Spurned by the NCAA Tournament last March, Wichita State made the most of their NIT opportunity by making it to New York City for the finals, and then winning the championship. As Head Coach Gregg Marshall told WBR at the Valley’s media day last week, he hopes the experience pays dividends.
“If recruits were watching our home games early in the tournament, they saw a place that’s rabid about college basketball. It was an infomercial for our program showing off crowd support, crowd noise, kids playing the game the right way, sharing the basketball, playing team basketball, and not worrying about who the leading scorer was, but how many we won by.”
Had the Shockers finished off a would-be victory over UCONN in the EA Sports Maui Invitational last year, they might have been in the NCAA Tourney instead of the NIT. They also dropped a hard-fought game to VCU in BracketBusters, meaning they lost games to two of the Final Four after leading both for large chunks of the game. Marshall told us, “The way the UCONN game finished altered the college basketball season. We should have won the game. On that given day in Maui, we were as good or better than Connecticut.”
The loss to VCU was hard to swallow at the time, and even moreso when VCU took one of the last at-large spots and played themselves “in” to the tournament with an exciting Opening Round win.
“We knew we were pretty good. But what we didn’t do was win the game against Southern Illinois at home and we got upset in the conference tournament to a team that was hot, Indiana State.
As a coach, there’s so many variables that you can’t control — whistles, what the national media think of you or of your league or of your team — but we can control who we recruit, how hard we coach, who we schedule, and then preparing to win those games. We have to control those things to the best of our ability, and put our student athletes and our teams in position to win as many games pre-conference. Unless someone figures out why we’re not getting more opportunities, and has the key to unlock that door, we just have to win more games in the pre-conference and if everyone does that then we’ll have an opportunity to play higher rated RPI teams within our conference schedule.”
Five seniors are gone from the 29-8 NIT champion of a year ago, including leading scorer and first-team All MVC big man J.T. Durley. However, the next five leading scorers after Durley all return, so there’s plenty of firepower left at Marshall’s disposal.
“Practice has been up and down, as you’d expect this time of year. We’ve had some good ones and some not so good ones. We’re trying to mix seven guys that played a lot for us last year with a group of approximately seven newcomers, so we’ve got the veterans and we’ve got the newbies and it’s an interesting mix sometimes.”
Toure’ Murry averaged 9.4 points, 4.5 rebounds and 3.4 assists a game last year for the Shockers, and the 6’5″ senior is a preseason first team All-MVC pick. He had a strong finish to last season, raising his average to 10.6 points in the five NIT games, making 20 of his 40 shots in the tourney.
“He’s been a big force for us for three years. He’s played a lot of different positions and done a lot of things well. He can score off the bounce. He can score off the bench. He can rebound and push the ball. He’s got great size and athleticism. He’s a conscientious defender — he looks at it as an important phase of his game, and doesn’t just do it because he has to.”
Murry’s backcourt mate David Kyles also returns. Another senior, Kyles started 21 of the 37 games a year ago and averaged 9.3 points a game. He was their leading scorer for the first 20 games of the season, and his 74 three-point makes is second on the all-time WSU single season list.
“David is an explosive athlete. I thought one of the greatest dunks I’ve seen in years was his dunk against Washington State in the NIT semifinals. He can really get up. He can really run the court. And he can really shoot the ball.”
Also back is center Garrett Stutz, who was named to the NIT All-Tourney team after averaging 16 points and 6 boards in the games as MSG, including a 24-point 11-rebound performance in their semifinal win over Washington State. His biggest problem, as anyone who’s watched him play will tell you, is staying out of foul trouble — undoubtedly his per-game averages of 7.2 points, 3.5 rebounds and 14.5 minutes played would be higher if he could just stay on the court.
“Garrett simply has to play more for us this year and stay out of foul trouble. He can play on the perimeter — he hit a three-pointer to beat LSU at the buzzer. Garrett has great hands, great skills, he can shoot the ball, and he’s got good moves in the post. But he’s got to cut down on his fouls.”
MVC Sixth Man of the Year Ben Smith returns for his senior season after averaging 6.7 points, 2.2 rebounds and 16.5 minutes off the bench, platooning with Graham Hatch. The small forward spot is all Smith’s now, and Marshall told us, “He’s a sniper and a great rebounder for his size. He got better on the defensive end last year and continues to work.”
The Shockers were relatively healthy when WBR spoke to Coach Marshall last Tuesday in St. Louis, but two days later Toure’ Murry was fouled hard going up for a dunk at Shocker Madness, their season kickoff event. Murry suffered a collapsed lung and will be sidelined for a week to ten days.
Marshall was enthusiastic about the league’s new TV deal, announced at media day, and said he discussed the particulars with commissioner Doug Elgin to find out how it might benefit his program.
“I talked to Doug (Elgin) about what was different, and I think it’s great. Being on television is very important for us, and however many times, however we can be on television is advantageous. But I just didn’t know how it compared to last year’s contract, and whether going forward if it was worse, the same or better. He assured me that it was better, especially financially for the league, so it’s good. Anytime we can improve ourselves and improve our exposure for our student athletes and our great arenas and crowds I think it’s a positive.”
Wichita State finished a close second to Missouri State a year ago, and is picked a close second behind Creighton this year in the preseason poll. Luckily for them, it’s a season where many prognosticators believe the Valley will get multiple bids to the NCAA Tournament, so a second place finish could well earn them an at-large bid. Anything less than that will likely be disappointing, given their NIT championship last spring.