How Wichita State basketball ‘leveled up’ to close out UNI win in OT
For the first month of the season, Wichita State had lived in the narrow space between almost and enough.
Four losses away from home, all to top-100 opponents, each punctuated by the same ache: The Shockers could get close, could fight back, but they could not finish.
This past Saturday night inside the old proving ground of the McLeod Center, that storyline finally snapped. The Shockers didn’t just survive Northern Iowa, they excelled in the very moments that had previously tormented them in a 74-69 overtime victory.
“That’s a good win,” WSU head coach Paul Mills said. “You need to be able to do the things necessary to win games like that. Whether we won or lost this game, I thought we showed some real grit and some fight to us that wasn’t necessarily always there in the previous (losses). I was really proud of the way we leveled up.”
The win pushed WSU to 6-4 this season and handed UNI (7-2) its first home loss. But more than that, it gave WSU something it had not yet earned this season: a victory away from home.
Up until that point, the Shockers had fallen into an all-too-familiar script: play well enough to build a lead, wobble in the middle stretches, watch the opponent seize control, then mount a furious rally.
And then, whether it was a rushed shot, missed defensive rotation or hurried decision, WSU would fail to make the one play it needed. The losses stacked up in eerily similar fashion.
That’s why the game at UNI could have so easily turned into another haunting chapter. For 25 minutes, WSU controlled the game and built a 12-point cushion. And just like those previous losses, WSU’s offensive rhythm evaporated. And just like those previous losses, UNI capitalized to open up a 56-50 lead inside the final five minutes of regulation.
“We’ve been in that situation before,” senior guard Mike Gray Jr. said. “We were tested. We know we came up short in those four games, but we knew what we did wrong and what we had to do differently.”
Mills admitted afterward that WSU had fallen into a familiar trap: leaning too heavily on Kenyon Giles, who has often carried the offense. The numbers backed up his concern — WSU was outscored by eight with Giles on the floor, a rarity this season.
In a testament to WSU’s growth, the team figured out in real time that it didn’t need to funnel every possession to Giles. That’s when redshirt freshman T.J. Williams stepped up and began to assert himself down the stretch to give WSU a different avenue for success.
When WSU’s offense bogged down, Williams became the engine. He scored 11 of his career-high 18 points in the final seven minutes of the game, including nine in overtime.
“After the game, it was pretty obvious,” Mills said. “There’s a guy you were watching grow up right before our eyes.”
But moment illustrated WSU’s growth more sharply than the final 20 seconds of regulation.
Down two, WSU put the ball in Gray’s hands. In the Saint Mary’s loss just a week earlier in the Bahamas, Gray had forced a step-back 3 when Mills was hoping he would seek out a paint touch. This time, Gray didn’t settle for the jumper. He put his head down, drove, absorbed contact and earned free throws with 10.8 seconds left. He made both.
“I just put myself back like I was in Koch Arena,” Gray said. “And I had to knock down free throws so we don’t have to run at the end of practice.”
Then came the possession that saved regulation: Karon Boyd stayed chest-to-chest with UNI guard Trey Campbell on a drive and forced a tough miss at the buzzer to send the game to overtime.
The extra five minutes showed even more resilience from WSU.
Campbell drilled back-to-back 3s to put UNI up 66-61, the exact kind of punch that had buried WSU in past games.
Instead, Williams scored. Then Mills adjusted the defense, ordering Emmanuel Okorafor to blitz Campbell in ball screens. The change forced UNI’s star guard to retreat and try to loft a pass over outstretched hands that became a turnover. And from that pressure came the possession that steadied everything: Giles drove, attracted a crowd and fired a dump-off pass to Williams slicing down the baseline for a three-point play that cut it to 68-66.
When UNI split more free throws, Williams scored again. And after another defensive stand, Will Berg crashed through for a go-ahead putback with 25 seconds remaining.
And when UNI made one final push at the rim, Williams, just as Boyd had done earlier, stood his ground. He forced the miss, secured the rebound and buried two free throws to seal the most important win of WSU’s young season.
For the first time away from home, WSU’s late-game execution looked like a team that understood that winning is in the details.
“This was definitely a stepping stone for us in the right direction,” Williams said. “We had to show that we could win outside of Charles Koch. So this is definitely going to give everyone confidence.”
This story was originally published December 8, 2025 at 4:03 PM.
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