Wichita State senior Carl Hall entered Wednesday’s contest with Evansville having attempted only one 3-pointer in two years at WSU, a miss. 

So it was surprising when it was Hall—instead of Tekele Cotton—that took the potential game tying 3-pointer at the buzzer, a shot that clanked off the rim and left WSU wondering what happened. 

“It was open originally. Then somehow they got back to (Cotton) and he couldn’t get free so Carl had to end up taking the shot,” WSU coach Gregg Marshall said. “That’s the play I called and it wasn’t very successful.”

The result was a 59-56 loss for the Shockers on senior night, a game that could have clinched at least a share of the Missouri Valley Conference title. 

“Disappointing is an understatement,” Marshall said. “I don’t know if there have been any other senior nights quite like this in my career.”

The stage was set for the Shockers to bring home back-to-back conference titles for the first time since the 60’s with pre-game introductions of their four seniors—Hall, Demetric Willliams, Malcolm Armstead and Ehimen Orukpe. 

But once the game got underway, WSU quickly found itself looking for something to grab on to when Evansville jumped out to a 19-6 lead. 

“There were a lot of emotions going around,” Williams said. “Started off slow, couldn’t really get a handle on the ball.”

WSU was able to finally match Evansville (17-13, 9-8 MVC) basket for basket in the latter part of the first half, but never made any serious headway and trailed 38-28 at halftime. 

“They were on fire in the first half and we weren’t doing enough to break their rhythm,” Marshall said. “We lost the game because they made a lot of shots in the first half. We came out a little flat.”

Cotton opened the second half with a 3-pointer, the start of a 14-4 Shocker run that made it 42-all with 13:06 to play. 

The Shockers had three possessions to take the lead, but could never capitalize, turning the ball over three times. Jordan Nelson finally broke the deadlock with a Purple Aces’ 3-pointer. 

Evansville lead by five with 10:20 to go when WSU made its best run, one that included back-to-back dunks by Hall and Cleanthony Early in transition. 

Armstead’s 3-pointer with 8:05 remaining gave WSU its largest lead of the game at 53-49. 

“We were starting to point fingers a little bit right there,” Evansville coach Marty Simmons said. “We bent there in the second half, but didn’t break.”

The Purple Aces responded with a 7-0 run and kept WSU from scoring in the final 3:28 to pull the season sweep of the Shockers. Evansville defeated WSU 71-67 on Jan. 13. 

“They’ve built something pretty special here and it’s not an easy place to win,” Simmons said. “They missed some shots they normally make, no doubt about it.”

Instead of clinching a share of the MVC title, the loss sends the Shockers into a tie with Creighton for first place in the conference with one game to go. 

Creighton (23-7, 12-5 MVC) will host WSU (24-6, 12-5 MVC) on Saturday in both team’s season finale, a game that will decide the outright conference winner. 

“Obviously we have a huge one Saturday in Omaha,” Marshall said. “You aren’t going to get this one back. You have to learn from it and try to win the next couple.”

Saturday’s game begins at 1 p.m.