The American Conference has been in disarray since league play started, and Wichita State has a path to the top of the standings for the first time in five years.
Multiple teams have seen double digit leads evaporate before them. At the same time, teams have risen to the occasion and pulled off those double-digit comebacks. The Shockers have both triumphed and fallen victim in those scenarios.
Memphis, the conference’s preseason favorite, doesn’t look like the same squad that went 16-2 and won the league a season ago. Florida Atlantic has dropped its last two after the struggling Tigers showed a semblance of their past selves Thursday night.
Charlotte, which was predicted to finish dead-last, sits alone in first place after its win over Rice Friday.
Seven teams are within a game of each other in the conference standings at two or three losses. Anywhere from three to five could very well be enough to win the title come March.
For now, the Shockers (13-8, 5-3 American) can move themselves into a solid position down the stretch of the regular season in what’s arguably their biggest game so far Sunday when they travel to play Tulsa (18-3, 6-2). The game will air on ESPNU at 1 p.m.
The Golden Hurricane is the hottest team in the league, most recently using a game-sealing 20-3 run against North Texas for their fifth consecutive win. They did the same thing against Memphis on Jan. 21 to come out on top, 83-66.
Still, WSU coach Paul Mills is carrying his patented “1-0 mindset” into the Reynolds Center just 177 miles south of campus. He reiterated Friday that he couldn’t care less about the opponent. He’s just excited for the Shockers to be able to compete after a week since their last game.
“It doesn’t say because they got this (name) across the front of their jersey that means we grit our teeth a little bit more,” Mills said. “Honestly, we’re excited to play. It really doesn’t matter who it is.”
The Shockers face one of the American’s (and America’s) most dominant offenses
WSU’s stingy defense will be put to the test on Sunday against a high-scoring Tulsa team. The Shockers give up the second fewest points in the American at 69.5 points per game, while Tulsa averages 87.7 PPG — the second most in the conference and good for 17th most in the nation.
“Just a really potent offensive team and really solid defensively as well,” Mills said of the Golden Hurricane. “We’re in for quite the fight.”
Tulsa’s offense is powered by its explosive 3-point shooting. The Golden Hurricane’s 39.6 3-point percentage ranks them at the seventh in the country and at the top of the conference. Against league opponents alone, Tulsa shoots at a 42.2% rate, which is 4.2 percentage points above the next team.
“I’m not the dumbest person in the world, taught calculus. So I can do a little bit of second grade math,” Mills joked. “If you just think about it — 43% from three. We don’t have anybody on our team who shoots 43% from three, and Kenyon Giles can shoot. Collectively, as a unit, they’re better than anybody that we have individually.”
Mills explained that Tulsa is both good at creating open looks and making tough shots. He specifically mentioned Miles Barnstable, David Green and Ade Popoola as players for the Golden Hurricane who can convert on difficult looks.
“Being able to contain those guys is pretty important,” Mills said.
Green leads Tulsa with 16.4 points per game and also secures the most rebounds on the team with 4.9 per game. On top of this, he shoots 52.6 percent from the field. It will be a challenge for the Shockers to slow him down.
Barnstable is another threat, serving as an elite shooter. He contributes greatly to the Golden Hurricane’s impressive shooting numbers with a 94.7 free throw percentage and connects on 43.9 percent of triples.
“We need to make sure that we’re able to contain the basketball and then limit them to one shot,” Mills said. “That’s easier said than done, but we’ll have to rotate a lot of guys on a lot of different personnel.”
WSU will definitely be tested defensively at the Reynolds Center. However, the Shockers have a chance to take down one of the top teams in the conference — and most high-powered offenses in the country.
How Wichita State must carry itself, literally
After the Shockers blew an 18-point second-half lead and headed into overtime against Charlotte Jan. 3, it was apparent that they weren’t in the right frame of mind. Then another extra period happened.
The body language of a winning team wasn’t there. WSU lost in double overtime during a game in which there were 204 points combined.
But a similar scenario arose against South Florida just two weeks later, when the Shockers watched a 15-point lead flip to a 13-point deficit. They clawed back to force their fourth overtime period of the season and came out revived.
WSU escaped that game against the Bulls and left Tampa with an 86-85 win, which jumpstarted its three-game win streak. The Shockers’ response between the two contests didn’t get lost on Mills.
“Just go watch the body language of us playing Charlotte and going to overtime and then watch the body language of us playing South Florida,” Mills said. “Two totally different body languages. That attitude (of) ‘man, I can’t believe we have to play five more minutes, and we squandered an 18-point lead,’ versus ‘Man you know what? We just squandered a 28-point turnaround. We were up 15, they go up 13.’
“You can sit around and be disappointed all you want … you’re going to lose leads. It’s going to happen in the nature (of the game).
“But how you respond to it is what really, really matters. You have to teach guys what winning looks like. We have to go back, and we have to show them how winning teams respond. I would tell you that our body language has been night-and-day better.”
Since that grind-it-out road win, the Shockers have come out and punched teams from the opening tipoff.
East Carolina fell behind by 18 points early and couldn’t recover. Memphis was suffocated and WSU went up by 21 in the first half to claim its biggest win over the Tigers since before Penny Hardaway was their coach.
Another potent pop against one of America’s — not just the American’s — hottest teams could carry the Shockers headed into February.
“You do have to play hard,” Mills said. “None of this stuff matters stylistically if you don’t know how to play hard. We know who we are offensively, and we know what we’re doing defensively. You can’t play hard unless you know what you’re doing.”
Game info
What: Tulsa (18-3, 6-2) vs. Wichita State (13-8, 5-3)
When: Sunday, Feb. 1 at 1 p.m. CT
Where: Donald W. Reynolds Center (8,355), Tulsa, Okla.
How to watch: ESPNU, Joe Malfa (pbp) & Bryndon Manzer (analyst)
How to listen: KEYN (103.7 FM), Mike Kennedy (pbp) & Bob Hull (analyst)
Probable starters
WSU
- Karon Boyd, forward (11.2 ppg, 5.9 rpg, 1.2 apg)
- Kenyon Giles, guard (18.2 ppg, 2.3 rpg, 1.7 apg)
- Dillon Battie, forward (5.3 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 0.3 apg)
- Mike Gray Jr., guard (9.4 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 2.0 apg)
- Emmanuel Okorafor, center (6.4 ppg, 5.1 rpg, 0.5 apg)
Tulsa
- Tylen Riley, guard (14.4 ppg, 3.6 rpg, 3.9 apg)
- Miles Barnstable, guard (15.0 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 1.6 apg)
- Ade Popoola, guard (9.0 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 1.6 apg)
- David Green, forward (16.4 ppg, 4.9 rpg, 1.5 apg)
- Tyler Behrend, center (6.2 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 1.7 apg)
*Probable starters information comes from the most recent lineup in the teams’ notes provided before the game.
American Conference standings
- Charlotte: 7-2 (13-9)
- Tulsa: 6-2 (18-3)
- South Florida: 6-2 (14-7)
- Florida Atlantic: 6-3 (14-8)
- Temple: 5-3 (13-8)
- Wichita State: 5-3 (13-8)
- Memphis: 5-3 (10-10)
- UAB: 4-4 (13-8)
- North Texas: 3-5 (12-9)
- Tulane: 3-5 (12-9)
- Rice: 3-6 (9-13)
- East Carolina: 1-7 (6-15)
- UTSA: 0-9 (4-17)
