Examining the little things that kept Wichita State basketball from win at Memphis
Charging full speed ahead, Harlond Beverly had no time to think, just do.
Basketball is a free-flowing, spontaneous sport, and the Wichita State guard was attempting to make a winning play off script.
There was no time to calculate what decision would lead to the highest win probability for the Shockers, clinging to a two-point lead as the final minute approached in Sunday’s game against Memphis at the FedExForum.
Beverly had cracked Memphis’ full-court pressure and had two choices: pull the ball out and run time off the clock with his team in front or continue to exploit the advantage and look to score to extend the lead.
He chose the latter, completing a coast-to-coast drive all the way to the rim where his layup attempt was challenged by Memphis’ Nick Jourdain. The shot from point-blank range was a touch strong and bounced off the back rim.
Less than 13 seconds later, Jahvon Quinerly drilled the go-ahead 3-pointer at the other end. After WSU tied it, Memphis held for the final shot and David Jones supplied the game-winner to push the Tigers to a 65-63 victory.
In its 1-8 start to American Athletic Conference play, Wichita State has learned the hard way there’s a razor-thin line that can separate winning and losing. All but two of WSU’s eight conference losses have come when the team is in a one-possession game in the final four minutes. On Sunday, WSU led for nearly 38 minutes and by as many as 14 points in the second half.
“It’s frustrating to come so close and have a lead like that and lose it at the end,” WSU guard Colby Rogers said. “It’s not a good feeling, but we’ve got to learn from this.”
If Beverly pulled the ball out and WSU waited until the final seconds of the shot clock to shoot, Memphis would have taken over with approximately 37 seconds left, likely giving WSU the final shot. But would WSU have generated as good of a look as the one Beverly took? Not likely.
So what’s the lesson there?
It isn’t about whether Beverly made the right or wrong split-second decision; the lesson for the Shockers is that execution down the stretch is paramount.
WSU knows it isn’t far away from winning, but a handful of tiny execution errors have snowballed into a bigger problem.
“It’s never about just one play,” WSU head coach Paul Mills said. “It’s the little things that add up and come back and get you.”
WSU suffered a handful of those breakdowns late as Memphis closed the game on a 25-9 run. Here’s what went wrong in those key moments...
WSU needed to finish more shots at the rim
With WSU holding an 11-point lead with less than seven minutes remaining, Ronnie DeGray III missed a 3-pointer, tracked down his own miss and had an uncontested left-handed layup to extend the lead.
But the shot missed and the rebound went out of bounds in favor of Memphis.
The ball was quickly in-bounded and Quinerly caught WSU’s defense slacking. He hit Nae’Qwan Tomlin over the top for a layup — a four-point swing that chipped away at the lead.
A few minutes later, DeGray was open for a kickout to the corner and did well to attack the late closeout and get to the rim. There was a late contest, which caused DeGray to double-pump at the rim. The layup missed.
Ten seconds later, Jones hit a 3-pointer in transition for another vital swing to help Memphis chip away at the lead, 58-52, with more than four minutes still left.
WSU shot 35% (12 of 34) in the paint and scored just 0.86 points per shooting possession in the paint against Memphis, marks that fell well below the team’s average this season.
“We were getting shots around the rim,” Mills said. “We’ve just got to be able to convert more than one out of three on those.”
Shockers come up empty late at the foul line
Free-throw troubles have plagued the Shockers at times in conference play and they once again haunted the team late against Memphis.
Even though the Shockers shot relatively well for the game (14-of-20 for 70% accuracy), the team misfired on 3 of 4 free throws in the final three minutes.
With WSU clinging to a 58-55 lead with 2:46 remaining, Kenny Pohto clanked two free throws. And then with WSU trailing by one with 16 seconds left, DeGray made the first shot to tie the game, then left the second one short.
Meanwhile, Jones made all three of his free throws down the stretch for Memphis.
In close games, empty trips to the foul line late are difficult to swallow.
“At the end, it’s going to come down to free throws,” Mills said. “We’ve got to be able to be better at that.”
Defensive breakdowns haunt Wichita State in loss
Down the stretch of the loss at Tulsa, WSU was punished on cross switches that left its guards trying to defend bigger players.
Those cross switches once again came into play at Memphis.
With WSU holding a 58-52 lead in the final four minutes, DeGray, a power forward, was switched onto Quinerly, a point guard. DeGray contested a long jumper by Quinerly that missed, but WSU found itself at a complete disadvantage underneath with Xavier Bell, a point guard, trying to contend for a rebound against Tomlin, a 6-foot-10 forward.
Memphis came down with the offensive rebound, then WSU compounded its mistake when the ball went to the corner and Bell correctly forced the ball handler to drive the baseline, where WSU’s help defense was supposed to cut off the drive outside of the paint.
But the chase for the offensive rebound left WSU’s defense scrambled, which made the help late to arrive and led to a foul and three-point play for Jones to cut WSU’s lead to 58-55 with 3:15 left.
“We knew they were going to up the pressure, but that got us a little distorted,” Rogers said. “We’ve got to think about the next best thing to do and that was to get a stop. Unfortunately, we didn’t do a good job of that.”
Less than a minute later, another defensive breakdown cost the Shockers three points on a simple pick-and-roll out front for Memphis.
Pohto was defending in deep drop position at the foul line, which suggested he was expecting Beverly to fight over the top of the screen and funnel the ball toward him. Instead, Beverly peeled off to switch to try to box out the big man.
That left Jones wide open to walk into the game-tying 3-pointer with 2:22 remaining.
“We just had a lot of miscues on defense, finishing out plays,” Bell said. “At the end of the day, it comes down to us in the locker room making the plays to finish games out.”
Offensive timing issues plague WSU down the stretch
Following a timeout with 4:04 left and WSU in front, 58-52, Mills dialed up a quick-hitter to Pohto to try to score an easy one.
The play called for the ball to be passed to the corner, then for Pohto, standing at the foul line, to receive a back-screen to cut to the basket for a potential score.
The play revolved around the timing of the actions, and WSU’s timing was a tick off.
The back screen should’ve been timed when the ball was passed to the corner, so the player with the ball had time to fire the pass inside.
But this time, the back screen was already happening before Bell could swing the ball to DeGray in the corner. By the time DeGray caught it, the Memphis defender guarding Pohto had already caught up to the action. With the first look gone, WSU’s offense stalled out and Beverly was left throwing up a heavily-contested runner that missed and led to a shot-clock violation.
An empty possession like that is easy to forget since it didn’t come in the final minute, but a missed chance at an easy score matters a lot when trying to protect a lead down the stretch.
“We had ourselves in the right position to win, but maybe a few execution and mental errors down the stretch,” DeGray said. “It’s not just about the things that happened at the very end of the game. It’s the things that we didn’t do in the middle and the beginning of the game, too. All of those things add up.”
This story was originally published February 5, 2024 at 12:57 PM.
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