Low energy led to mental lapses for Wichita State basketball in South Dakota State loss
Coming out of halftime following a sluggish offensive showing, the Wichita State men’s basketball team needed a strong start.
The same energy that resides inside Koch Arena didn’t translate to the much larger Intrust Bank Arena. Then again, the Shockers hadn’t given the crowd of 4,076 much of a reason to become involved.
This was a chance for the Shockers to change that.
Three minutes after halftime, WSU head coach Paul Mills was calling a timeout to try to halt a disastrous stretch that saw a six-point deficit grow to 14 in an eventual 79-69 loss to South Dakota State on Saturday night.
“I just felt like our energy was a little bit low,” WSU junior Harlond Beverly said. “When the energy is low, that can cause mental lapses.”
WSU had its fair share of those in the opening minutes after halftime, as its first six possessions turned up empty. Making matters worse, the Shockers turned the ball over three times to fuel South Dakota State’s 8-0 run.
A careless cross-court pass from Colby Rogers turned into a wide-open 3-pointer for Kalen Garry to bury. A minute later, Kenny Pohto attempted a dribble handoff, but the ball was knocked loose and Garry finished at the other end. Not long after, Xavier Bell tried to throw an alley-oop pass in transition that was deflected and turned into, you guessed it, a Garry 3-pointer.
“Some of those pitch-aheads were just unnecessary and that turned around and put us in disadvantage basketball,” Mills said. “Those live-ball turnovers turned a six-point lead into a double-digit lead for those guys.”
Falling behind double-digits to a South Dakota State team that entered with a losing record didn’t help improve the mood in what was the least-attended downtown game in the event’s 13-year history.
When relayed his player’s assessment that the energy felt off, Mills immediately took ownership of the issue.
“That’s 100% on me,” Mills said. “I didn’t have the energy that I needed to. That’s not on the players. That’s on me.”
Not helping matters was WSU’s disastrous performance inside the arc. The Shockers were averaging 39.8 points in the paint with at least 34 in every game, but they finished Saturday’s game with just 18 on 25.6% (11-of-43) accuracy inside the arc.
After struggling to produce 39 points (0.68 points per possession) in the game’s first 31 minutes, WSU finally snapped out of its funk to score 30 points (1.76 points per possession) in the final nine minutes. That included a season-high (against Division I competition) 40.7% shooting on 3-pointers with 11 makes.
Rogers, who scored a team-high 21 points, liked what WSU did during its best scoring flurry of the season, but didn’t like that it took falling behind by 17 points to bring it out of the team.
“The easiest way (to increase energy) is to get stops,” Rogers said. “Sometimes your best offense can be your defense. We have to come together, get some stops and then get more ball movement, player movement on offense and keep attacking. I think (when the offense bogs down), we’ve got to attack a little bit more and just be smarter with the ball. We’ve got to wear them down and make them work on the defensive end. It can’t just be a pass and a shot.”
Beverly said the team leaders will need to do a better job of keeping the team’s energy up the next time the Shockers encounter a prolonged slump like that.
“I just chalk it up to us being human,” Beverly said. “Everybody doesn’t always have the most energetic days, but we’ve got to do better as teammates. Me and Colby being leaders on the team, we have to make sure everybody gets their energy up. We have to make sure we can never have those low-energy nights. As a team, we’ve got to be better.”
For a relatively new team in the first year of a new system, Mills said WSU’s first loss in a game where it was favored to win can serve as a lesson.
“The good thing is that you can grow from losses. It isn’t as if it’s debilitating,” Mills said. “You learn from it and we’ll get in the film room and we’ll grow.”
This story was originally published December 10, 2023 at 10:59 AM.
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