Wichita State basketball is poised for first home losing record in a season since 1996
For the first time in nearly three decades, the Wichita State men’s basketball team is poised to finish a season with a losing record at home.
WSU’s 83-78 loss to Memphis on Thursday dropped the Shockers’ record at Koch Arena to 2-6 in American Athletic Conference play, while WSU fell to 7-9 in Wichita this season.
With only one home game — a March 5 date with South Florida — remaining on the schedule, WSU’s fate of a losing home record is almost certainly sealed, given the team’s 125 NET ranking that suggests a postseason berth is unlikely.
It would be the first home losing season since the 1995-96 season when the Shockers finished 6-9 at home in the final year of coach Scott Thompson’s tenure before he resigned following an 8-21 campaign.
“We’re always frustrated with a loss,” WSU head coach Isaac Brown said. “I thought we played well, but we just didn’t defend in the halfcourt enough in order to get enough stops against a good basketball team. When you allow a team to shoot (47%) from the 3-point line and (54%) from the field, that’s the difference in the game. We just didn’t defend home well enough.”
When Brown led WSU to the 2021 AAC championship as an interim head coach, the Shockers took care of business on their home court all seven times in conference play. That was the expectation, as the Roundhouse had garnered a worthy reputation as one of the most difficult places to win in college basketball.
But that has not been the case the last two seasons, as WSU’s home-court advantage has deteriorated under Brown. The Shockers are 7-10 in home conference games in the last two seasons, which has seen Tulane, East Carolina and UCF all win for the first time at Koch Arena.
And that mark doesn’t include the 66-57 loss to Alcorn State that WSU suffered as 17.5-point favorites in the second game of this season.
Considering WSU has six road wins, including a four-game winning streak away from home, it’s not hard to imagine an entirely different season playing out for the Shockers if they would have been able to maintain their usual home dominance up this season.
“I honestly don’t know what it is,” WSU star senior Craig Porter said. “I’ve got to take most of the blame for that. I’m supposed to be the leader of this team.
“I feel like we get a little comfortable being at home and I don’t think we have done enough to be comfortable. I feel like on the road we’ve got a little more fight in us because it’s us against everybody there. Once we get home, we get comfortable and once we get comfortable, we have lapses.”
WSU’s defense was once considered a lock to be among the best in the country, but it has collapsed in conference play at home this season. The Shockers are allowing 78.2 points in their six home AAC losses, while opposing offenses have hummed to 1.17 points per possession in those games.
It’s a testament to how much WSU’s offense has improved from the start of the season that none of those games have been blow-outs. But there’s not much solace to be taken from that fact in a season with so many close games botched down the stretch at home.
“It’s tough, but we’re definitely getting better,” WSU sixth-year senior James Rojas said. “We just need to learn how to close out games. That’s really it. We’ve been in every game. We haven’t got blown out or nothing. We just got to learn how to finish out a game.”
This story was originally published February 24, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
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