How can Shocker basketball get fans back? This 38-second stretch in ETSU win shows how
It’s no secret that Koch Arena is emptier than usual these days, as several factors have played into the steady decline of attendance by Wichita State basketball fans.
While the paid attendance was 5,602 for Saturday’s game, it was clear the Roundhouse was less than half full to watch WSU win 96-87 over East Tennessee State and improve to 8-1 this season.
So how can the Shockers win back fans?
Stacking wins will help, but it’s not enough. It’s become increasingly clear that a blue-collar fan base wants to see a blue-collar team win games in blue-collar fashion, a trait that has been missing with the Shockers in recent history.
This Wichita State team still has a long ways to go to earn that kind of reputation, but a 38-second stretch late in the first half of Saturday’s game gave a glimpse of what was possible.
The 7-0 explosion was ignited by a tip dunk and 3-pointer by Corey Washington and a block by Quincy Ballard, then finished with a series of hustle plays: Justin Hill fighting over a screen to block a corner 3, Washington diving to save the ball from hitting out of bounds, Ballard sprinting the floor in transition and slamming home a transition alley-oop pass from Bijan Cortes.
That is the kind of Shocker basketball fans have been craving.
“People appreciate that stuff, I appreciate that stuff,” WSU head coach Paul Mills said. “That Quincy dunk happens off an effort play where we’re the first to the floor. That’s what needs to transpire. There’s a brand of basketball that we expect to play. Sometimes you may not have it from an offensive standpoint or you may screw some things up defensively, but you do have to fight. I didn’t think we had great fight the other day against Alcorn (State). I thought that (sequence) we were honestly fighting for the basketball and I’m glad it got rewarded in that manner. But that’s got to be way more common than it is an aberration.”
There’s nothing WSU fans dislike more than a Shocker team that is weak at rebounding, and WSU had been trending in the wrong direction in that regard. Mills publicly called out his team’s toughness following the ESPN Events Invitational, then was left astonished by his team allowing a winless Alcorn State team to retrieve 21 offensive rebounds in its first game back home.
That style of play was not going to fly — in Mills’ film room or by Shockers fans — and Saturday’s game was a step in the right direction by WSU restoring its reputation as a gritty rebounding team. ETSU entered as the 13th-best offensive rebounding team in the nation, but the Shockers held the Buccaneers without an offensive rebound for a 15-minute stretch and boarded out at a solid 74% rate on the defensive glass.
In fact, outside of a three-minute lapse when ETSU collected five offensive rebounds early in the game, WSU grabbed 82% of possible defensive rebounds for the other 37 minutes.
“The last two games, we felt a little bit embarrassed (by rebounding),” WSU guard Justin Hill said. “We came back and really focused on boxing out.”
No one embodied WSU’s new tenacity on the glass than Corey Washington, the 6-foot-5 forward who registered a career-high 13 rebounds — 11 of them coming at the defensive end.
“I just made a challenge to myself, knowing we haven’t been doing that good these past few games,” said Washington, who also scored 17 points. “It’s just reverting back to my old self. I feel like I’ve been a great rebounder, but since I’ve gotten here, it’s kind of dropped off a little bit. I wanted to get back to that.”
While WSU needed team-wide improvement in its toughness on the glass, Mills has specifically called out his guards for failing to box out properly in recent games. The perimeter players were too often failing to be physical enough to complete a box or whiffing on them altogether.
WSU was much improved in that regard on Saturday and Mills praised Cortes specifically for fighting more in the battles on the glass.
“This is a game that honors toughness,” Mills said. “We don’t expect you to win every fight, but we do expect you to fight every fight.”
Even ETSU head coach Brooks Savage could tell the difference from playing against the Shockers on Saturday to the team he watched on film preparing for the game.
“You could tell it was a big point of emphasis for them,” Savage said. “You could really see them try to block out and they got excited when they would get first-shot rebounds. They did a really good job on the glass. Obviously we were hoping we would get a few more, but they’re tough, they’re big, they’re physical and they’re old. The Shockers have a good team this year.”
Wichita State has the players to get the Roundhouse rocking again this season, but as Mills said, it will need a lot more sequences like the 38-second stretch of brilliance on Saturday to bring the fans back in droves.
“You could feel the energy in the room,” Washington said of the run. “As soon as we started making plays, that really shot up our confidence. We were on a roll.”
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This story was originally published December 8, 2024 at 7:02 AM.
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