Wichita State’s title dreams took a hit. Why there’s still plenty at stake
The look on Paul Mills’ face told the story before he even answered the question.
After Wichita State’s 66-58 loss to South Florida at Koch Arena on Wednesday, the coach looked drained. The defeat itself was damaging, a squandered home opportunity in a tightly packed conference race, but the real gut punch arrived after the game when he learned the scores from around the American Conference.
Tulsa and Temple had both lost, which meant a win would have vaulted WSU to first place in the conference standings.
Instead, the Shockers walked away with regret — but still plenty to play for in the final six games of the regular season, none more important than Saturday’s 6 p.m. showdown with Tulsa at Koch Arena.
“Absolutely,” Mills said when asked if it was a missed opportunity. “Especially just being told what happened through the rest of the conference. But we’re still in the thick of things in order to try to ensure you’re a top-two seed. We’ve got a lot of things to fix before Saturday night.”
The conference race is no longer just about the regular-season crown. It’s about seeding.
The league’s new ladder format dramatically raises the stakes. The bottom three teams in the standings won’t even qualify for the conference tournament in Birmingham. Teams seeded seventh through 10th must win five games in five days to claim the automatic NCAA Tournament bid, while the No. 5 and 6 seeds must win four in four days. A top-four seed earns a bye straight to the quarterfinals, while the top two seeds jump directly to the semifinals and need only two wins to reach March Madness.
At 7-5 in conference play, WSU is in a logjam. South Florida (9-3) is alone in first, while Tulsa (8-4), Temple (7-4) and Charlotte (7-4) one game back in the loss column. The Shockers sit in the next cluster with Memphis and UAB at 7-5, then Florida Atlantic (6-6) and Tulane (5-6) still within striking distance behind them.
The margin between second and seventh is just one game, thing enough where one week can flip everything. That math is why Saturday’s showdown against Tulsa looms so large.
Predictive models view it as essentially a coin-flip game with WSU a slight underdog. A win would hand Tulsa a fifth league loss and give the Shockers a valuable tiebreaker chip by salvaging a season split. A loss would push WSU further into the crowded middle tier and increase pressure the rest of the way.
T-Rank currently gives WSU a 68% chance of landing a top-four seed, behind Memphis (75%) and ahead of Charlotte (43%), Temple (41%), UAB (41%) and Florida Atlantic (23%). The Shockers are currently well-positioned in potential multi-team tiebreakers. They are already 1-0 against Memphis and UAB, split with Charlotte and still have Temple at home with a return trip to Memphis remaining. In mini-conference tiebreaker scenarios, those head-to-head results could swing seeding in WSU’s favor.
T-Rank data shows the Shockers have played the second-hardest conference schedule so far, meaning their path has been tougher than most of their competitors. The good news is that the rest of the way, WSU is rated as the 10th-hardest schedule.
That’s because two of the final three road games come against the league’s bottom two teams, East Carolina and UTSA. The heavier lifts come at home against teams like Tulsa, Temple and Florida Atlantic, meaning the path to a strong finish likely runs through Koch Arena.
Models suggest 11 conference wins might be the golden ticket for the Shockers to secure a top-four finish, but 12 wins would be considered more safe. For WSU, that translates to a 4-2 finish to reach 11 wins or a 5-1 finish to reach 12.
Players insist the emotional turnaround after their worst offensive showing of the season must be immediate with Tulsa’s high-octane offense coming to the Roundhouse. The Golden Hurricane easily brushed the Shockers to the side in a 93-83 win just two weeks ago in Tulsa.
“It’s a missed opportunity, but we’ve got to have short-term memory,” WSU star Kenyon Giles said. “We’ve got to move on. We’ve got a really good Tulsa team, so we’ve got to throw that in the past. If you want to think about it, then use it as fuel for Tulsa.”
The Shockers may have lost the fast track on first place on Wednesday, but they did not lose control of their postseason path.
With six games left, favorable tiebreaker positioning and multiple head-to-head swings still available, WSU’s ceiling to a high seed remains intact. But the response must start immediately.
“You can’t let one loss turn into two,” WSU guard Mike Gray Jr. said of the team’s mindset.
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