Two miracles, one road heist: The numbers of Wichita State’s most improbable win
For the final 20 minutes of Wednesday’s game at Minges Coliseum, Wichita State played like a team trapped in someone else’s ending.
Always behind. Always chasing. Always one possession away from the door slamming shut.
The Shockers kept running into what looked like dead ends, the kind that turn into a painful road loss and a costly one considering their pursuit in the American Conference standings. Instead, Wichita State snatched a 92-89 win in double overtime.
KenPom’s win-probability meter caught the absurdity. With 15 seconds left in regulation and WSU down four, the Shockers were given a 5.6% chance to win. Later, with ECU inbounding up two with 5.2 seconds left in the first overtime, WSU’s win probability sat at 8.3%.
And yet WSU won a game it was supposed to lose — not once, but twice. Stack those two escape acts together and the chances of WSU surviving both scenarios and winning the game was roughly 1 in 215 odds. In other words, that’s like rolling three straight sixes.
The larger picture was just as wild. WSU trailed for 17 minutes and 47 seconds of the final 20 minutes, counting the last 10 minutes of regulation plus both overtime periods, meaning the Shockers spent 89% of crunch time in chase mode, constantly needing to find an answer.
“We needed some things to fall our way,” WSU head coach Paul Mills said in his postgame radio interview. “There were a lot of ups and downs over the course of the game, but I never felt like we were out of it. Just really proud of our group for turning around and finding a way.”
Here’s a closer look at how the Shockers pulled off the improbable.
The Kenyon Giles Miracle: Part 1
After Kenyon Giles missed his third straight potential game-tying 3 down the stretch of regulation, WSU looked finished. ECU rebounded and Eli DeLaurier split a pair of free throws with 18.8 seconds left to put the Pirates up four.
Except that one missed free throw left the door cracked open.
Down 69-65 with 15 seconds left, WSU called timeout and head coach Paul Mills dialed up a play that he’s been saving for a moment like that one.
“We practiced that play and have gone over it quite a bit,” Mills said in his postgame radio interview. “We just haven’t been in a situation where we had to utilize it. Heck of a time to deliver in that particular instance.”
After WSU got the ball in, Giles and Will Berg were isolated in the middle of the floor. The 7-foot-2 center set a pindown screen for Giles, who came off the screen with his defender, Isaiah Mbeng, trailing and crowding just a fraction too tight.
Giles caught the pass, rose and fired.
The whistle sounded right when the ball left his fingertips, leaving a split-second for everyone to pause and try to process what just happened: the shot dropping through the net and a foul called.
After watching his shot find its target, Giles pointed to the official in anticipation of the call and when the referee raised his arms to signal the shot was good, Giles let out a primal scream that was equal parts disbelief and thrill.
Giles then calmly knocked down the free throw to complete the four-point play and tie at 69 with 11.9 seconds left to force overtime.
Somehow, it wasn’t even the most ridiculous shot Giles made.
The Kenyon Giles shot that was overshadowed
The four-point play will live on, but Giles hit another shot, arguably even more impressive, that got swallowed up by the chaos.
In the first overtime, ECU jumped out to a 73-69 lead. Once again, WSU’s back was against the wall. And another possession was seemingly headed toward disaster, as Giles was thrown a grenade at the end of the shot clock where he was closer to halfcourt than the 3-point arc.
Giles caught it and launched anyway.
It was about 30 feet away, a step outside of the center circle, with two defenders closing hard enough that he couldn’t even finish his normal shooting motion. It didn’t matter. The shot was pure, a clean swish, slicing the deficit to 73-72 and keeping WSU breathing.
That’s what made Wednesday’s comeback such an outlier for the Shockers. They didn’t just make one improbable play. They stacked them.
The Kenyon Giles Miracle: Part 2
Even after all of that, WSU again looked cooked late in the first overtime after Giles missed another potential go-ahead 3.
There was a scramble for the rebound and a tie-up that gave ECU the ball under its own basket, up 78-76, with 5.2 seconds left.
This is a spot where most games end on a clean inbound, a couple free throws and a horn.
But Mills went to his bench and inserted 6-foot-8 freshman Noah Hill, who had not played a single second before that, specifically for one reason: a 7-foot-1 wingspan that could smother the inbound window and create chaos.
“How about Noah and his five seconds?” Mills said, practically laughing in amazement afterward. “He was just tenacious over the ball and was able to get a tip.”
Hill’s arms changed the geometry immediately, as he deflected the inbounds pass and started a mayhem drill.
The ball rolled loose. ECU’s Jordan Riley and WSU’s Mike Gray Jr. both dove at the free-throw line. The ball squirted out. And there was Giles, again, right place at the right time.
Giles scooped it up with time evaporating and immediately rose into a jumper. ECU’s Demitri Gardner flew by hard enough that Giles had to double-clutch midair, only increasing the difficulty. But this one curled in anyway with 1.3 seconds left, tying the game again.
If WSU was sitting at an 8.3% win probability, forcing a live-ball turnover that led directly to a tying shot accounted for only a sliver of those already-thin odds.
“It always felt like we were playing catch-up and we needed to make plays,” Mills said.
WSU made them. Over and over.
The Shockers score yet another improbable road win
Wednesday wasn’t the first time Wichita State showed a flair for the dramatic on the road. It was just the latest entry on the list of stunning comeback wins away from home.
The Shockers rallied from an early hole in overtime to win 74-69 at Northern Iowa, erased a 16-point deficit to take the American opener on the road at UAB and stormed back from another double-digit deficit at South Florida, then stealing a victory in overtime when Giles came up with an improbable steal and bucket to push the Shockers over the top.
Wednesday’s game felt like an inverse of WSU’s earlier road disaster at Charlotte when the Shockers coughed up an 18-point lead and lost in double overtime on a pile of improbabilities going the wrong direction. On Wednesday, WSU evened the ledger.
The timing mattered.
The Shockers improved to 17-10 overall and 9-5 in the American Conference, staying firm in second place with their current tiebreaker over Tulsa. The win was massive for a team trying to keep control of its destiny for the No. 2 seed and that triple-bye into the conference tournament semifinals.
The film study of the game might get ugly. WSU made more mistakes than you can usually survive on the road. But in the standings, the win will be labeled as essential.
And sometimes, especially this late in the season, teams don’t need a masterpiece. Sometimes, they need some luck.
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