Bob Lutz: Shockers’ defense takes on all comers and almost always comes out ahead

Anthony Beane started out like a house on fire Wednesday night against Wichita State at Koch Arena.

Southern Illinois’ senior guard, the second-leading scorer in the Missouri Valley Conference, had 11 points in the game’s first 6:34. It looked like Beane was having one of his good nights against the Shockers, and he hasn’t had many of those.

Turns out Beane was to score nine points the rest of the way. He made 6 of 17 shots. It was, once again, a frustrating night for one of the Valley’s most-dangerous scorers.

And that’s what Wichita State does. The Shockers shut down, or at least slow down, the best players on other teams. And it helped them pull away for a 76-55 win — yes, another blowout — over the Salukis.

Beane and Evansville’s D.J. Balentine, the Valley’s top scorer and one of the best in the country, are prime examples of great scorers who stumble against WSU. Balentine is the No. 8 scorer in Missouri Valley Conference history and Beane has a chance to reach 2,000 points.

In four games against the Shockers this season, though, Beane and Balentine are 20 of 67 from the field. That’s 29.9 percent.

Awful.

And tremendous for Wichita State.

In 18 career games against WSU, Beane and Balentine are scoring OK — an average of 14.7 points — but not scoring the way they do against everyone else.

Their combined field-goal percentage is 35.9 percent and they’ve taken 242 shots to score 265 points.

“It’s just guys that are committed to trying to stop them,” said Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall, who passed Ralph Miller on the Shockers’ career coaching wins list with 221. “We certainly focus on those guys and have a great deal of respect for them as players and scorers. And we send multiple guys at them. It used to be Tekele Cotton and Ron Baker and (tonight) it was Markis McDuffie and Zach Brown. You can’t stop those guys, they’re going to get their points. You just try and contain them.”

Southern Illinois coach Barry Hinson said the Shockers’ size bothers not just Beane, but all of the Salukis. Offense is tough to come by.

“They have great length and we don’t really run up against anybody in our league with that kind of length,” Hinson said. “And I don’t do a very good job of subbing Anthony and he wears down. That kind of constant pressure wears anyone down. But I really think you have to give it up to Wichita State’s length. There’s no margin for error.”

Not against defense like this. SIU, which had been shooting 47 percent from the field in winning 18 of 23 games before Wednesday, shot 30.6 percent against the Shockers. The Salukis shot 37 percent during an 83-58 loss to Wichita State in Carbondale on Jan. 9 and failed to make 20 field goals in either game.

The Shockers know how to clamp down.

“I’m sure the guys who guard players like (Beane) and (Balentine) take it personally when they go against them,” WSU senior guard Fred VanVleet said. “It takes more than one guy to guard those type of players who get to shoot 20 shots a game and have the ball in their hands most of the time. You know they’re eventually going to get their points but you try to make it tough on them.”

Wichita State isn’t having a great offensive season. But the Shockers do all the other stuff. For one of the rare times this season, Wichita State was out-rebounded badly by Southern Illinois, which had 24 offensive rebounds. But WSU forced 22 turnovers and steadily pulled away after leading just 20-19 more than midway through the first half.

Wichita State is easily the most well-rounded team in the Valley, the most experienced, the most talented. And it’s not close.

The Shockers beat the two teams tied for second place — Evansville and Southern Illinois — by an average of 17 points in the span of four days this week. They’re 11-0 in the Valley and only one of those wins has come by fewer than 13 points.

Wichita State has the country’s longest home winning streak (43), a coach with more wins than any other Shocker coach in history (221), a 19-game winning streak in the Valley and a string of 41 consecutive sellouts at Koch Arena.

Life is good for these Shockers, mostly because they make life so miserable for opponents. There’s no end in sight, either. Wichita State now leads SIU and Evansville by four games in the race — and we use that term loosely — for the MVC championship.

There are a lot of reasons Wichita State is strolling through the Valley these days. But near the top of the list is defense, especially against the most dangerous guys on the other team. It’s impossible to beat the Shockers if your best guys aren’t shooting straight.

This story was originally published February 3, 2016 at 11:18 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Shockers’ defense takes on all comers and almost always comes out ahead."