The keys for Wichita State basketball in search of first road ranked win since 2018

A trip to Memphis means 40 minutes of dealing with high-intensity pressure is on the horizon for the Wichita State men’s basketball team.

No Shocker team has been able to record a win at the FedExForum against the Tigers in the Penny Hardaway era, as WSU is 0-6 in the last six years on the road against Memphis teams that almost always crank up the defensive pressure.

Paul Mills nearly ended the streak in his first year as head coach at WSU: Memphis required a game-winner at the buzzer to escape with a victory.

As the Shockers prepare to try again in Thursday’s 6 p.m. game at No. 24-ranked Memphis, the pathway to WSU’s first road win over a ranked opponent since 2018 is an obvious one to Mills.

“You’ve got to be able to handle their pressure,” the coach said. “They’re going to have a multitude of full-court presses and they’re going to come out and try to establish themselves pretty early. ‘Let’s see if you can handle this pressure.’ They’re a blood-in-the-water team. If they see blood, here they go. So you have to be mindful and you have to be patient about what’s actually occurring because what they try to do is speed you up.”

Memphis has the top-ranked defense in American Athletic Conference play with guards that hound the ball and elite rim protection from its bigs.

But one way to make overeager defenses pay is with well-timed cuts, something WSU has excelled at this season. The Shockers rank No. 8 nationally in scoring efficiency (1.44 points per possession) off cuts, per Synergy, and will have to be at their best on Thursday to have a chance.

An area where the Tigers (14-4, 4-1 AAC) have also proven vulnerable is on the glass, where they rank dead-last in conference play in defensive rebounding percentage.

Controlling the glass is another box that the Shockers (11-7, 1-4 AAC) almost certainly will have to check off in their upset bid. WSU has actually been a much improved rebounding team in conference play, ranking first in defensive rebounding percentage and third in offensive rebounding percentage. The Shockers out-rebounded East Carolina by 16 in their last game, including 20 offensive rebounds and limiting the Pirates well below their average (27%) in collecting their own misses.

“We have to be physical in order to give ourselves a chance,” Mills said. “We’ve got to do a better job of guarding the arc, but we do have to limit you to one shot and do a really phenomenal job at it. We can’t be average at it.”

This week kicks off the most difficult stretch on WSU’s conference schedule, as the Shockers play at Memphis on Thursday and at Tulsa on Sunday. In fact, four of the next five games come on the road with the lone home game against a title contender in North Texas.

WSU fumbled an opportunity to build momentum with two wins on its home court last week, as the home loss to ECU this past weekend has the team sitting in 12th place in the conference standings.

Trying to work through issues in a road game against a top-25 opponent is far from ideal, but Mills wants the Shockers to focus on fundamentals to turn around what has been a leaky defense. Most of the issues revolve around pick-and-roll coverage, which Mills said the team has changed recently and showed improvement — but far from the consistency required.

“There are some actions defensively that we have to get right,” Mills said. “We don’t have margin for error. We can’t be 50% right or even 80% right. You have to get certain actions right.”

Botching the basics has been at the root of many of WSU’s defensive issues, namely its 3-point defense. Opponents have torched the Shockers for 42% shooting beyond the arc in conference play and Memphis, which ranks No. 9 in the country in 3-point shooting, is fully capable of piling on with an array of elite distance shooters in Tyrese Hunter, Colby Rogers and P.J. Haggerty.

WSU is coming off a performance where it allowed one of the worst 3-point shooting teams in the country to go off for 11 makes beyond the arc at a 48% clip.

“A lot of that is just fundamentals,” Mills said. “Like you have to keep your hand above the basketball. Your hand can never be below the basketball. Having a stick hand up and having it above the ball is paramount to being a distraction.

“I thought with a veteran team that we wouldn’t have to rehash some of this, but you do. You’ve got to get back to fundamentals. I get it if the other team beats us, but we cannot beat ourselves because of these fundamental issues.”

Wichita State at No. 24 Memphis basketball preview

Records: WSU 11-7, 1-4 AAC; Memphis 14-4, 4-1 AAC

When: 6 p.m. Thursday

Where: FedExForum (19,000), Memphis, Tenn.

How to watch: ESPN2 (Kevin Brown with Jon Crispin)

Radio: KEYN, 103.7-FM (Mike Kennedy with Bob Hull)

Series history: Memphis leads 20-13 (13-3 in Memphis)

Betting line: No odds yet

KenPom says: Memphis 85, WSU 70

Projected starting lineups

Wichita State Shockers (11-7)

Coach: Paul Mills, second season, 26-26

Memphis Tigers (14-4)

Coach: Anfernee Hardaway, seventh season, 147-66

This story was originally published January 22, 2025 at 6:34 AM.

Taylor Eldridge

The Wichita Eagle

316-268-6270

Wichita State athletics beat reporter. Bringing you closer to the Shockers you love and inside the sports you love to watch.