When Wichita State women’s basketball has found success this year, it hasn’t looked pretty. The poor-shooting Shockers have grinded out wins through defensive intensity and rebounding.
On Sunday night in the second round of the American Athletic Conference Tournament, the 11th-seeded Shockers finally showed a glimpse of efficient offensive basketball. Then, it all fell apart midway through the game.
WSU ended its season with a loss to the sixth-seeded Tulane University, 69-63.
“I just think the ball didn’t bounce our way today in the second half,” WSU head coach Terry Nooner said. “I think it was a lot of, quite a few loose balls that we made stops and didn’t come up with them, for whatever reasons. But I’m just happy for the fight and the grit that I thought we showed as a team. And our future is bright going forward.”
Wichita State capped its 2024-25 campaign with a 10-22 record, identical to its tally last season. Three of the losses came to the Green Wave, who swept the Shockers.
Tulane came into the game having lost five of its last six games — with the only win coming against WSU. It moves on to face the No. 3 seed University of South Florida on Monday night in the AAC quarterfinals.
Sophomore guard Salese Blow scored 30 points, a career-high and nearly half of Wichita State’s total. She got whatever she wanted offensively: driving, knocking down 3-pointers and even posting up Tulane players.
Blow was noticeably emotional after the game, crying during the handshake line.
“I’ve always been a competitor, like, just growing up, which is how I was raised,” Blow said. “… So this one definitely stings, especially going out (in) our first round.”
On the other end, Tulane graduate student guard Victoria Keenan made shot after shot for the Green Wave, scoring a season-high 26 points on 11 attempts. Keenan was a force every time she received the ball, draining numerous deep 3-point attempts out of nowhere.
Tulane head coach Ashley Langford coached Keenan at Stony Brook University prior to both making the move to Tulane over the offseason. Langford said she was happy for Keenan because she sees how hard the player works.
“She’s the one that’s in the gym multiple times a day getting up shots,” Langford said. “… She’s had some injuries in the past, and, you know, this is her last go round, but she’s only really played, you know, two full seasons of college basketball. So I’m just grateful for her because she deserves it.”
Coming out of her third war this season with the Shockers, Langford gave props to the losing team.
“Kudos to Wichita State,” Langford said. “I thought they played hard. Nooner’s done a great job just keeping them motivated. And they gave us a run for our money tonight.”
The first quarter was fast-paced and high-scoring. The Shockers finished the period on a 12-2 run that culminated in a make on a spinning desperation 3-pointer as the shot clock expired by senior forward Ornella Niankan.
Wichita State went into the quarter timeout fired up and holding a lead, 25-19.
The Shockers’ shot quality declined in the second period, as did its offensive efficiency. Both teams went on a more than two-minute scoring drought midway through the quarter.
Despite the slump, WSU went into the break holding on to the lead, 34-33. The Shockers were able to force turnovers, creating a season-high 13 steals in the game.
Then, Wichita State sleep walked through the beginning of the second half, not scoring for four minutes of game time and allowing Tulane to take full control of the game with a 12-0 run.
Blow identified third quarters as the “achilles heel” of the team, something she noticed even before the season began.
“It’s something that we’ve been (doing) since our foreign trip to the Virgin Islands,” Blow said. “Like, we just come out so flat. It’s just something that we haven’t been able to shake.”
The Shockers frequently took bad shots on the offensive end and couldn’t find the bottom of the net when firing an open look. WSU also committed five turnovers during the first five minutes of the second half.
“We had some unforced turnovers that are, you know, that are uncharacteristic,” Nooner said. “Just throwing the ball away and not making an easy play, which is kind of one of our tenants and things that we talk about all the time.”
WSU rallied early in the fourth quarter, scoring a few second-chance baskets to cut the deficit to three points, 55-52. The momentum was shattered when Keenan was fouled on a 3-point attempt and sank all three shots from the line.
“I think we really stepped up our intensity and our heart and fight, and kind of picked up our pressure a little bit, which was a part of it,” Nooner said. “But all of the games that we played them, we just didn’t finish how we need to finish around the basket.”
After a back-and-forth, both teams went cold, not scoring for more than four minutes. Down by five points, WSU missed chance after chance to close the gap, with players growing more exasperated with each shot that rolled off the rim.
With 47 seconds left, Keenan fittingly hit another deep 3-pointer, signaling the end of WSU’s season.
“That was really kind of like a dagger, because it was a tough shot,” Nooner said. “But she’s made those kind of shots for her team throughout the course of the season, and that was kind of the one that doomed us.”
Nooner said the team’s hustle and defensive effort are solid building blocks for the future — but he expects the returning WSU players to put more work in during the offseason.
“It’s going to be a mindset thing,” Nooner said. “It’s going to be a conditioning thing, and it’s going be a bunch of stuff that you have got to do from June, in July and August, to get yourself prepared so that when we come to these tough matchups, make sure we’ll be getting over the hump.”
