Wichita State basketball goes inside early and often for comfortable road win at ECU
Learning from its mistakes from earlier in the week, the Wichita State men’s basketball team kept its tunnel vision focused on scoring inside.
The result was the most comfortable road win of the season, as the Shockers led by double-digits for almost 35 minutes in an 85-72 win over East Carolina at Minges Coliseum in Greenville, N.C. on Sunday afternoon.
“The message from the coaches was to figure out a way to play the full 40 minutes and that’s what we did,” WSU star Craig Porter said. “We realized the mismatches that we had and we knew from the first time playing them that we excelled getting the ball in the paint and scoring in the lane.”
After squandering an 18-point lead in its last game against Tulane by abandoning the inside-out game plan, WSU made no such mistake against ECU.
The Shockers didn’t allow the allure of the three-point shot to tempt them, as they attempted a season-high 75% of their shots inside the arc. Instead of launching threes, WSU worked the ball inside and attacked the rim consistently to finish with 56% accuracy on 2-pointers, a total of 27 free throws (with 22 makes) and nearly doubled up ECU (40-22) in points in the paint.
“We just played smart,” WSU head coach Isaac Brown said. “Valuing the basketball, not turning it over. We did a good job of getting off to a good start and the guys defended at a high level. We got the ball inside and we played inside-out and we came away with the win.”
WSU has won three of its last four road games to vault to sixth place in the conference standings, as it improved to 11-10 overall and 4-5 in American Athletic Conference play. ECU fell to 11-11 overall and 2-7 in conference play.
It was the second-most efficient outing of the season from WSU’s offense, which scored 1.21 points per possession. Porter notched his second 20-point game of the season and added eight rebounds, four assists, a block and a steal. In his last 70 minutes, spanning the last two games, Porter has 12 assists to just one turnover.
James Rojas matched his career-high of 19 points, juiced by an 11-of-14 performance at the foul line, to go along with seven rebounds and four steals. WSU’s starting lineup scored 84% of the team’s points, as Jaykwon Walton (13 points, seven rebounds), Kenny Pohto (10 points) and Jaron Pierre (nine points) also scored well.
“We started to play inside-out and got the ball inside early,” Rojas said. “That’s what we focused on and we capitalized on it early, then we started to kick it out and make some shots. That worked pretty good for us.”
The victory was so thorough that it was easy to wonder how it was possible for WSU to lose to ECU by 10 points on its home court just a month ago.
While the Shockers certainly played a better game in the rematch, ECU was a completely different team for Sunday’s game without Javon Small, a dynamic guard who does a lot of the heavy-lifting (15.8 points, 5.6 assists) for the Pirates. Small missed his fourth straight game due to injury on Sunday, as ECU’s offense shot just 37% from the field.
It was clear the message from Brown after three days of film was for WSU to enforce its will inside. The Shockers followed orders and created essentially a layup line to the basket early, as Pierre, Pohto, Rojas and Walton all had dunks during a 14-2 run to open up a 20-6 lead in the first seven minutes of the game.
For the second straight game, WSU scored nearly 50 points in the first half. On Sunday, WSU made 60% of its shots, scored 1.49 PPP and held a 16-2 advantage in fast-break points to open up a 49-28 halftime lead, the fifth-largest in a road game since 1970.
“Guys were flying around and shots were falling, it was a great feeling,” Rojas said. “That’s how basketball is supposed to be. But we’ve still got to be able to lock in when shots aren’t falling.”
In the Tulane loss, WSU allowed a 13-point halftime lead to dwindle to four before the first media timeout. After superb play for the first 17 minutes of the game, WSU negated almost all of its good work by a stretch of poor play that kept the Green Wave’s hopes alive.
Given a second chance on Sunday, WSU handled a similar situation — granted, against a different quality of opponent — much better.
The Shockers maintained their level of play and extended its lead in the opening five minutes of the second half. They kept pushing until they saw their lead grow to as many as 27 points.
“We were just focused on starting off good because we tend to come out and be a little hesitant,” Porter said. “We just worked on keeping our foot on the pedal and kept this thing going.”
The final seven minutes weren’t pretty.
Brown was whistled for just the second technical foul of his career arguing a no-call with officials. The bench unit was so sloppy, allowing a 27-point lead to be cut to 17 within two minutes, Brown had to re-insert the starters. With the lead safe at 23, Brown again turned to the bench unit in the final four minutes, only to watch ECU finish the game on a 12-2 run.
In its first game at Minges Coliseum since 2019, WSU was without sophomore center Quincy Ballard, the 7-footer who missed his ninth game in the last 10 with a back injury. He did make the road trip and his return to the court is uncertain, given WSU’s new policy in disclosing injury information.
After an 0-3 start to conference play, the Shockers reached the halfway point with a 4-5 mark. The team returns to Wichita to host No. 2 Houston on Thursday. The teams have played instant classics in the last two meetings at Koch Arena, as WSU knocked off No. 6 Houston in 2021 to help secure an AAC title and then lost a double-overtime thriller to the Cougars in 2022.
“We can really build on this (ECU) win on the road and go on a run from here on out,” Rojas said. “If we put together a whole 40 minutes, we can play against anybody.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2023 at 1:17 PM.
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