Double-digit lead not enough for Wichita State basketball in agonizing OT loss to Tulane
Stringing together 40 straight minutes of focused basketball remains only a concept to the Wichita State men’s basketball team.
It’s not a problem for the Shockers to crank up their intensity when it’s convenient, but their struggle to maintain consistency during times that aren’t easy was on full display once again in Wednesday’s game against Tulane.
The consequence was blowing the fourth-largest lead in program history in a 95-90 overtime loss to Tulane. Wichita State failed to protect a lead that stretched to as many as 18 points late in the first half and remained at eight points in the final three minutes of regulation.
By the end, a crowd of 7,003 WSU fans sat in stunned silence as the Green Wave erased a double-digit halftime deficit for the second straight year to win at Koch Arena. The days of the Roundhouse being known as a place of despair for conference opponents feel like distant memories, as WSU has now lost more than it has won (6-7) at Koch Arena in conference play the last two seasons.
“We have high-character guys and I talk to them all the time about how you can’t start listening to the people on the outside,” WSU head coach Isaac Brown said. “I know it stings. It’s stinging me right now. Those guys hate losing ball games, but I know those guys in the locker room will continue to fight. Right now this one stings all of us, but I know they will be back to fight.”
Holding a 71-63 lead with 2:41 remaining in regulation, Wichita State was a few defensive stops away from notching its best win of the season and its fourth victory in its last five American Athletic Conference games.
Needing just a handful of stops, WSU’s defense instead produced none. Tulane scored 32 points on its final 16 possessions in the game, which included an 11-0 spurt at the end of regulation and then scoring every trip down the floor but once during overtime.
The Shockers (10-10, 3-5 AAC) botched a chance to build serious momentum, while Tulane (13-7, 6-3 AAC) pulled off yet another stunner at Koch Arena behind its trio of stars in Jaylen Forbes (game-high 25 points), Jalen Cook (20 points, 9 rebounds, 6 assists) and Kevin Cross (18 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists).
“We just didn’t guard at the level we needed to guard at,” Brown rued afterward.
“We had lapses where we were probably ball watching, probably got a little tired,” said WSU senior Craig Porter, who finished with 12 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists without a turnover. “The defense slipped. It also doesn’t help when you blow a lead like that and then you’re playing a chance game with the refs at the end. At the end of the day, it’s on us.”
After allowing the 18-point lead to slip away midway through the second half, WSU pulled back in front with a 9-2 spurt featuring three straight triples, including two from Jaron Pierre Jr. (18 points, 7 rebounds), for a 71-63 lead with 2:42 left in regulation.
But if this season — and this week after WSU squandered a 13-point lead in just over two minutes at SMU this past Sunday — has proven anything, it’s that no lead is safe with these Shockers.
Tulane rattled off 11 unanswered points, culminating in a wild sequence that gave the Green Wave the lead. The play started with WSU forward James Rojas (10 points, 8 rebounds) trying to break Tulane’s full-court pressure, only to have the ball poked out from behind. Pierre, his teammate, retrieved the loose ball and, when he was trying to bring the ball back across halfcourt, had the ball poked out from him.
Tulane’s Sion James recovered the steal and threw down a dunk over WSU’s Kenny Pohto for a foul and three-point play to give the Green Wave a 74-71 lead with 21 seconds left.
After leading for nearly 34 minutes of the game, WSU needed late heroics just to force overtime. On a baseline-out-of-bounds play with 12.2 seconds left, Jaykwon Walton (career-high 24 points, 6 assists) broke free in the opposite corner, Porter delivered a bullet and the Georgia native swished the three that forced overtime after Forbes’ final chance missed.
“(The Tulane players) were already calling out our play, so I knew if I fake one way and got to the corner I would be wide open,” Walton said. “I heard them calling out the play, so I just gave CP a look like, ‘Come to me in the corner.’”
In overtime, WSU scored just about every chance it had. The problem was that its defense allowed Tulane to score 21 points on 10 possessions, logging just one stop in the extra period.
Every time WSU scored, Tulane had an answer. After Walton hit back-to-back threes, Tulane responded with three points both times. Rojas scored four straight points for WSU, only for Cook to conjure four straight points of his own. The Shockers would come within two or three points a total of seven separate times in overtime, but they never once had a chance to tie the game because they simply could not find a way to stop Tulane.
“I kept telling our guys that we got it all the way back, let’s not give it away now,” Tulane coach Ron Hunter said. “We just lost an overtime game at Tulsa and I thought we rested there. This time, I thought we battled. The resiliency of these guys makes it fun to coach.”
WSU’s biggest regret will once again be taking the easy way out on offense in the second half, settling for a barrage of three-pointers and long two-point jump shots against Tulane’s match-up zone.
WSU pummeled Tulane for 48 points (1.41 points per possession) in the first half, mostly because it was aggressive attacking the rim in building a 13-point halftime lead. Pohto (17 points, 9 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 blocks) was a force inside, scoring 13 first-half points, and WSU attempted 10 free throws.
The Shockers abandoned their inside-out philosophy in the second half, choosing instead to pull the trigger on the first look they found beyond the arc. More than half of WSU’s shots (19 of 32) in the second half came beyond the arc, while the team attempted just two free throws.
While WSU made a season-high 14 three-pointers, it came on a season-high 38 attempts, just one off the school record. For a team that ranks among the 30 worst outside shooting teams in the country this season, Tulane was more than happy to watch WSU unload from deep time and time again.
“We started taking a lot of threes and stopped sticking to the game plan,” Porter said. “One thing led to another. It was a domino effect after that.”
This story was originally published January 25, 2023 at 10:39 PM.
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