How Shocker basketball exploited a new play time and time again to beat Charlotte
With a 5-day break in between games, Wichita State men’s basketball coach Paul Mills took full advantage to come up with a new play the Shockers used to help pull out a 66-58 win at Charlotte on Tuesday.
WSU dialed up the new play a total of eight times and scored six baskets, including eight points during a critical 14-2 run late in the second half to help seal the team’s first road win in American Athletic Conference play.
It was the kind of advantage a team can create with a layoff, Charlotte coach Aaron Fearne said after the game.
“They’ve had a week to prepare for the game and we played on Saturday,” Fearne said. “So those little things in a really tight league when so many of these games are being decided by single figures, that little bit of extra prep probably makes a difference.”
Here’s a breakdown of how WSU flipped the game with a new play call.
What play did WSU use to pull out the Charlotte win?
No one on WSU wanted to give up the exact name for the play, but the best way to describe the new play in X-and-O terms would be a “Loop Rip” series.
The first iteration of the play was initiated by Xavier Bell, the team’s leading scorer, circling around Quincy Ballard — the “Loop” part — to create confusion for the defense, then the shooting guard set a back screen — or “Rip” screen — on the center’s defender, which allowed Ballard to slip toward the basket for a high-quality look at the rim.
The second version of the play also featured Bell twirling around Ballard and screening the big man’s defender, except in this variation, Ballard popped to the perimeter to set a ball screen for the point guard and Bell exited to the opposite wing. It was essentially a dressed-up pick-and-roll play designed to clear out the help defense and put Charlotte’s defense in a bind.
“We just had to read what was happening based on what (Charlotte) was doing,” Mills said. “If the big is back, then run it into a ball screen. If the big is up, then hopefully we can get something at the rim for Q.”
How the Shockers kept exploiting Charlotte’s defense
So how was WSU able to find Ballard so many times for easy baskets? By confusing Charlotte with window dressing.
In the end, WSU found success by essentially clearing out one side of the floor to run a pick and roll between Cortes and Ballard.
If WSU’s other three players simply stood like statues on the other side of the floor, the defense would have had a better chance of identifying WSU’s intention and sending the proper help to take away Ballard on the roll. So WSU executed simple, yet effective cuts that were never intended to be part of the play — hence the window dressing — but succeeded in occupying the defense’s attention.
That’s why every time WSU ran the play, Corey Washington began on the side of the court WSU wanted to clear out and then cut across to the other wing. And after Bell finished his loop around Ballard, he exited to opposite wing.
By clearing out the obvious help, WSU put Charlotte’s defense in a bind to make difficult split-second choices against a play it had not scouted before. This was clear midway through the second half when WSU dialed up the play-call and Bell’s defender initially decided to stick with Ballard on the roll — until he saw Bell popping to the perimeter on the other side of the court, which pulled him in that direction and left Ballard wide open for Cortes to feed him for an alley-oop dunk.
“We practiced that play the last two or three days,” said Ballard, the biggest beneficiary of the new play. “Me and Bijan have real good chemistry, so we knew if I dived hard to the rim then the defense would mess something up.”
What WSU’s point guard looked for to make the play happen
While WSU was able to cleverly clear a path for Ballard to the rim, the final result wouldn’t be possible without the team’s point guard.
The Achilles’ heel of Bijan Cortes has always been turnovers, usually by trying to do too much, but the senior delivered one of his better decision-making games at Charlotte to ensure WSU fully capitalized on its new play.
In order to make the play work, Cortes had to handle the heat from Charlotte’s hard-hedging defense — meaning its big man flashed high and hard at Cortes any time he received a ball screen.
“You’ve got to try to get around the big because once you can get around the big on a blitz, now you’re in an advantage,” Mills said. “When (Charlotte) blitzed, they weren’t blitzing to trap, they were blitzing to just stall. So you need to be able to pull back on that dribble with your left hand and I thought (Cortes) did a good job of that. He was able to hit the gas and play in space and he was pretty accurate with his throws.”
Cortes expertly pulled that off in a crucial late possession when Rosado, Charlotte’s center, came screaming up the floor to momentarily trap Cortes near the sideline. Instead of panicking, Cortes kept his composure, waited for Rosado to back track, then went into attack mode. By dribbling around Charlotte’s hedge, Cortes collapsed the defense and once again put Charlotte’s help defender in a bind on covering Ballard on the roll or retreating back to the corner to cover his original mark.
“When they blitzed, I just had to read how far the big man comes out,” Cortes said. “Because I know he still has to run back to his man, so then I just look and see how the defense rotates and then make the read.”
Indecision crippled Charlotte, as its low defender was caught in the middle and Cortes made the decisive read to loft an alley-oop pass that Ballard dunked on the head of the defenseless defender.
“It always gives us momentum,” Ballard said of his alley-oop dunks. “It brings the energy to us on the floor and to our bench. And it kind of messes up the other team’s confidence when we do plays like that.”
WSU ran the same series on back-to-back possessions in the final five minutes and scored both times with each iteration called. After Ballard slammed the alley-oop pass after setting the screen, the next time down, he slipped to the basket off Bell’s screen and scored through to contact to cap a 14-2 run that WSU used to build an 11-point cushion and secure the victory.
It must have been an agonizing film watch for Charlotte, as guard Nik Graves correctly points out where the help defense needs to be both times — only to be left exasperated when the 49ers failed to make the rotation in time and gave up easy baskets to Ballard both times.
“Cortes made some excellent reads on the high ball screen there and found Ballard on the rim,” Fearne said. “We really struggled with our coverage. It was not really well done until the last time they ran it and then we covered it really well.”
But by then, the damage had already been inflicted.
This story was originally published February 6, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
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