Video breakdown of how Shockers picked apart Tulane’s zone in latest basketball win
The box score effectively told the story from the first 20 minutes of Sunday’s men’s basketball game between Wichita State and Tulane.
The Shockers shot just 28.6% (2 of 14) on 3-pointers, but made 55.6% (10 of 18) of their 2-pointers. The message at halftime was clear: Stop settling for shots beyond the arc against the matchup zone.
“We had a lot of open shots from 3, but we knew we had to cut down on the attempts and turn some of those into drives,” WSU senior Harlond Beverly said.
After Tulane’s shape-shifting zone bottled WSU up in the first half, the Shockers erupted for one of their best offensive halves of basketball on the season with 49 second-half points on 67% shooting from the field, 57% on 3-pointers and 81% on free throws. They generated a whopping 1.49 points per possession.
It was just the latest example of Wichita State’s growing ability as a problem-solving team, as it rolled off its sixth straight win in American Athletic Conference play with a 78-67 victory over the Green Wave.
“We shifted in how we were approaching things,” WSU head coach Paul Mills said. “Our guys did a good job of understanding who was taking the ball screens (in the zone defense) and what to do when the (center) would step up. So some of it was just the acumen of our players.”
What Mills quickly noticed in Sunday’s game was how ineffective ball screens were when WSU used a forward, like Corey Washington or Ronnie DeGray III, as the screener. Tulane’s matchup zone had no issue switching off against like-sized players at the top.
But when Mills deployed 6-foot-11 center Quincy Ballard, an elite vertical threat, as the screener, Tulane’s defense reacted very differently. By swinging the ball when Ballard rolled hard to the basket, WSU managed to catch Tulane’s zone slow to react three different times for easy scores inside for the big man. And when the Green Wave did take Ballard away, his presence collapsed the zone and led to open driving lanes that teammates capitalized on several times.
“You definitely have to have ball movement and player movement,” Washington said. “A lot of people just think you sit up at the top and swing the ball. But you’ve got to have good player movement as well.”
A key halftime adjustment made by Mills was the decision to begin running double drags — two screens at the top of the key — instead of a single screen.
Because the top of Tulane’s zone featured just two defenders, the second screener freed up WSU’s ball handler to turn the corner. That was paired with Ballard rolling hard to the rim and then the back-side player shaking up the perimeter to put the maximum amount of stress on the defense.
WSU ran the play its first two possessions, as Ballard’s roll crashed the defense and opened up Xavier Bell for back-to-back 3s. The next time Tulane was late to tag Ballard and Cortes found him for a reverse alley-oop dunk. And shortly after that, Bell turned the corner after the second screen and kissed the ball high off the glass with his left hand.
The Shockers scored three different ways out of the same double-drag play, which they used to spark the onslaught out of halftime that ultimately won them the game.
“When you have anybody making 3s like that and they’re in a zone, they’re going to have to start cheating out a little bit more,” Bell said. “That’s going to open up a lot more driving lanes for everyone and dominoes are going to start falling in other areas where we’re going to be able to attack the defense.”
After feeling like WSU was a bit too stagnant in the first half, Mills was particularly pleased with one of WSU’s early possessions coming out of halftime.
The possession involved five passes in six seconds, as WSU’s players continued making snappy decisions to keep the ball moving and defense rotating. More importantly, WSU created an advantage and maintained the advantage with a series of swing passes, pump fakes and drives. After putting Tulane in rotation, the possession ended with Bell executing a pump fake and then finishing a left-handed floater in the lane.
“You’ve got to make 0.5 (second) decisions,” Mills said. “I thought there was way more of a 0.5 approach than there was in the first half. We were way too stagnant and I didn’t think we put enough pressure on the rim. I think we were just way more mindful about the discipline that’s required.”
During WSU’s winning streak, the team’s 3-point rate was hovering at a minuscule 24%. In the first half against Tulane, 44% of the team’s shots were coming beyond the arc.
In the second half, the Shockers showed that when they are selective with their shots from deep, they can be effective. WSU made 4 of 7 from distance after halftime, as looks were more open because they made 12 of 17 shots inside the arc and 13 of 16 shots from the foul line.
That has been the winning formula that WSU will have to replicate in Thursday’s showdown against second-place UAB at Koch Arena in order to extend its winning streak once again.
“We’re just playing together and trying to play the right way,” Bell said. “We try to play hard-nosed defense and rebound the ball and trust that everything else will take care of itself. These last couple of games we’ve been leaning on each other and trusting each other and we’ve come out on the right side.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2025 at 5:46 AM.
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