Inside why Wichita State’s biggest returners chose to run it back with Shockers
For the first time in years, Wichita State doesn’t feel like a program bracing for another reset. It feels like one ready to accelerate.
That shift hit the fan base in a flurry last Monday when Dillon Battie, Will Berg and T.J. Williams all announced they would not even entertain the transfer portal and instead were planning to “run it back” at Wichita State. By the end of the week, sophomore center Noah Hill had joined them.
In an era when college basketball rosters are stripped down and rebuilt every spring, as Shocker fans know all too well, WSU managed to do the hardest thing first. Paul Mills kept the bones of a winning team together.
And not just any bones.
He kept the core of the identity that fueled Wichita State’s late-season surge, the defense-and-rebounding formula that carried the Shockers to a 14-4 finish over the final two months, second place in the American, a trip to the conference tournament championship game and a run to the third round of the NIT.
With senior stars Kenyon Giles and Karon Boyd gone, there were obvious reasons to wonder whether the momentum of a 24-win season would survive into the offseason. Instead, it only seems to have grown.
Around Wichita, there is a genuine buzz surrounding the program that hasn’t been felt in some time. It showed up at Eck Stadium last Thursday night when Berg, Battie and Williams made their first public appearance since announcing their returns.
Berg, all 7-foot-2 of him, threw out the first pitch before WSU’s baseball game against Tulane, while fans stopped the trio around the ballpark to congratulate them, thank them and talk about what might be next. Even WSU president Rick Muma, passing by during one of those moments, paused to do the same.
That is the part that matters most here. WSU is no longer trying to convince its fan base to believe again from scratch. There is already belief. There is already trust. There is already a picture forming in the minds of fans of what next season could look like.
And the players can feel it.
“The response has been almost overwhelming,” Berg said. “It makes all of us very, very excited, looking forward to next year because we know the community is going to be such a big part of the success we’re going to bring.”
That relationship between program and city is not some happy offseason byproduct. It is at the center of why this story matters.
In a transfer portal market where players with Berg’s size and production often come with seven-figure price tags, WSU did not just retain talent. It retained buy-in.
Berg would have been a highly sought-after portal entry. A 7-foot-2 center with elite rim protection, high-level offensive rebounding and a breakthrough season after barely playing in three years at Purdue is exactly the kind of player whose market can explode in April.
WSU posted a team-best plus-16.2 net rating with Berg on the floor, with the offense surging to a 120.2 rating and the defense improving to 102.4. He improved dramatically as the season wore on, too, shooting 68.3% from the field over the final 10 games, including 76.7% at the rim.
But Berg was not looking to parlay his WSU breakout into a power-conference exit. He was looking at Wichita and seeing home.
“The grass is greenest where you water it,” Berg said. “I feel like here in Wichita, not only do we have an amazing coaching staff, we have great players returning and we have a great community. Wichita State is the place where I want to be. I feel like what we’re building here, this is something I want to be a part of.”
That same sentiment came through from Williams, only with an added layer of hometown pull.
The 6-foot-5 Wichita native emerged as one of the breakout stories of the season, growing from promising freshman into one of the most important building blocks on the roster. Over the final month, Williams averaged 12.2 points and 6.5 rebounds and delivered one of the season’s signature performances with 27 points in the double-overtime win at East Carolina. His impact went far beyond the box score. WSU’s offense posted a 121.3 offensive rating with Williams on the floor, compared to 106.6 when he sat.
For Williams, the decision to stay was not driven by the highest possible payday.
“You mentioned the money, but it’s not all about that,” Williams said. “I just want to find joy playing basketball. For me, I find joy playing basketball at home. It’s not always about the money and I think more kids are starting to realize that. Being able to stay here and build my dream here is special to me.”
In a sport that increasingly treats every offseason like an auction, Wichita State found itself on the other side of a rare trend. Its most valuable returning pieces looked at what they had built, looked at the staff leading them, looked at the community around them and decided that was worth more than starting over somewhere else.
Battie’s return was nearly as important as any of them.
He began the season largely outside the main rotation before becoming perhaps the clearest player-development success story of Mills’ third season. After entering the starting lineup on Jan. 11, Battie averaged 10.0 points and 5.7 rebounds over the final 20 games, then took another leap over the final month with 12.4 points and 6.3 rebounds per game. His athleticism, activity on the glass and improved finishing made him a vital part of Wichita State’s winning formula.
“I’m really excited to have my teammates back, some really big pieces,” Battie said. “We’re going to do our best here for the program and for the community. I think we’re just all really excited. Everyone wants to be here.”
That last line may be the most important in the entire equation.
Everyone wants to be here.
That was not always a safe assumption in modern college basketball. It is not a safe assumption at most places now.
But WSU’s returning core did not stumble into this together. They told The Eagle that the players held a players-only meeting after the loss in the American tournament title game and then checked in with each other again after the season-ending loss at Tulsa in the NIT. They wanted to know who was in. Battie was in. Williams was in. Berg was in.
“I think we all want to do something special here,” Williams said. “After the end of the season, we were all like, ‘Let’s come back.’ Everybody had to talk about it with their family and I know a lot of guys have agents now. But we all wanted to come back. We’re all in.”
That kind of collective commitment changes an offseason. It changes the way a coaching staff attacks the portal. It changes what recruits see when they study a roster. And it changes what fans allow themselves to imagine.
Instead of spending April and May wondering whether WSU can salvage enough pieces to field a competitive team, the conversation now starts from a much more ambitious place.
The Shockers already know they are bringing back a frontcourt built around Berg, Battie and Williams, plus an intriguing young big in Hill. They know their best rebounding pieces are still in place. They know the defensive backbone of their late-season surge remains intact. And they know there are only a handful of obvious holes to address with departing seniors Giles and Boyd gone and Emmanuel Okorafor still awaiting clarity on a possible NCAA waiver for another year.
That gives Mills a head start few programs have. It also gives him something tangible to sell.
When Wichita State enters the portal now, it is not pitching a theoretical team. It is pitching joining real building blocks.
And even though sources tell The Eagle that WSU is entering this offseason with its largest war chest to date in the NIL era, Mills made it clear on his final coaches’ show last week that the decisions of the four returners were not rooted in finances.
“I will tell you, these are not monetary discussions,” Mills said. “They genuinely want to see this through.”
That line resonates even more when viewed through the story athletic director Kevin Saal recently told on The Roundhouse podcast about his first interview with Mills in the spring of 2023.
Saal said that during the hiring process, Mills explained how he had managed to keep Oral Roberts star Max Abmas through two recruiting cycles, even when Abmas could have left for significantly more NIL money elsewhere. When Mills told him the number Abmas stayed for, Saal said it caught his attention.
More than the figure itself, Saal said, it was the value judgment behind it that stuck with him: that the right players will sometimes choose fit, development and belief over chasing every last dollar.
Now, three years later, Saal cannot help but see a similar pattern emerging at Wichita State.
“I remember connecting the dots in that conversation that these players are finding value in something other than the dollar if they’re willing to stay at Oral Roberts,” Saal said. “When you project that onto Wichita State … we’re going to be resourceful and be in the neighborhood, but it also behooves us to have people that will be able to outperform resources.”
Yes, WSU will have more resources than it has had in previous NIL cycles. Saal even hinted recently that the Shockers project to be top-two in the American financially, saying that should come with expectations of competing for league championships. But the bigger point he keeps coming back to is that resources alone do not explain why Berg, Battie, Williams and Hill chose to stay before the portal even opened.
“Those are four players whose circles are likely telling them, ‘Man, you probably ought to go and explore.’ But they’re not,” Saal said. “So what are they seeing value in? Development with coach Mills and his staff. The Wichita community, Shocker nation, Koch Arena on game day.”
Saal sees that as evidence that Mills’ formula is working. Mills sees it as confirmation that his program has found the right kind of people.
For a fan base that has spent the past several years wondering when Wichita State might finally feel like Wichita State again, that may be the most important takeaway of all.
Yes, WSU still has work to do. The portal opens Tuesday and Mills still has to prove he can complement this returning core with the right guard play, shooting and experience. The next two weeks will go a long way toward determining whether the Shockers are merely intriguing or a genuine contender at the top of the American.
But for the first time in a while, WSU enters portal season with something every program wants and very few have: a foundation sturdy enough to dream on.
“It’s only the beginning,” WSU assistant P.J. Couisnard said. “Coach (Mills) has been laying the foundation and the bricks are starting to turn into houses. I know the fans are excited, but honestly I think the guys are more excited than the fans. They can’t wait to get back because they feel like they left a lot on the table.”
The Shockers are no longer selling hope as an abstract idea. They have already shown fans what this can look like when the identity clicks, when Koch Arena matters again, when the city sees itself in the team. By keeping Berg, Battie and Williams, Wichita State preserved more than production. It preserved belief.
And now, with “Portal Paul” stepping into the next phase of roster building, that belief comes with something Wichita State hasn’t carried into an offseason in years: real expectations.
“I just want Shocker nation to pause for just a minute and smell the roses that we’ve got four guys who are completely bucking the trend on what’s going on in college athletics,” Saal said on The Roundhouse podcast. “Because we’ve got great people involved and we’re playing and representing a great community and they love doing all of those things. Playing for Wichita, fighting for Wichita. It’s really important for Wichita to understand.”
This story was originally published April 6, 2026 at 7:01 AM.
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