Wichita State men’s basketball came out with the juice head coach Paul Mills said the team needed going into its game against DePaul Saturday morning, but the tank thinned eight minutes in.
That’s when the Blue Demons flipped a 14-point deficit into a five-point halftime lead, using a 21-3 run to command the rest of the game. DePaul went up by as many as nine points in the second half during the Shockers’ 61-58 loss in Koch Arena — their first loss at home this season.
WSU, now 6-5 overall, has lost every game this season by two possessions or fewer. And in each game, the Shockers have had chances to take the lead or tie it late, but the shots haven’t fallen.
“It just sucks,” said senior guard Kenyon Giles, who finished with a team-high 16 points on 5-for-17 shooting, four steals and three rebounds. “You want that moment. You want to take over that moment. When it rolls back out, you’re like, ‘Man.’ But you have to keep attacking for that moment.”
Giles had a chance to tie the game with five seconds left, but his 3-point shot rattled in and out, underscoring a theme of untimely misses for the game.
“I was able to double clutch it, and get my eyes back on the rim,” he said. “It rimmed out, you know, just a tough one. It was one I really wanted. Obviously, we all wanted it. It just didn’t go in.”
Free throw shooting was also a problem and theme of the loss. WSU made just 46% of its attempts at the line throughout the game. The Shockers nearly tripled DePaul’s attempts (28-to-10), but the trouble at the foul line was costly.
“I think we just have to put more emphasis on it,” Giles said.
Despite the loss, Mills said that he was proud of the fight the Shockers showed throughout the whole game, and that it didn’t come down to a matter of effort.
“That I never question,” Mills said. “I mean, we’ve had a bad half of basketball, but this wasn’t a situation where — we didn’t lose this game because our guys weren’t fighting. I thought their fight was good. We were 0-3 on 50-50 balls… I’ll have to go back and look and just see how that happened. But we didn’t lose this game because we weren’t trying.”
The Shockers blitzed DePaul (8-3) out of the gates, going on an 11-0 run to the delight of the home crowd that stood on their feet for the first four minutes of the game. WSU was sharp on offense, knocking down its first four shots from the floor while playing staunch defense, holding the Blue Demons to three misses and forcing two turnovers.
WSU kept pace, going up 16-2 with a little under 14 minutes left in the half, but that’s where the wheels began to fall off. Mills said it’s nearly impossible to maintain that kind of momentum for a full 20 minutes.
“You’re just not going to be able to do that at the snap of a finger,” he said.
Once the Shockers slowed down, DePaul’s senior guard CJ Gunn helped the Blue Demons seize control. He scored 11 unanswered points in the blink of an eye, spotting up for three 3-pointers and a drive to the rack.
Senior center Emmanuel Okorafor, who started in place of junior Will Berg (out with an ankle injury), stopped the bleeding briefly — but it wasn’t enough for WSU to regather. DePaul connected on another couple of threes right after building a four-point cushion and held it going into the break, 36-31.
Out of halftime, the Shockers trimmed their deficit to three points in the first six minutes, but a drought of nearly three minutes allowed the Blue Demons to take their nine point lead, 51-42.
WSU kept pushing and eventually cut its deficit to two points multiple times. The Shockers stayed with it and later got the difference down to a single point, but could never hit the shot or make the free throw that would put them over the hump to take the lead.
Gunn, who was held scoreless for almost the entirety of the second half, came up clutch for DePaul with 13 seconds to play and nailed two free throws — his only points in the period — to up the Blue Demons’ lead to three, 61-58. WSU never got a shot up before the buzzer sounded.
Gunn finished with a game-high 18 points on 6-for-13 shooting. WSU shot 20-for-53 (38%) from the field and hit only 46.4% of its free throws (13-of-28). DePaul shot at a 51% rate and 41% from beyond the arc.
The Shockers won the rebounding battle, 33-29, but costly misses late in the game and at the charity stripe were differentiators.
Next up, WSU continues its three-game homestand against Wofford Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.
“We have to attack the moment, no matter what,” Giles said. “We still have to get ready for Wednesday, because it might be a one-possession game, and hopefully we learn from that situation.”
Box score breakdown
WSU — 31; 27 — 58
DePaul — 36; 25 — 61
Shooting (fg-3pt-ft)
WSU: (38% — 29% — 46%)
DePaul: (51% — 41% — 60%)
Leaders
Points — WSU: Kenyon Giles (16), Emmanuel Okorafor (12), Dre Kindell (9). DePaul: CJ Gunn (18). NJ Benson (12), RJ Smith (10).
Rebounds — Emmanuel Okorafor (8), Karon Boyd (7), Noah Hill (5). DePaul: Kaleb Banks (5), CJ Gunn (4), Three players with 3.
Assists — WSU: Dre Kindell (2), Three players with 1. DePaul: Kruz McClure (3), Kaleb Banks (3), Layden Blocker (2), CJ Gunn (2).
