Kenyon Giles shoots Wichita State basketball into American tournament final
Wichita State is one win away from March Madness again.
The Shockers earned their spot in the American Conference tournament championship game for the first time with an 81-68 win over Tulsa in Saturday’s semifinals at Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama.
With the victory, Wichita State improved to 22-10 and extended its winning streak to seven games. The Shockers have won 12 of 14 overall.
After splitting the regular-season series with Tulsa, the Shockers settled the grudge match emphatically and now will face South Florida at 2:15 p.m. Sunday on ESPN with an NCAA Tournament bid on the line.
Wichita State is seeking its first trip to the NCAA Tournament since 2021 and its first conference tournament championship since 2017.
WSU star Kenyon Giles finished with 27 points on 10-of-27 shooting and buried seven 3-pointers. Will Berg controlled the interior with a double-double of 13 points and 13 rebounds, while also chipping in four assists in one of his most complete all-around games of the season.
Mike Gray Jr. added 13 points, six rebounds and six assists, while Karon Boyd chipped in 12 points and six rebounds and T.J. Williams provided 13 points off the bench.
Here are three takeaways from the game:
1. Another star performance from Kenyon Giles
Kenyon Giles delivered another standout outing Saturday, pouring in 27 points to power WSU into the tournament championship game while adding another chapter to his record-breaking season.
Giles knocked down seven 3-pointers, setting a WSU single-game record for a conference tournament game, and pushed his season total to 112, extending his program record for most 3s in a season.
The outburst also continued Giles’ climb into rare company. Giles now has 17 games of 20 or more points this season, fourth-most in school history, and his 19.7 scoring average is on pace to be the highest by a Wichita State player since Jason Perez in 1999-00.
It was Giles’ second-half barrage that helped Wichita State seize command, as he scored 14 points in the first 12 minutes after halftime to fuel a 68-49 lead. Tulsa trimmed the deficit to 70-60 with 3:12 remaining, but the Shockers had built enough cushion to finish it off.
2. Shockers broke open the game with barrage of 3-pointers
Wichita State broke the game open in the first eight minutes of the second half with a jaw-dropping shooting display that left Tulsa scrambling and the Shocker fans in Birmingham roaring.
After Tulsa scored the first five points of the half to trim WSU’s lead to just 39-38, the Shockers responded with a knockout punch from beyond the arc, drilling six of their first eight 3-point attempts of the half to turn a tense game into a rout.
Giles and Karon Boyd sparked the eruption with back-to-back 3s. Then Giles hit another. Boyd followed with another. Mike Gray Jr. joined the party with a triple of his own as WSU’s lead swelled by the minute.
But the sequence everyone will remember belonged to Giles, who delivered the highlight of the afternoon when he crossed up his defender, saw Tulsa’s center switched onto him and darted toward the corner, where he buried a fadeaway 3 over the outstretched hand of the big man.
That shot gave Wichita State its largest lead to that point at 62-45 and sent the small but spirited pocket of Shocker fans into hysterics.
Tulsa, playing its second game in a little more than 24 hours and coming off a draining triple-overtime win over North Texas the day before, looked like a team that had finally run out of gas just as Wichita State found another gear.
3. Wichita State’s hot shooting produces halftime lead
The Shockers carried a 39-33 lead into halftime behind a hot-shooting first half and an energetic spark from T.J. Williams and Gray.
WSU shot 51.6% from the floor, as Williams and Gray combined for 17 points on 8-of-10 shooting, and used an early 11-2 burst to create the first real separation of the game.
Williams capped that run with an offensive rebound putback for a 35-26 lead. Even so, WSU’s edge came despite an uncharacteristically shaky showing on the glass, as Tulsa collected 10 offensive rebounds and turned that into a slight advantage in offensive rebounding rate and a 13-10 edge in second-chance points.
This story was originally published March 14, 2026 at 6:49 PM.
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