WE’RE SPOILED, WE SHOCKER FANS.
We now count the extraordinary basketball season as ordinary, thanks to Gregg Marshall, who has just tallied his eighth season at Wichita State, and to the singular string of individual players he has coached into record-setting teams. It started when Marshall led the 2010-11 Shockers to an NIT Championship, and then took off when his No. 8 seeded team drove to the Final Four in Atlanta in 2013.
The Shockers followed that feat up with an undefeated regular season in 2013-14, winning 35 games before their history-making streak was snapped by Kentucky in the NCAA tournament’s round of 32. As we well remember, the Wildcats won 78-76 on that Sunday afternoon in St. Louis, in a battle of a game, a game later named by Sports Illustrated as the 2014 Game of the Year. Mind you, that’s the No. 1 game of any game played in 2014. At any level. In any sport. What in the world would the Shockers do next?
This season, Wichita State opened competitive play ranked No. 11 nationally and climbed to No. 8 after four straight wins. The Shockers bested New Mexico State, 71-54; the Memphis Tigers, 71-56; the Newman Jets, 105-57; and Tulsa’s Golden Hurricane, 75-55, before the No. 25 Runnin’ Utes of Utah handed them their first loss of the season, by a lone point, 68-69.
The Shockers then knocked down six competitors – the Saint Louis Billikens, Seton Hall, the Detroit Titans, Alabama’s Crimson Tide, Loyola Marymount and Hawaii’s Rainbow Warriors – before running into another defeat, this one a 54-60 loss to the George Washington Colonials. The 10-2 Shockers, now ranked No. 16, then took care of another string of foes: Missouri Valley Conference rivals Drake, Illinois State, Bradley, Loyola Chicago, Southern Illinois, Evansville and Missouri State, defeating the Bears 76-53 on Jan. 21.
Wichita State had jumped back up to a No. 12 ranking with second conference wins over Drake and Loyola when, on Jan. 31, the No. 18 Panthers of Northern Iowa set the Shockers back again with their third loss of the season. But they kept their eyes on the prize and got back on track with eight consecutive victories over MVC teams, including a 74-60 win Feb. 28 over the No. 10 ranked Panthers – WSU was ranked No. 11 at the time. Both schools left the court with 27-3 records, closing out the regular season.
After going 17-1 in regular-season Missouri Valley competition and capturing its second straight conference championship, Wichita State dispatched the Southern Illinois Salukis, 56-45, in the first game of the MVC Tournament in St. Louis. But they took their fourth loss of the season March 7 in their second game of the tournament, losing to the Illinois State Redbirds, 62-65.
Heading into the NCAA tournament, WSU (28-4) earned a No. 7 seed in the Midwest Region, an assignment that seemed to many Shocker fans a less-than-fitting reward for a team with a No. 17 RPI. Marshall and his team refused to complain, choosing instead to focus on the accomplishment of landing an at-large bid for the third time in four seasons. Over the past three seasons, WSU boasts a 90-15 record with an .857 winning percentage, which ranks second-highest of any Division I hoops program over that span. And this season WSU was in the 68-team tournament field for an unprecedented fourth straight time.
The Midwest Region was formidable. If WSU could get past the No. 10 seed Indiana Hoosiers (20-13), they would face the second-seeded Jayhawks, a much anticipated Sunflower State showdown. It would be the first time the two Kansas schools had played since 1993, when KU routed WSU 103-54. The last time the Shockers beat the Jayhawks was all the way back in 1981. The stuff of Shocker legend, that NCAA tournament game is still known as the Battle of New Orleans, and WSU won it, 66-65, with a last-second, 25-footer by Mike Jones.
But first, the Shockers had to take care of the Hoosiers; they did, winning the hard-fought contest 81-76. Junior guard Fred VanVleet was WSU’s top performer, with 27 points, two rebounds, four assists and two steals. But senior Darius Carter may have had the most memorable scenes: first, a collision with a player’s elbow that nearly knocked out a front tooth, and – after a brief absence in which his tooth was saved – a dunk. A play-angry dunk. “We pride ourselves on toughness, the whole ‘play angry’ thing,” he said after the game. “We all have a will to win.” He added, “I’m thankful I got my tooth. That would be a bad look, to not have a front tooth.”
Carter and the rest of the Shockers were looking good as the game against KU approached. The hype didn’t seem to phase them. “There’s so much to be said about this rivalry with Kansas,”
Van Vleet said matter-of-factly during a news conference. “But really, it’s all about the fans. What better story is there for Wichita State?” Junior guard Ron Baker, who hails from Scott City, added, “It’s a big thing for the state of Kansas. A lot of houses are going to be divided.”
The long-awaited matchup took place March 22 in Omaha; it wasn’t much of a battle. Senior Tekele Cotton scored 19 points, VanVleet had 17 and Evan Wessel hit four 3-pointers for the Shockers on their way to a 78-65 victory and a trip to the Sweet 16. “We don’t have McDonald’s All-Americans,” Van Vleet said. “We don’t have guys that have been in the spotlight, and been given that pedestal. We work for everything we’ve got, from managers to coaches to our preacher to, you know, whoever. We’ve scrapped and fought our whole lives.”
This season, the Shockers’ last fight was March 26 in Cleveland in a Sweet 16 game against Notre Dame. Wichita State (30-5) lost, 70-81, to the Fighing Irish.
Who knows what’s coming next?
