Shocker fans help Wichita State basketball score ‘a community win’ over Tulsa
With every roar after a defensive stop and every eruption following a Wichita State bucket, the belief inside Koch Arena swelled.
In front of a season-best crowd of 7,569 on Saturday night, the Shockers could feel the energy coursing through the building. In the midst of pandemonium, a quiet certainty grew amongst the team: If they could just keep it close down the stretch, there was no way — not with a crowd like this — the Shockers were going to lose on their home floor.
When Kenyon Giles toed the foul line with less than three minutes to go and a chance to put WSU ahead, he found himself thinking the same three words so many Shockers before him have carried into winning time: This is ours.
Moments later, the senior guard buried both free throws, Koch Arena detonated and Wichita State seized control of a game it had spent practically the whole night chasing, finishing off an 81-77 win over Tulsa in a pivotal American Conference showdown.
“This was a team win, but more importantly, I thought this was a community win,” WSU head coach Paul Mills said. “I thought they put us over the top.”
The comeback win lifted WSU to 16-10 overall and 8-5 in the American, keeping the Shockers firmly in the hunt for a top-two seed and the triple-bye that comes with it in the conference tournament. Just as importantly, it prevented Tulsa from securing a season sweep and added another valuable tiebreaker chip for a team now 4-2 against the teams bunched within one game of each other near the top of the standings.
But the numbers alone didn’t capture the mood inside the Roundhouse, which had the second-largest crowd of the Mills era, only behind last season’s Kansas State game. Unlike that one, which featured a healthy contingent of away fans, Saturday night was reserved for almost all Shocker fans, making for what was likely the best atmosphere inside Koch Arena since Mills took over.
“I’m sitting there thinking with 7,600 in here, we can still fit 3,000 more in here,” Mills said.
Tulsa coach Eric Konkol agreed that the setting mattered.
“I think the fans have a big impact on the game,” Konkol said. “You could tell this was a rivalry-type game and the fans were invested. I certainly thought they played a factor.”
WSU needed every bit of that push because nothing about the game came easily.
Just three days earlier, the Shockers had been “punked,” as Mills put it, in a home loss to South Florida. That forced a hard look in the film room. The message entering Saturday centered less on tactics and more toughness, especially against a team that had also decidedly won the physicality battle over the Shockers in the first meeting.
“You have to have the resolve to do the next right thing,” Mills said. “We’re here to do the tough things. And tough means, ‘Can I do the right thing when it’s hard to do the right thing?’ Anybody can do the right thing when it’s easy. Can you do it when it’s hard? I thought our guys played tough, like, ‘Let me attack the next right thing.’”
For long stretches, Giles was the answer when the right thing needed doing.
The 5-foot-10 senior poured in 31 points on 13-of-27 shooting, turning broken possessions into highlights and tight windows into scoring angles. He twisted through traffic for layups, feathered in floaters and launched his signature leaning jumpers that look off-balance to everyone except him. There’s a showman’s rhythm to his game and the crowd followed every dribble like a cue.
“Man, it was lovely,” Giles said of the crowd. “Crowd going crazy from the jump. When the crowd got into it, I feel like it helped our play, so I really appreciate the fans coming out today.”
Still, even with his shot-making, WSU had to keep climbing out of holes and finding a way to do the next right thing following mistakes.
After falling behind by nine in the second half, the Shockers surged back to within one, 66-65, when Mike Gray Jr. drew a charge on Tulsa star Tylen Riley, sending a jolt through the arena. With the crowd ready to erupt, WSU was whistled for a five-second inbounds violation and then gave up two straight scores to Tulsa — a gut punch sequence that could have cracked a less connected group.
Instead, WSU steadied. Three straight defensive stops followed. Dillon Battie knifed in for a tying basket on a cut with 5:30 left. WSU was primed to take the lead on an offensive rebound by Karon Boyd, but his pass back out was intercepted and converted into points at the other end by Tulsa. Giles answered with a soft teardrop in the paint, but Riley buried a 3-pointer to stake Tulsa to a 75-72 lead entering the final four minutes.
In another test of nerve, WSU’s response was definitive.
The Shockers locked in defensively, stringing together stops while the crowd noise continued to climb with each one. When Giles sank the go-ahead free throws with 2:42 remaining, the sound inside Koch Arena turned from loud to overwhelming. Mills said afterward that communication on the floor was limited due to the crowd noise.
WSU center Will Berg said that plays to WSU’s benefit on the defensive end.
“They’re a big part of that momentum swing,” Berg said. “They give us that extra kick and it helps us defensively because most of the time (opponents) don’t even know what they’re running because the crowd is so into it. It’s hard to be tired when the whole arena is rocking for you.”
WSU’s defense held Tulsa to one field goal over the final four minutes and produced stops on seven of the Golden Hurricane’s last eight possessions.
The style was exactly what WSU fans love: gritty, physical, urgent. Berg diving on the floor. Emmanuel Okorafor rising for blocks. Boyd powering through contact. Gray sacrificing his body for charges. T.J. Williams flying in for put-backs. And then, of course, Giles provided the flair by becoming just the fourth Shocker since the turn of the century to have multiple 30-point games in the same season, joining Jason Perez (1999-00), Joe Ragland (2011-12) and Markis McDuffie (2018-19).
With two home games remaining and WSU in the thick of the conference race, Mills was asked again about attendance figures. He’s been consistent about the cause-and-effect relationship between performance and turnout, once again quoting Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy.
“If we get better, the market will demand that we get bigger,” Mills said. “I knew that we needed to get better. And if we get better, the people in the community will show up.”
On Saturday, WSU fans showed up and were rewarded with a throwback kind of night: a rivalry game, a gritty comeback and a reminder of the power of Koch Arena magic.
This story was originally published February 15, 2026 at 6:12 AM.
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