Colby Rogers’ 28-point explosion leads Wichita State basketball to Saint Louis win
Colby Rogers scored a career-high 28 points to power the Wichita State men’s basketball team to an 86-69 win over Saint Louis on Sunday evening.
After a disappointing finish in a loss on Friday, the Shockers responded with a dominant close 48 hours later (and without a starter) to wrap up a 2-1 showing and third-place finish in the Myrtle Beach Invitational at the HTC Center.
Flying back home to Wichita on Sunday evening with a 5-1 record sounded a lot better than the alternative the Shockers were faced with entering the game.
“We responded the right way,” said WSU junior guard Xavier Bell, who was voted on the all-tournament team after scoring 14 more points on Sunday. “Obviously things didn’t go how we wanted to this weekend, trying to go 3-0, but we overcame some adversity and capitalized on the opportunity (Sunday). We can get on the plane with happy faces for sure now.”
WSU played with the lead for essentially the entire game, but Saint Louis (4-2) was still lingering, trailing 70-62, entering the final six minutes of the game.
Much like Liberty did to the Shockers in Friday’s semifinal game, WSU buried the Billikens in a 90-second barrage that featured three straight 3-pointers (two from Rogers) to extend the lead to 17 points.
After sitting out last season following a transfer from Siena, Rogers has been worth the wait for the Shockers. His career-high on 11-of-19 shooting, including 5-of-7 accuracy beyond the arc, upped his season scoring average to 17.8 points, tops on the team. WSU had two players score 28 points last season in Kenny Pohto (Feb. 12 against SMU) and Jaron Pierre (Feb. 26 at Tulane)
“The biggest thing I wanted to do (Sunday) was to respond,” said Rogers, who is eight points from reaching 1,000 career points entering Saturday’s game against Norfolk State at Koch Arena. “We took a loss. Things happen. Everything isn’t going to go our way, but what matters is how we respond and I wanted to respond by competing and playing to win. I just gave it my all out there and luckily today my shots were falling.”
After the guards were a little too eager to hunt 1-on-1 match-ups in the loss to Liberty, WSU came out Sunday with a clear intention of involving junior center Kenny Pohto more in the offense.
Pohto scored 10 points in the game’s first 12 minutes and helped WSU build a 29-17 lead. He finished with his second double-double of the season with a season-high 23 points on 8-of-13 shooting from the field and 7-of-8 shooting on free throws to go along with 12 rebounds and three assists.
“We could have come back here today and hung our heads and play bad,” Pohto said. “But we came out with the juice. I feel like we handled adversity in a positive way and kept moving forward.”
Down a starter — a sprained ankle kept Harlond Beverly out on Sunday — with what had been a seven-player rotation, it was two players who had been outside of the rotation in Joy Ighovodja and Jacob Germany that provided the biggest sparks in the first half.
On his first defensive possession, Ighovodja came up with a steal and dunk in transition. After only playing at the tail-end of blow-outs against Division I competition previously, the true freshman from Nigeria tallied seven points, five rebounds and four steals in 25 minutes in his first real action of the season.
Germany, a graduate transfer from UTSA, also delivered a pop for the Shockers in his first stint in the first half against a Division I team this season. He brought the pro-Shocker crowd to its feet by out-working his defender for position, grabbing an offensive rebound, pump-faking to bait the defender in the air and finishing through contact for a foul and basket. He added two more free throws to score five points and grab three rebounds in his eight first-half minutes.
“Jacob’s minutes were huge for us,” Mills said. “He came in and did his assignment. He knew exactly what he was doing and he came up with some big plays for us. He was 100% a factor in this ball game and just phenomenal. That’s a hard position to be in, not knowing if you’re going to play or not. To stay locked in mentally and for him to get his number called and deliver like that, that’s big time.”
After a near-even split with Coastal Carolina on the glass for WSU and losing the rebounding battle to Liberty, Mills was particularly pleased to see the Shockers exert their dominance in Sunday’s game by grabbing a superb 88.6% of defensive rebounds and 29.7% of their own misses in a 50-31 rebounding advantage over Saint Louis.
Missing their leading scorer in Sincere Parker, who injured his foot in Thursday’s opening-round game, the Billikens struggled to find much success (0.88 points per possession) other than pick-and-rolls to Terrence Hargrove (21 points). The rest of SLU shot 30.6% from the field, as star sharpshooter Gibson Jimerson needed 15 shots to score 11 points.
After falling behind by 15 points early in the second half, SLU switched to a full-court press that at times rattled the Shockers and allowed SLU to trim the deficit to single-digits.
Given a second chance to respond to adversity, this time the Shockers were up to the challenge in the first meeting between the regional foes since Dec. 6, 2016.
“I thought we were content to just get the ball across half-court there for a while,” Mills said. “We needed to take advantage of their disadvantage. I wasn’t always happy with some of the decisions, but you’re not going to go anywhere if your foot isn’t on the gas.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2023 at 8:58 PM.
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