Paul Mills has questions about Wichita State. Why Saturday will bring answers
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- Paul Mills will assess a retooled Wichita State roster in Saturday's open scrimmage.
- Games vs. Drake and Santa Clara will supply key data for 2025-26 roster decisions.
- Mills says these next two weeks carry heavy weight in evaluating team strengths and needs.
For the past four months, Wichita State men’s basketball head coach Paul Mills has seen his players battle each other every day in practice.
He’s learned a lot from those interactions, but the truth is, he won’t know much until 1 p.m. Saturday at Koch Arena.
That’s when the Shockers, featuring 12 newcomers and a completely retooled roster, will take the floor for the first time against outside competition in an open scrimmage against Drake.
“We practiced it, now we just need to see it against live competition against somebody else,” Mills said. “I don’t know if we’re bad at defensive rebounding or are we good at offensive rebounding? So another opponent allows you to get some answers to some questions.”
For Mills, those answers carry significant weight — much more than what he’s seen in the friendly confines of practice.
The Shockers will face Drake on Saturday, then Santa Clara next weekend in Denver, giving Mills and his staff two invaluable data points to evaluate where this brand-new roster stands heading into the 2025-26 season.
“This is like taking a final worth 75% of your grade,” Mills said. “These next two weeks are heavily, heavily weighted.”
A different kind of show for WSU fans
Mills cautioned fans not to expect a traditional basketball game Saturday.
Instead, a good chunk of the afternoon will be spent on situational segments — particularly the O-D-O (Offense-Defense-Offense) drill that simulates the transition between possessions in a game.
“That can get pretty boring for the casual basketball observer,” Mills said. “It is crack for coaches. It is absolutely what you enjoy seeing.”
Coaches will rotate players freely, stop action to teach and even blow the whistle in the middle of possessions to correct mistakes. In addition to those drills, fans will also see a pair of 20-minute scrimmages and a shorter 10-minute period with a running clock.
While the action might not resemble a polished exhibition, Saturday marks the first time fans will get an early look at the Shockers under the NCAA’s new rule allowing what used to be “secret” scrimmages to be open to the public.
WSU has embraced the opportunity, as all proceeds from the $20 tickets will go toward local charities — Cheese Johnson’s UJUMP Junior Mentoring Program and the Wichita Children’s Home. Admission is free for WSU students, faculty and anyone 18 and under with general admission seating and free parking.
“I’m excited about the public being able to see this team,” Mills said. “I think we’ve got dudes and I think people will be able to see that we do have a high caliber of talent on this squad.”
Mixing and matching the Shockers
One of the biggest benefits of Saturday’s scrimmage will be the opportunity for Mills to experiment with lineups. With so many new faces, the staff has spent the preseason tinkering with combinations and different looks that have piqued Mills’ curiosity.
Mills said he feels like his options at power forward (Jaret Valencia and Dillon Battie) and at center (Will Berg and Emmanuel Okorafor) can sub in and out without much of a drop-off. The real intrigue comes at what he does with the other three players on the court.
If WSU wants a more defensive-oriented lineup, it could send out Karon Boyd and T.J. Williams, whom Mills said play a “bully ball” style on offense and have been menaces on defense in practice. For spacing and shooting, Mills likes the potential of Mike Gray Jr., Kenyon Giles and Brian Amuneke. For maximum offensive firepower, Giles (5-foot-10) and Dre Kindell (5-foot-11) form a tantalizing, though undersized, duo.
While Mills has prepared scripted lineups for Saturday, he knows live competition rarely follows the plan.
“I’ve been doing this now for a while and you walk into this thing really scripted and all of a sudden, the score is 11-2 and you’re on the wrong side and you just crumble up that script,” he said. “I’m going to do the best I can to stick to the script.”
Before Saturday, every player on WSU’s roster has already sat down for an individual meeting with the coaching staff to discuss their role for the season. Mills has made it clear: Saturday isn’t the time to freelance.
He wants to see players stick to their strengths, the things the staff has identified as their best contributions to winning basketball. How well they do that against Drake and Santa Clara will go a long way toward determining rotations heading into November.
In that sense, Saturday is both a test and an opportunity — the first real chance for this new-look Shockers team to show what it can become.
This story was originally published October 10, 2025 at 9:07 AM.
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