Wichita State’s Brian Amuneke chasing confidence in first year with Shockers
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Amuneke struggled early at Wichita State but rebounded to hit 14 of his last 32 threes.
- Coach Mills pushed Amuneke to convert to a catch-and-shoot role, play team defense.
- Amuneke averages 3.0 points and 7.8 minutes in conference games, showing flashes.
For a shooter, confidence can feel like oxygen.
Invisible when it’s there, suffocating when it’s not. Each side of that confidence coin has presented itself for Brian Amuneke — the sophomore guard who arrived at Wichita State with a reputation as a perimeter weapon but has spent much of the winter fighting for rhythm, minutes and trust.
The flashes are still there, as the Shockers welcome Charlotte, tied atop the American Conference standings, to Koch Arena for a 6:30 p.m. Wednesday game. The consistency, however, has not been.
“It’s frustrating, which is normal,” Amuneke said of his slow shooting start to the season. “But I just kept moving forward, kept working. My teammates have trust in me. They know how I play, so it was easy to keep shooting.”
Amuneke is averaging 3.0 points across 22 appearances, a sharp statistical dip from his freshman season at Fresno State, when he averaged 7.7 points per game and shot 40.7% from beyond the arc. Over the final 12 games of Mountain West play last season, he looked every bit like a rising sniper, pouring in 13.1 points per game while hitting nearly 47% of his 3s. The projection was clear: instant spacing and scoring punch off the bench.
Instead, his role has been more volatile than expected at Wichita State.
He’s averaging just 7.8 minutes in nine conference games in the American, often deployed in short, three-to-four-minute bursts. That’s a difficult runway for any young guard, especially one wired to score, to settle into the flow of a game.
“Brian’s goal is to be a complete player, not just be one-dimensional,” WSU head coach Paul Mills said. “We have to make sure that when Brian is in the game, not only is he adding value, but he’s locked in on the defensive end of the game.”
The numbers tell a story of adjustment. After opening the season just 1 for 10 from deep in the first month, Amuneke has quietly corrected course, making 14 of his last 32 3-point attempts — a 43.8% clip. In American Conference play, he’s at 42.9% from long range, albeit on only 14 total attempts. His shot diet has also changed dramatically: He hasn’t attempted a 2-pointer since Jan. 15, with his last 10 field-goal attempts all coming from behind the arc.
That shift didn’t happen by accident.
Mills said the staff urged Amuneke to stop forcing drives into traffic after too many possessions ended in off-balance misses. He’s shooting just 31.8% on 2s this season, a number that underscored the need to recalibrate toward his strength as a catch-and-shoot threat.
“We’ve had to tell Brian, ‘Your job is to shoot the ball,’” Mills said. “This isn’t a challenge to see if you can go in there and finish. So just really encouraging him, ‘You need to be able to turn around and shoot the ball.’”
Development, in Mills’ system, isn’t measured only by makes and misses.
“We understand he has value making shots. We get that,” Mills said. “But we need him to share the ball. We need him to shoot the ball when he’s open. We need to defensively to (be physical). A lot of players operate within that 95% of the game, but there’s a tendency to just think about the 5% when the ball is in your hands. You have to operate in that 95%, so that’s the message.”
Mills has seen both the promise and the drift.
“There’s a lot of people that play basketball,” Mills said. “There’s very few of them that play winning basketball. We have to play winning basketball. I think Brian understands what winning basketball looks like. He has flashes, but when you’re around him every day, you realize sometimes he can be a space cadet and start floating. You kind of have to remind him about what’s happening.”
When Amuneke is decisive and aggressive from outside, the impact is obvious. His best example came in the Jan. 24 home win over Memphis when he buried 3 of 5 from deep and stretched the defense with zero hesitation. Those possessions — quick trigger, clean mechanics, no second-guessing — are the template the staff wants replicated.
Teammates haven’t wavered in their encouragement.
“He’s just got to keep shooting,” senior guard Mike Gray Jr. said. “That’s the good thing about him, though. He doesn’t ever get down about misses. You need someone like that because not everything is going to fall.”
Amuneke insists the internal belief hasn’t disappeared, even when the box scores might suggest otherwise.
“My teammates and my coaching staff, they just tell me to keep shooting,” Amuneke said. “So the confidence never really left. It was always there. I know that belief that my teammates have in me, so I just keep shooting it.”
Working through the early slump required patience.
His next opportunity comes Wednesday against the same Charlotte team that WSU blew an 18-point lead in a double-overtime road loss on Jan. 3, a result that looked damaging at the time but has aged better with Charlotte now 13-9 overall and 7-2 in the American, tied for first place. The Shockers (13-9, 5-4 American) are chasing a fourth straight home win.
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