Bob Lutz: Shockers continue their incredible run of success

For five years now, Wichita State basketball fans have been living the good life.

It started in 2011 with an NIT championship and a celebration on the floor at Madison Square Garden, the Mecca of hoops.

And it just keeps getting better. The Shockers are on an incredible run of success, to the point now where getting a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament causes folks to raise their fists in anger.

WSU has won 149 games the past five seasons and gone 77-13 in the Missouri Valley Conference. The Shockers have become a constant in college basketball’s Top 25 and are a known commodity to everyone who breaks down college basketball for a living.

Jay Bilas was in Wichita this year. So was Stephen A. Smith. And the one and only Dick Vitale called the Alabama game at Koch Arena for ESPN.

It’s become impossible to get a ticket for a home game at Koch Arena, where the Shockers routinely throttle opponents. They’ve made a mockery of the Valley, wining 35 of 36 regular-season conference games the past two seasons.

Gregg Marshall and his coaching staff keep bringing in fantastic players. Every year, it seems, somebody makes a push to hire Marshall away and every year he expresses his joy and appreciation for what he has at Wichita State as the WSU administration continues to make his wallet fatter.

This amazing era of Shocker basketball culminated with an unexpected run to the Final Four two seasons ago, when the Shockers started as a No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament. But they knocked off top-ranked Gonzaga in the third round in Salt Lake City, then beat La Salle and Ohio State in the West Regional at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

The Shockers had gone Hollywood.

They pushed Louisville to the brink in the national semifinals before falling 72-68. If a walk-on named Tim Henderson hadn’t played out of his mind in the second half for the Cardinals, the Shockers would have been in the national championship game.

How do you top a Final Four, the school’s first in 48 years?

You become invincible.

Last season, the Shockers were perfect in November, December, January and February, rising to a preposterous 35-0 before losing to Kentucky 78-76 in the third round of the NCAA Tournament at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis. Two weeks earlier, in the same building, Wichita State won the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament for the first time since that event moved to St. Louis 24 years earlier.

Kentucky was a ridiculously-underseeded No. 8 seed that reached the national championship game against Connecticut. The WSU-UK game was the best in the tournament, with WSU’s Cleanthony Early stealing every scene in which he appeared.

Wichita State has lost 28 games over the past five seasons and only five have been by double figures. The Shockers’ worst loss in that span was at Northern Iowa this season, where the Panthers jumped on WSU in the first half and won 70-54. Wichita State’s other double-digit losses were to Creighton (91-79 in 2012-13), Indiana State (68-55 in 2012-13), Alabama (70-60 in 2011-12) and San Diego State (83-69 in 2011-12).

And that’s it.

The Shockers’ other 23 defeats since 2011-12 have been by an average of 3.9 points and 12 have been by three points or fewer.

Wichita State has had nine first-team All-MVC players during the past six seasons. Before that, the Shockers had nine All-Valley players in the previous 27 years.

If you remember the 1990s, when Wichita State was at its lowest point, then you probably appreciate this amazing run of success more than some others.

It wasn’t until athletic director Jim Schaus, who had been on the job for about a year, decided to fire Randy Smithson and replace him with Mark Turgeon that the Shockers’ fate started to improve.

Turgeon built Wichita State into an NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 team in 2005-06 before the Shockers took a step back the following season, prompting Turgeon to leave for Texas A&M.

Schaus, though, had been impressed with the coach for Winthrop when Wichita State was playing in the 2006 NCAA Tournament in Greensboro, N.C. And he was able to entice Marshall, who had been at Winthrop for nine years, to take the WSU job.

In eight seasons, Marshall and has accomplished the unthinkable. He’s made Wichita State a perennial basketball powerhouse. He’s changed the way we define success. Before Marshall, most Shocker fans I know were content with an occasional NCAA Tournament appearance and being in the top two or three in the Missouri Valley Conference race.

They were happy with some fun, competitive basketball.

Now there’s a decent chance Wichita State and Kansas will meet Sunday in the NCAA Tournament in Omaha for the right to advance to the Sweet 16. Both teams have to take care of Friday business first – KU against New Mexico State and the Shockers against Indiana.

But this just keeps getting better. WSU basketball is the gift that keeps on giving.

This story was originally published March 18, 2015 at 10:15 AM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Shockers continue their incredible run of success."