Wichita State coach vows changes are coming as disconnect grows for Shocker basketball
Something isn’t adding up on the Wichita State men’s basketball team.
By head coach Paul Mills’ estimation, WSU checked all of the boxes he wanted in preparation for a road game at Tulsa. But during the 40 minutes that actually mattered on Sunday, the Shockers once again played with a lack of urgency and lack of attention to detail in what became an 84-77 loss to a team they were expected to handle.
This season was supposed to be different in Year 2 of the Mills regime. The coach retained a nucleus of key players, then added pieces from the transfer portal that impressed his peers enough to pick the Shockers to finish fourth in the American Athletic Conference — after finishing in a tie for last place last season.
But WSU finds itself in the same situation as a year ago, off to a 1-6 start in conference play and in last place in the conference standings with one of the most veteran rosters in college basketball. So what isn’t translating right now for the Shockers?
“That’s a good question,” Mills said. “Honestly, it’s not translating from head to heart.
“I honestly thought that we would come out ... our scouting report was good. I thought it was communicated. I thought they understood. I thought we practiced it. It just did not translate.”
One of the most troubling trends to emerge in WSU’s midseason swoon has been the team’s propensity for making opponents look like prime Splash Brothers from the Golden State Warriors. In its last 10 games against Division I competition, WSU has allowed opponents to shoot 41.9% beyond the arc with 10.6 made 3-pointers per game — numbers that would rank dead-last among the 364 teams in the country for season-long performance.
Some of that is out of the team’s control, chalked up to poor shooting luck, but WSU is hardly a sympathetic character with the porous way it defends the arc. Thanks to a variety of breakdowns from game to game, the Shockers surrender a constant barrage of open catch-and-shoot 3s, the exact type of jump shots defenses try to prevent. Coaches have pleaded with players to show urgency defending shooters on the catch, only for fifth- and sixth-year seniors to routinely be burned by their casual attitudes and late contests.
Mills finally reached his breaking point after watching the same players make the same mistakes to allow Tulsa, one of the worst 3-point shooting teams in the country, to connect on a season-high 13 3-pointers on 62% accuracy.
“From a coaching perspective, we need to put personnel out there that can better do what we need to get done defensively,” Mills said. “Because right now, unfortunately, it’s not getting done.”
With two days before Wednesday’s home date against North Texas, a team tied atop the conference standings, it remains to be seen just how different the Shockers will look when they take the floor for their next game.
But when asked if a potential youth movement — more playing time for inexperienced players like Joy Ighovodja, Yanis Bamba, Zion Pipkin and T.J. Williams — would be considered moving forward, Mills nodded his head.
“Every single one of us in that locker room needs to look in the mirror and figure out if we want to win or do we want to continue going down this road we’re going down,” WSU senior Xavier Bell said. “I would hope the other guys feel the same way because who knows what a couple months will look like from now. This is the last opportunity for a lot of us. Coach (Mills) told us the other day that the pen is in our hands and I 1000% believe that. We can write the end of our story. We get to write how this thing finishes. I would think everybody in that locker room wouldn’t want it to go how it’s going right now.”
Mills has said earlier this season that he’s never doubted the desire of WSU players to win, but he thought they were going about trying to win in the wrong way. The players seem to agree that the talent is in place for WSU to be a winning team, but for whatever reason, that hasn’t added up to victories so far in conference play.
The Shockers’ lack of attention to detail once again caught up with them on Sunday.
After allowing Tulsa to drill seven 3s in the first half, defending the 3-point arc was a major point of emphasis during halftime. Yet on the first play of the second half, WSU allowed Tulsa’s best shooter, Keaston Willis, to come off a screen and fire freely from the wing. Swish.
Not long after, WSU gave up three consecutive offensive rebounds that resulted in another open try for Willis from distance. Swish. Another halftime adjustment was made to take away the pick-and-pop to Tulsa big man Jared Garcia, only for WSU to botch that coverage as well and leave Garcia open for a career-high fifth 3-pointer. Swish.
In seven conference games, opponents have shot 43.4% beyond the arc against WSU. No other team in the 13-team league has given up better than 40% of 3s.
“We just have to have more urgency, man, from the start of the game to the finish,” Bell said. “It goes back to practice. We’ve got to have more urgency, more attention to detail.”
There’s still time for the Shockers to turn around their play by March, but their careless play in January has dug quite the hole for them to climb out of.
“There’s nobody coming in to help us,” Mills said. “It’s on the guys on the court in order to be able to get it done.”
This story was originally published January 27, 2025 at 9:18 AM.
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