AfterShocks shake off rust, lock down No Excuses for opening TBT win
The crowd wasn’t as loud, the play wasn’t as crisp and the rust was easy to spot, but July basketball in the Roundhouse still meant something.
The AfterShocks opened their sixth run in The Basketball Tournament with a grinding 74-51 win over No Excuses on Friday night, overcoming a sluggish start to keep their perfect first-round record intact in front of a smaller, but still loyal, Wichita State fanbase.
The 23-point victory was the second-largest in team history, but more important than the margin was the opportunity. With less than a week together before tipoff, this year’s roster needed real game reps to start building chemistry before Sunday’s second-round test against Challenge ALS, a 75-73 winner over Austin’s Own. Tipoff is set for 8 p.m. with a national broadcast on FS1.
“We’ve only been together for four days,” AfterShocks head coach Zach Bush said. “A big focus was just letting them play and finding a rhythm with each other and finding chemistry.”
It showed early. The AfterShocks didn’t take their first lead until nearly six minutes in and the flow was off for most of the first half. But balanced carried them. Rashard Kelly led with a double-double (11 points, 10 rebounds), while Markis McDuffie chipped in 10 points and Conner Frankamp added eight points, five boards and four assists.
“We’ve got legitimately 10 guys who can go in and impact the game at a really high level,” Bush said. “The challenge with that is trying to get them enough minutes where they can be productive and get in the flow of the game. But it just felt like wave after wave of guys who can make a play.”
Frankamp, a returning core player, agreed the opener was less about style and more about settling in.
“It’s important to get that first one,” he said. “We all have some nerves coming into the first game of a new year, but overall, I thought we played pretty well. There are some things we can definitely work on, but for the first game, it wasn’t a bad effort.”
Just like in their deep TBT runs from 2021 to 2023, it was the defense that anchored Friday’s win. The AfterShocks forced 51 missed shots and held No Excuses, a team filled with Houston pro-am talent, to just 30.1% shooting and 0.72 points per possession. The 51 points allowed marked the fewest ever by the AfterShocks in a TBT game.
There’s precedent for what that means. In each of the three TBT regionals where the AfterShocks held their first opponent under 55 points, they went on to win the regional title. In the two openers where they gave up 70-plus, they were knocked out in the second round.
“I’m actually surprised by how good the defensive intensity was considering this was our first real organized game coming from overseas,” McDuffie said. “If we can make a few more shots and still defend like that, I think we’ve got a high ceiling.”
But for all the defensive success, one glaring issue stood out: rebounding. The AfterShocks surrendered 20 offensive boards and corralled just 63% of No Excuses’ misses, leading to multiple groans from the home crowd when potential stops turned into second-chance points.
Asked what would’ve happened during their WSU days if they’d allowed 20 offensive rebounds to an overmatched opponent, the players laughed.
“Oh man, we would’ve been in practice working for hours,” McDuffie said with a grin.
While veterans like Frankamp, McDuffie, Kelly and Trey Wade were back in familiar surroundings, Friday’s atmosphere hit different for newcomers like Marcus Santos-Silva, who once played against Wichita State in 2019 as a starter for VCU. Friday marked his first time experiencing the Roundhouse crowd on his side.
“Man, that crowd (back in 2019) felt like it was on top of us,” Santos-Silva said. “It was so crazy. Everyone knows the history of Wichita State and what they’ve done. So to come here and experience that love from the home side was crazy. A lot of the guys were telling me that even more fans are going to come out for the next game. So I’m excited to see it.”
The AfterShocks have been around long enough to know their first opponent is usually not capable of pushing them. They recognize how quickly things ramp up.
With Friday’s news that Wichita sold more tickets than Kansas City, it means the AfterShocks could host a quarterfinals game once again.
But first, they’ve got to get there.
Up next is Challenge ALS, a battle-tested team with legit weapons. The AfterShocks can’t afford to leave the door open the way they did Friday.
“We know not every team is going to shoot like that,” McDuffie said. “We understand it’s going to get harder and harder. It’s like easy, medium, then hard. This was the game where we can mess up a little and make mistakes. But next game, we’ve got to be on point because it can be over.”
This story was originally published July 19, 2025 at 6:01 AM.
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