Turnovers spoil valiant road effort for Wichita State basketball in loss to No. 1 Houston
Turnovers and missed free throws spoiled a surprise upset bid by the Wichita State men’s basketball team on the road against No. 1-ranked Houston on Thursday night.
Not much was expected from the Shockers, deemed 17.5-point underdogs by oddsmakers, and that was before their leading scorer Jaykwon Walton was ruled out with a sickness for a road game against the nation’s top-ranked team on the Cougars’ senior night.
In a game closer than the final margin indicated, Wichita State made Houston earn its 83-66 win in front of a record crowd of 7,879 fans at the Fertitta Center.
The Shockers torched one of the country’s best defenses with 65% shooting from the field and 50% accuracy on 3-pointers, but 20 turnovers and a 12-for-21 performance on free throws negated the hot shooting.
WSU’s 73% effective field goal percentage was the highest Houston’s defense has allowed in the last two decades. The Shockers came up just short of their school record performance of 66.7% set in 1987 against Austin Peay and became just the 11th team in college basketball in the last 13 seasons to lose shooting at least 65% from the field, according to Sports Reference.
“The final score ain’t necessarily how the game was the whole time,” WSU senior star Craig Porter said. “There are a lot of positives to take away and you can see our offense is building every game and getting better. Our defense slipped not having Kwon there hurt us, but we were still right there. We’re not going to look at this as a negative; we’re focused on the positives.”
WSU led for more than 11 minutes and by as many as eight points in the first half, but failed to match the intensity of the Cougars, as Houston racked up 11 offensive rebounds for 15 second-chance points and forced WSU into turnover after turnover to pull away in the second half.
Houston coach Kelvin Sampson won his sixth American Athletic Conference championship, as the Cougars (28-2, 16-1 AAC) won their 10th straight game and cuts down the nets to celebrate an outright title. Meanwhile, WSU’s 5-game road winning streak was ended and the Shockers dropped to 15-14 overall and 8-9 in conference play.
WSU’s chances of a first-round bye in next week’s conference tournament were extinguished minutes after its loss, as Temple held off UCF to win and clinch a top-5 seed. The Shockers can clinch the No. 6 seed in Fort Worth with a win over South Florida in the regular-season finale at Koch Arena on Sunday.
“We felt good about certain parts of how we played collectively, but 20 turnovers is tough to deal with,” said WSU guard Jaron Pierre, who scored 16 points and had six of those turnovers. “Those turnovers are what kind of cost us.”
Houston’s Jamal Shead tied his career-high of 25 points and Marcus Sasser, the all-time winningest player in program history, added 24 more, as the Cougars outscored WSU 17-4 in points off turnovers and 15-5 in second-chance points.
“You can’t look at our box score stats and judge us,” Sampson said. “We get so many points off loose balls and turnovers and second-chance points. We’re not a very pretty first-shot team. Never have been.”
WSU didn’t back down to adverse circumstances early, as it ripped off a 10-0 run, capped by a free throw line jumper by Isaiah Poor Bear-Chandler, to take a 22-14 lead and force Sampson to call a timeout with 8:53 left.
“We were still wiping tears away,” said Sampson, referring to the team’s pre-game senior recognition ceremony. “I said, ‘Fellas, get rid of the tears, that’s over with. We’ve got a game to play.’ I felt like I was talking to a wall for the first three timeouts.”
The game changed in a 5-minute stretch featuring the final minute of the first half and the first round of the second half when Porter was whistled for his third and fourth fouls, both of which appeared to feature clean plays on the ball but ruled to be violations due to body contact.
Porter still finished with a team-high in points (17) and rebounds (7), but admitted the foul trouble affected how he played in the second half.
“I know I have to watch my fouls because I’m a big key to this team,” Porter said. “But I feel like it’s been happening a lot the last few games where I’ve been called for a lot of bad calls and it’s been affecting us. I feel like it’s taking away from my aggressiveness.”
That’s when WSU could have used Walton, the team’s leading scorer at 14.0 points per game and its best athlete at 6 foot 7 who gave Houston fits in the first meeting with 24 points. Walton is “hopeful” to play in Sunday’s regular-season finale for WSU, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
Houston pulled away for a 53-41 lead in the first seven minutes of the second half, but WSU punched right back with an 8-0 run to trim the deficit to 53-49 with more than 11 minutes still remaining.
That would prove to be as close as WSU would come, as Shead drilled a 3-pointer and WSU committed three turnovers in less than 60 seconds, ending with a Sasser layup to push the lead back to 60-51.
WSU was still within striking distance entering the final five minutes, but Houston (20 of 22 at the foul line) finished its free throws and WSU (12 of 21) did not down the stretch.
“When Craig picked up that fourth foul, we had to play without our quarterback there and try to handle their pressure,” WSU head coach Isaac Brown said. “We didn’t handle it well with 20 turnovers. That was the difference in the game and then the free throw line hurt us bad too. It’s hard to win games when you shoot 57% and the other team shoots 91%.”
It was WSU’s first time playing against a No. 1-ranked team in the regular season since the Shockers faced off against Lew Alcindor and the top-ranked UCLA Bruins on Dec. 8, 1967.
Box score for Wichita State’s 83-66 loss at Houston
This story was originally published March 2, 2023 at 8:03 PM.
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