to spring off the floor a split-second after Griffin planted and went up to launch a fadeaway jumper.
Watching from the far sideline, Brown couldn’t help but appreciate the textbook, fundamental defense by Porter, who executed exactly how the WSU coaching staff teaches in practice.
“We’ve got this drill called ‘2-on-2 closeouts’ and when you close out, you’ve got to show your hands and you’ve got to be the second guy off the floor,” Brown said. “Craig being a veteran, he had our fundamentals down pat.”
After Griffin had tortured WSU’s defense with jump shot after jump shot, Porter was able to sniff out Griffin’s shot in the most important moment of the game.
Porter smothered the shot before it could be released by Griffin, which created a fast break opportunity for the Shockers. James Rojas picked up the loose ball, passed ahead to Jaron Pierre Jr. and the New Orleans native glided through the air to finish a left-handed lay-up to give WSU a 70-69 lead with 1:11 remaining.
“Craig almost like baited (Griffin) and he timed up his jump shot,” Pierre said. “He was the second person off the floor, just like coach IB always says, and he ended up with the block and I got the finish for us at the other end.”
The sequence happened so quickly — Porter blocked the shot and Pierre scored the go-ahead basket at the other end within five seconds — that Porter still wasn’t sure how Pierre scored when Pierre caught the ball outside of the three-point arc and used two long strides and some serious hang-time and body control to finish at the rim.
It was play only Pierre, fueled by his New Orleans swagger and utmost self-belief, could have made.
“I ain’t going to lie, I didn’t know what he was doing,” Porter said when he saw Pierre launch from so far away. “But he made it work and I didn’t do nothing but smile after that.”
In Porter’s mind, it was fitting that a defensive play was what ultimately helped the Shockers erase a 16-point deficit to pull off the largest comeback in Wichita in program history.
“That shows these guys that when you hunker down and play defense like Shockers do, you’re going to get stops and get wins,” Porter said.
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