Leave it to Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall to compare matrimony to a struggling basketball team that had lost its chemistry.

“We are stuck with one another for better or worse. It’s like a marriage. You’ve got to work it out. You’ve got to figure out what’s going wrong, talk about it,” Marshall said. “It’s very candid and it’s very raw. Sometimes it’s difficult.”

The worse came in the Shockers’ recent three-game losing streak after their 19-2 start to the season. The better came on Saturday when WSU rekindled its on-court passion with a 79-50 torching of Missouri State.

“It was pretty evident that we had lost something. Not only did we stop scoring, but then it affected us on the defensive end and the rebounding end,” Marshall said. “I think that’s hopefully done with and we can move on.”

And sometimes moving on requires looking back. Instead of talking about what was going wrong over their three-game losing streak, Marshall and his staff showed the team clips of earlier wins against quality opponents like Virginia Commonwealth, Iowa, Air Force and Creighton.

What they saw was passion and energy; they saw a team willing to fight for each other the entire game. It was a team that could overcome poor shooting with pure effort to win basketball games.

It was a team the Shockers hadn’t seen for nearly two weeks until Saturday.

“We played as well as we’ve played in a while. It’s indicative with the score,” Marshall said. “Sometimes the ball gets sticky and doesn’t move quite as well as we’d like it to. (Saturday) I thought we had a very nice rhythm and flow.”

The numbers back it up, too. Against MSU on Saturday, WSU had 19 assists to 8 turnovers, shot nearly 50 percent from the field and out-rebounded the Bears by 25.

“We had no answers anywhere for them,” MSU coach Paul Lusk said. “When you are a good team and trying to win a conference championship and are coming off three losses, you are going to be sharper in everything that you do. And that certainly showed.”

Despite the losses, WSU (20-5, 9-4 Missouri Valley Conference) is still tied for the MVC lead with Creighton. Indiana State was the third team tied atop the Valley until its’ 67-65 loss Tuesday night to MSU.