‘Nothing more frustrating’: Rebounding issues continue for Wichita State basketball
Paul Mills watched the sequence unfold in astonishment. Or perhaps it was in horror. Or maybe it was in anger.
It was probably some combination of all three when the Wichita State men’s basketball coach witnessed his team give up four straight offensive rebounds and then an easy put-back to a winless Alcorn State team rated as one of the worst teams in the country.
Three days prior to Wednesday’s game at Koch Arena, Mills forced his players to watch every second of their 37-point loss to Florida and showed all of the ways WSU failed in giving up 20 offensive rebounds. After being bullied in a blowout loss, the coach figured his team would be fired up to show it was more physical and a better rebounding team than it had showed.
Instead, WSU’s problem on the glass persisted and, more troubling, the players didn’t seem too motivated to change it. A 78-54 win to improve to 7-1 looks nice on the surface, but Mills understands how serious of an issue is bubbling underneath the surface that needs to be solved sooner rather than later.
“There’s nothing more frustrating than to play 25 seconds of solid defense, then give a team an extended possession,” Mills said. “We’re just trying to stand in front of people instead of move people. We’ve got to be better at moving people.”
The possession highlighted above occurred in the first four minutes of the game and with WSU’s starting lineup on the floor.
It began with WSU forcing a contested miss on a mid-range jumper, a good outcome for any defense. But WSU wing Harlond Beverly was on a cross-switch and never established inside position and gave up an offensive rebound. Seconds later, Alcorn State rushed another long shot that missed — and once again, Beverly was unable to properly box out his man and was whistled for a foul.
Seconds later, it was Corey Washington’s turn to give up an offensive rebound. And then WSU gave up the fourth and final offensive rebound when Quincy Ballard pursued a block at the rim, but no one covered his man when he vacated to chase the block, allowing Alcorn State’s 6-foot-7 center Djahi Binet to follow for an easy bucket.
On the sidelines, Mills called timeout before the first media break in disgust. Even more troubling, after he chided his team for not boxing out during the timeout, WSU proceeded to give up offensive rebounds on its next five defensive possessions.
“You can just tell that right now, especially against the teams that have girth, we miss Ronnie DeGray,” said Mills about WSU’s injured senior forward who is expected to miss at least three more weeks. “It ends up being a situation where you have Harlond and Corey, guys who do other things well, but they just don’t have the girth necessarily to match up. We were pushing more than hitting. And we need to hit rather than shove.”
After a disastrous start, WSU boarded out at an acceptable 72% on the defensive end for the final 31 minutes of the game. Another positive was that WSU’s defense held Alcorn State to 24% shooting (14 of 58) on its first shots of a possession.
But those first nine minutes revealed a troubling lack of urgency and focus from the team in an area that was a major point of emphasis leading up to the game.
After retrieving better than 75% of opponent misses during a 5-0 start, WSU’s defensive rebounding percentage has plummeted to 62% in its last three games. Some of that has to do with a significant increase in competition, like Florida and Minnesota, but giving up a season-high 21 offensive rebounds to a 6-foot-8-and-under team like Alcorn State seems to indicate WSU has a serious issue on its hands.
“It is a little discouraging,” Washington said. “We knew coming into this game that (rebounding) is the thing that we’ve been working on, but we still need to get better in that aspect. But there’s no panic. We know we’re going to have to do it.”
While a poor effort on the glass can go unpunished against a team like Alcorn State, the Shockers must be better and in a hurry with a December schedule that features three top-100 offensive rebounding teams in the country in East Tennessee State (No. 13 nationally), DePaul (No. 87) and Kansas State (No. 26).
WSU can’t be much worse than it was on Wednesday.
“From a physicality standpoint, we were a ‘D’,” Mills said while grading his team’s performance. “Not good.”
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