Offense continues to hum for Wichita State basketball in fourth AAC road win at Tulsa
For years now, grinding out defensive rock fights was the preferred method for the Wichita State men’s basketball team.
Times might be changing.
The Shockers’ recent scoring surge continued on Sunday afternoon with an 86-75 win over Tulsa at the Reynolds Center.
The same offense that was struggling to crack 50 points in December has now pumped out an average of 76.7 points in its last eight games. WSU won its fifth game during that stretch on Sunday to improve to 12-11 overall and 5-6 in American Athletic Conference play, moving into sixth place in the standings with its fourth conference road win.
“You can definitely tell that we’re getting better every single game,” said WSU junior Jaykwon Walton, who finished with 17 points and seven rebounds. “From the time that me and Craig (Porter) got healthy, you can tell we look like a whole different ball club.”
After the Shockers needed to rally from a 16-point deficit to win the first meeting at Koch Arena, they exerted their dominance from the start over the last-place team in the American. WSU controlled the game for all but 96 seconds and it led by as many as 24 points in the second half to sweep the season series against Tulsa (5-17, 1-10 AAC) for the fifth time in the last six years.
WSU just occasionally cracked 1 point per possession on offense for the first two months of the season, but has now exceeded that standard in seven straight games. The Shockers pumped out 1.18 points per possession against Tulsa’s lackluster defense on 52% shooting (35 of 68) and a 17-7 advantage in second-chance points after winning the rebounding battle with 11 offensive boards.
“If we just keep that same intensity, I don’t see anybody that we can’t beat,” said WSU star Craig Porter, who flirted with a triple-double and finished with nine points, 10 rebounds and seven assists.
When that intensity is channeled, WSU seems capable of competing with any team in the conference. When that intensity drops, the Shockers are capable of blowing leads of any proportion.
It’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde nature was in full force on Sunday.
For the first 37 minutes, WSU throttled Tulsa like a good team should do to a bad team. The inside-out emphasis was working with James Rojas (17 points, nine rebounds) and Kenny Pohto (12 points, seven rebounds and six assists) both thriving. Jaron Pierre (19 points) was in his element, while Walton and Porter wreaked havoc in transition (16 fast break points).
“Honestly, we’re just starting to run more in transition,” Rojas said. “That’s why we’re starting to get easier shots. When you slow things down like we were, you don’t always get the shots you want. You have to force some up at the end of the clock. Once we started running more, now we’re getting dunks and lay-ups and wide-open threes on the break. I think that’s the biggest difference.”
All of the good work put forward in the first 37 minutes of the game was just about undone by three minutes of unserious play.
WSU led by 21 points inside the 3-minute mark, yet somehow allowed Tulsa to have a shot in the air that would have trimmed the deficit to five points in the final 30 seconds. The shot missed and Pierre sealed the win once and for all with a dunk at the other end, but there was still a tinge of embarrassment that WSU head coach Isaac Brown was forced to re-insert his starters to close out the game.
WSU’s bench was once considered a team strength and was among the nation’s leaders in bench production and minutes. But WSU has become heavily reliant on its starting lineup as of late.
“Those guys have just got to execute better down the stretch,” Brown said succinctly.
Instead of dwelling on the sour finish, WSU believed the first 37 minutes, when it led by double-digits almost the entire time, was indicative of a step in the right direction.
The Shockers wasted no time establishing a quick tempo, thanks to Porter’s penchant for throw-ahead passes. After a Tulsa made basket, Porter caught Tulsa’s defense off-guard with a pass to Pohto in transition for an easy basket. Less than a minute later, Porter pulled down a rebound and, without taking a single dribble, immediately found Rojas a step ahead of his defender with a deep pass for another layup and a 9-3 WSU lead.
From there, the Shockers opened up a double-digit lead within the game’s first 10 minutes after a 14-1 spurt put them ahead 26-14. Tulsa briefly closed to within eight points, but WSU ended the final seven minutes of the first half on a 13-2 run to take a 45-26 lead into halftime. The rally was fittingly capped by a transition basket, as Porter found Walton on the break, then Walton slotted a bounce pass through a narrow window to a streaking Pierre for a layup.
“I love getting out and running,” Walton said. “I’m a big transition guy. I love getting my teammates involved and I knew I was going there as soon as Craig threw it.”
While WSU has managed to go 5-3 during its offensive uptick these past eight games, the team has yet to translate its improved play to a winning streak. WSU hasn’t won three consecutive games all season, a feat it will try to accomplish this coming week with two straight games at Koch Arena against UCF on Wednesday and SMU on Sunday.
“We’ve all playing real good right now, but we always seem to have those lapses where we let the other team go on big runs,” Rojas said. “We just got to keep trying to put 40 minutes together. I still don’t think we’ve put together a whole 40. Once we do that, it’s going to get real scary around here.”
This story was originally published February 5, 2023 at 3:59 PM.
.jpg)