FAU game shows Wichita State basketball is still learning how to win close ones
If there really is an art to learning how to win close college basketball games, Wichita State is stuck in a painful stage of the process.
It’s become clear the Shockers are better than a cellar-dwelling team their 2-9 record in American Athletic Conference indicates with the latest chapter coming in a 95-82 overtime loss to No. 20-ranked Florida Atlantic at Koch Arena on Sunday.
A missed free throw turned into a make here, a loose ball or rebound won there and WSU’s season could have an entirely different feel. In seven of WSU’s nine conference losses, it has been a one-possession game at some point during the final four minutes of regulation.
FAU coach Dusty May subscribes to the notion that a team must learn how to prevail in close games and it wasn’t too long ago his team was in WSU’s position.
“This Wichita State team is a little snake-bitten in these close games,” May said. “It’s a lot like how we were before last season. Just for whatever reason, we found ways to lose them and then the next year with that experience coming back, we found ways to win them.”
The Owls essentially returned the same roster as last season when they won 16 of 19 games decided by single-digits, including four straight in the NCAA tournament to reach the Final Four.
But the season before — when current stars like Johnell Davis, Alijah Martin, Vladislav Goldin and Brandon Weatherspoon were freshmen and sophomores — FAU was 5-10 in games decided by single-digits.
Experience helps, but more specifically, it is the trust that can only be developed by going through arduous situations together that helps more. Because it is essentially a first-year team playing together under a new head coach, WSU doesn’t have that kind of experience banked yet.
“Our guys have that belief now,” May said. “They’re not hoping to win. We’ve been in this situation so many times and we have such a high level of trust in each other. No one feels like they have to be our hero or save us.”
It’s difficult to boil WSU’s late-game problems down to a single issue.
On Sunday, it wasn’t even necessarily a problem. In fact, WSU took the fight to FAU in the final six minutes of regulation to erase a nine-point deficit and have a shot in the air that would have won the game at the buzzer.
The Shockers expended 40 minutes of superb effort, but didn’t have five more to give in overtime, which left the team pondering some agonizing “What-if” scenarios about the end of regulation.
What if officials would have correctly stopped play for a shot-clock violation committed by FAU? Instead of momentum continuing to build in WSU’s favor, FAU was able to score an uncontested layup to extend its lead to 70-66 with 3:37 remaining when WSU’s players stopped play to celebrate what they believed was a stop.
What if Quincy Ballard wasn’t called for a foul with 30 seconds left? Instead of the Owls likely being forced to foul from behind, Bryan Greenlee was sent to the foul line where he made two free throws to put FAU up 74-73.
What if Xavier Bell made both of his free throws with 17 seconds left? Instead of putting FAU in a must-score situation, Bell split his free throws to tie the game and eventually force overtime.
“That’s why you try to play your best over 70 possessions and hope you can avoid those situations,” May said of close games. “Because there’s a lot of randomness to this.”
Alter the outcome of any one of those three events down the stretch and it’s possible the final result changes too.
But hypotheticals don’t count in the standings, where WSU finds itself in a tie for 12th place in reality.
“At the end of the day, we’ve got to figure out how to close out games,” said Bell, who scored a game-high 25 points.
Given the end result, it’s easy to focus on when WSU came up short down the stretch. But the Shockers will also find plenty of times when they strung together winning plays required to pull out close games.
Like when Bell came through with clutch basket after another down the stretch. Or when the defense registered seven stops and limited FAU to six points in its final 10 possessions of the game. Or when WSU out-scored a nationally-ranked team who is a shoe-in for the NCAA tournament 15-6 in the final six minutes to force overtime.
“It was winning time and you have to make plays and dig deep and that’s what we did,” WSU guard Colby Rogers said. “You’ve just got to fight. We didn’t want to go down and not give our best punch in those last five minutes. Those are the moments we work on in practice.”
WSU head coach Paul Mills recently said there is a “gulf between playing people tough and winning.”
The collapse in overtime made for a sour ending, but WSU appears to be inching its way toward progress in the art of winning close games. The Shockers came up empty on Sunday, but it wasn’t due to a lack of effort in regulation.
Afterward, Mills gave a passionate answer about his team’s progress.
“Things don’t always go your way, so you know what you do? You put one foot in front of the other and you keep going,” Mills said. “I wish everything in life went my way. I’m sorry that my dad died at a young age. Guess what? You move on. You figure it out. That’s the nature of life and that’s the nature of this game.
“You figure out the next thing to do and you do it. Period. Competing is one thing and that’s exactly what our guys did. You continue to battle and you make sure you have no quit in you and that’s what our guys have.”
This story was originally published February 12, 2024 at 6:03 AM.
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