Who won the Wichita State-Drake basketball scrimmage? What the stats say
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Coaches prioritized experimentation over score; scrimmage served as evaluation.
- Drake led 69-62 combined, but WSU won controlled segment and validated depth.
- Mills says WSU’s top eight are impressing; bench faced adversity and stayed engaged.
In college basketball fandom, there’s rarely much room for nuance when it comes to winning or losing.
During the regular season, results are black and white. But in the preseason, especially in a scrimmage like the one the Wichita State and Drake men’s basketball teams played Saturday at Koch Arena, deciding who won is a little more complicated.
Neither Paul Mills nor Eric Henderson treated the nearly three-hour affair as a real game. Fans might be curious about the final score, but both coaches were more interested in experimenting with lineups than chasing points.
The format only added to the uncertainty. The teams played two 20-minute scrimmages back-to-back, but the score reset after the first. Each side approached the sessions differently — Drake used its starters throughout the first, while WSU experimented with bench lineups and fell 39-24. When the Shockers countered with their regular rotation in the second, they handled Drake’s reserves 38-30.
On paper, Drake held the edge, 69-62, though WSU dominated the controlled offense-defense-offense segment, 31-20, when both teams mixed lineups evenly. In truth, the result mattered little to either coach. Saturday, they agreed, was more about learning than winning.
“I wouldn’t read too much into it,” Drake coach Eric Henderson said. “Both teams had moments where they were pretty good and we both learned a lot about our teams.”
After controlling the offense-defense-offense segment, Mills chose to tinker once the full scrimmage began, while Drake kept its starters in. The Bulldogs led 13-9 when WSU started to turn to its bench, with sophomores Brian Amuneke and Dillon Battie, reserve Joy Ighovodja and freshman Noah Hill logging most of the remaining minutes. What had been a close game quickly ballooned into a 17-point deficit.
Mills admitted afterward he regretted not stepping in sooner, though he believed the experience could be valuable for his young players.
“I was going to let those young players go through it,” Mills said. “We probably should have bailed them out a little bit sooner, but they need to go through that sometimes to understand the urgency at which things need to get done.”
Drake point guard Jalen Quinn, a Loyola-Chicago transfer, was easily the best player on the floor before twisting his ankle early in the second scrimmage. In just 22 total minutes with Quinn on the floor, the Bulldogs outscored WSU by 19 points, as he finished with a team-high 19 points on 6-of-7 shooting, plus four rebounds, four assists and two steals.
Not only was the play on the court encouraging for Drake with a first-year head coach, but the star point guard Owen Larson, who followed Henderson from South Dakota State, participated in warm-ups without a knee brace eight months after tearing his ACL. Larson did not participate in any of the practice on Saturday, but he appears to be trending in the right direction to return to the court soon for the Bulldogs and add even more firepower to their backcourt.
Although WSU pulled away to win the second scrimmage, Drake still led 21-17 when its starting backcourt of Quinn and Jaehshon Thomas (17 points) checked out for good. Once the Bulldogs turned to their bench, WSU guard Kenyon Giles took over.
Just days after earning preseason first-team all-conference honors in the American, Giles showed why. He scored 16 of his team-high 22 points in the final 12 minutes of the second scrimmage, finishing 6 of 14 from beyond the arc.
No other Shocker scored in double figures, though 7-foot-2 center Will Berg added eight points and nine rebounds.
One clear bright spot for WSU was its work on the glass. The Shockers dominated the rebounding battle, 49-28, including 21 offensive boards — nearly half of all available. In the first scrimmage alone, WSU grabbed every defensive rebound, denying Drake a single second chance. Then again, the Bulldogs didn’t need them, shooting 48% from the field with just two turnovers.
“They’re a lot to handle,” Henderson said. “They’ve got great size and they’ve got guys that can really chase (rebounds). They really took the fight to us and I was a little disappointed in that on our end, but you’ve got to give credit to where credit is due.”
Mills, however, wasn’t nearly as impressed with his team’s rebounding edge.
“I didn’t think we were great,” Mills said bluntly when asked about his team’s physicality.
Another gripe was the lack of ball movement, as WSU generated only seven assists on 24 made buckets in the two scrimmages.
“You’ve got to move the ball a little bit better than that,” Mills said. “I thought the ball stuck some, but to be honest with you, that’s what you expect after 13 (full) practices.”
The loudest cheers of the day came early when WSU’s backcourt duo of Giles and Mike Gray Jr. took turns catching fire during the controlled drill segment. Gray drilled 6 of 7 triples, while Giles added two more, combining for 26 of WSU’s 31 points in the offense-defense-offense session.
“They can be a difference-maker for them,” Henderson said of the sharpshooting duo. “Their ability to use ball screens and then Paul runs such good stuff, to be able to find those guys shots is huge for them. They are serious weapons.”
Both guards showed they could score off movement and create late in the shot clock, something WSU lacked at times last season. Gray delivered the shot of the day, hitting a contested 3-pointer at the buzzer after already sinking five from deep to seal the drill win.
“My teammates were finding me,” Gray said. “They know in practice that I can knock those shots down, and then me hitting those shots opens everything up for everyone else. Getting going early helps the team a lot.”
“I love that, because we have the same logo on,” Giles said. “It’s always lovely. I know late clock, we’ve got a guy (in Gray). That’s a separator in games, that late shot clock. The play isn’t always going to work, so I love that we’ve got two guys.”
WSU will return to action with another scrimmage in exactly one week, as the Shockers will travel to Denver to face Santa Clara next Saturday.
This story was originally published October 12, 2025 at 6:02 AM.
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