ST. LOUIS—Wichita State hasn’t seen too many Sundays at the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament, having played in the championship game only once since it moved to St. Louis—a loss to Northern Iowa in 2010. 

But after Saturday’s 66-51 semifinal win over Illinois State, the Shockers are in position to win their first conference tournament title since 1987.

“Just real excited to move on to Sunday,” WSU coach Gregg Marshall said. “This is a defensive effort that can get you to a championship game and hopefully help win it.”

The defense was key in Saturday’s win over the Redbirds. Illinois State was held to 29 percent shooting and didn’t get a field goal until the 7:25 mark of the first half.

WSU led 15-0 and the first six ISU points came from the foul line.

“Defense came out early,” said WSU guard Malcolm Armstead, who had three steals in the first 3:03 of the game. “Knew I had to set the tone defensively to get going. I knew if I came out and was aggressive on defense, it would carry over and get transition buckets for us.”

Leading 22-6, WSU’s defense finally let up late in the first half. In fact, so did the offense.

ISU scored the game’s next 16 points to tie the game at 22, and eventually took the lead with 33 seconds to play in the half after Jackie Carmichael’s jumper.

A 3-pointer by Fred Van Vleet in the closing seconds gave WSU a 26-24 halftime lead.

“We know that a good team’s going to make runs, so you got to be able to control and stay composed at the time,” Armstead said about the finish to the first half. “Defense and rebounding, that was our mind frame going into the game. We knew that would get us further.”

A quick Tyler Brown 3-pointer to open the second half gave ISU a 27-26 lead, its final lead of the night.

WSU answered and would eventually pull away and lead by as many as 17 points with 2:32 to play.

Carl Hall led WSU with 16 points and eight rebounds, while Armstead finished with 15 points and nine rebounds. Carmichael led all players with 22 points.

“The reason they went on their run, not only were we not defending as well as we had been, we were not as good offensively either,” Marshall said. “Then they turned it around, took their run, and then we reestablished early in the second half.”

The win puts the Shockers in Sunday’s championship game against regular-season MVC champion Creighton. The Bluejays defeated Indiana State 64-43 on Saturday.

Creighton and WSU split their season meetings, with WSU winning in Wichita 67-64 on Jan. 19, while the Bluejays took the season finale on March 2 in Omaha, 91-79.

Creighton has won the MVC Tournament eight times since 1991, including a season ago when it defeated Illinois State in the finals.

“Play hard and execute,” Hall said about their plan to beat Creighton. “Creighton is a very good team. If you don’t play good on defense, they make you pay. We’ll concentrate on executing and not leaving shooters open.”

Sunday’s championship game tips off at 1 p.m. and can be seen nationally on CBS.