Wichita State vs Marshall Game Thread - First Round NCAA 2018 Tournament

[kochHead]

I don't think I'm buying that part about loving each other. This team had the look and feel of a team with some issues. I also think Kelly earned the right to have an opinion.

I thought the same thing. There were chemistry issues. Not sure about the details, but when egos and expectations don't match reality, it can create conflict. Too bad, because this team had some pieces. Hcgm and staff have to take responsibility for that and correct what can be corrected.

[SweetShocker]

I recognize that McDuffie is a good player, but his chemistry doesn't work with the team. I hope that he returns to work it out since he is nowhere near ready for the NBA.

[SweetShocker]

I thought that nothing could top the poor defense and turnover stench of today's games. Compared to Virginia, Wichita State looked stellar,

[12eagle]

This times 100.

Marshall’s Head Coach gets this. We put a bunch of dudes in the way of our best players. They space the floor and let the best players operate.

Modern basketball 101

[Shockm]

I thought the same thing. There were chemistry issues. Not sure about the details, but when egos and expectations don't match reality, it can create conflict. Too bad, because this team had some pieces. Hcgm and staff have to take responsibility for that and correct what can be corrected.

State the offenders and the evidence you have. I don’t think we have even a close situation to the cheating girl friend problem Turgeon last year. If you have the evidence, show us and we can move on from Coach Marshall, or just shut up.

[Aargh]

The evidence is a lot of players regressing from last year in both performance and execution. I don't know if there are issues between players or between players and coaches or whether we had an unbelievably high number of guys with girlfriend issues.

Lackadaisical performances and the appearance of a couple of players having more or less phoned in a lot of the season usually indicates something is going on.

The same players last year would beat this year's team easily.

[12eagle]

Our guards are slow. They can't stay in front of anybody on D. They can't beat defenders into the paint with the ball, and they can't make moves to get angles to make entry passes to the post.

We can't really play that "spread the floor and let somebody go to work" game. Our guy who can play that type of game with the ball in his hands is SHJ, and there's a reason he wasn't recruited out of HS.

We would never know if our guards could play in a spread the floor system because we shrink the floor by playing 2 non shooters. Watch how fat they sagged off Kelly and Brown. They didn't even guard Kelly at 15 feet. We made the game harder instead of easier for our guards over and over this year. I fear that we will do the same thing next year with 4 centers scheduled to be on the roster.

[proshox]

It is 2010.. We are basically BlackBerry and everyone else is IPhone.

We have a lot of folks who say we were great in the past so why question the future?

The maddening part for me is that we had the horses to do spread offense and switching defense as well as anybody.

[proshox]

When WSU has a chance to blow this game open... HCGM brought both Brown and Rashard in. Neither player was guarded. All hell broke lose.

[12eagle]

Good analogy. And we did this time and time again all year. It was maddening.

[SHOCKvalue]

Really getting tired of agreeing with you.

I can't disagree with Ref, either, but I'll just go ahead and quote you instead.

[proshox]

Ditto

[CBB_Fan]

I don't know about chemistry issues, but there were essentially zero working lineups all year. Every combination we tried was too slow (Conner + Nurger), too limited on offense (Kelly + Brown), too apt to turn the ball over (McDuffie + Willis), too limited on defense (Reaves + Conner), or too cold (Reaves + Shamet). Forget teamwork and working together, most of our lineups actively worked against themselves. They needed spacing and played a lot of non-shooters, needed defense but had too many holes.

Let's face it, there wasn't a single "good" lineup that provided offense, defense, ball security, and shooting. Not one. It is hard to be a great team when every lineup you can throw out has a hole the other team can exploit; by the end of the season they will be exploited. I should not feel sorry for our guys because they are on the wrong side of the court; I actively felt bad Kelly had to play offense this game. Marshall's defense was to let Kelly get the ball and not guard him, and it worked.

[Shockm]

When our shooters were shooting (Landry, Conner, Austin, and Shaq) and our rebounders were rebounding (Shaq, Kelly, and Willis) we were very good. Cincy there, Houston home, Temple home were all examples of when that happened (there may have been a couple more) but we were inconsistent. If Gregg stays, we will have to see if he can bring change.

[shock-it-to-me]

The clear turning point in the game was partway through second half, we had a seven point lead and Connor got a clean like from the right wing that he missed, then we allowed there gangly center to drive the lengtg of the floor for an and one. So instead of a 10 point lead, it was down to four.

[pinstripers]

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/final-minute-marshall-wichita-state-took-ridiculously-long-time-complete-205931356.html

[1972Shocker]

Ray Kinsella quoted author Terence Mann as saying: “There comes a time when all the cosmic tumblers have clicked into place — and the universe opens itself up for a few seconds to show you what's possible.”

This must be what happened for UMBC in their historic upset of Virginia last night,. And maybe all the energy it took to line up these tumblers in favor of UMBC caused a cosmic rift in Shocker karma earlier in the day and had an opposite impact on the Shockers.

In fact, at about the same time as the Shockers were losing to Marshall the Shocker golf team was playing in a tournament in Phoenix where the Shocker's Yannik Emmert, last year's MVC Golfer of the Year was carding a 14-over par including a 9 on the par 3 13th hole. In the second round he shot an even par 71.

In other words sometimes **** happens.

On the other had you could argue that the cosmic tumblers had not lined up all season for this Shocker team. Unfortunately, Stephen Hawking just past away so he's not available to add to the coaching staff so 3G his staff will just have to figure this out on their own as we move forward.

[BostonWu]

Hot shooting guards gave been our Kryptonite this year. Absolutely no answers.

past teams, especially with cotton would not have allowed for that. This team was truly incapable of containing any skilled guards. Javon Carter would have been gunning for 40.

[pinstripers]

It's morning and I just can't get over how bad Landry was.

[OregonShocker]

Yep. Just think how HE feels.

[1979Shocker]

It wasn't just him, but he's the one we look to for having a good game, which he didn't. If those players that didn't hit a 3-pointer during the game had just combined to make 25% of their 3's (4-16) instead of 0% (0-16), we'd be talking about our game today against West Virginia.

[Shox The Revenant]

Today, we're about to see Marshall taken to the wood shed. If and only if the refs allows West Virginia to play their kind of basketball mind you. If they do, West Virginia is going to tug, pull, push and bump the Marshall players all over the court while on D. They're much larger and longer than we are and much more aggressive on D. We would have been a better match up IMO due to our experiences with Cincy and Houston this year but alas, we screwed the pooch. If Marshall is going to win, he's going to have score over 30 and shoot 50 percent against that D.

[im4wsu]

I don't know about chemistry issues, but there were essentially zero working lineups all year. Every combination we tried was too slow (Conner + Nurger), too limited on offense (Kelly + Brown), too apt to turn the ball over (McDuffie + Willis), too limited on defense (Reaves + Conner), or too cold (Reaves + Shamet). Forget teamwork and working together, most of our lineups actively worked against themselves. They needed spacing and played a lot of non-shooters, needed defense but had too many holes.

Let's face it, there wasn't a single "good" lineup that provided offense, defense, ball security, and shooting. Not one. It is hard to be a great team when every lineup you can throw out has a hole the other team can exploit; by the end of the season they will be exploited. I should not feel sorry for our guys because they are on the wrong side of the court; I actively felt bad Kelly had to play offense this game. Marshall's defense was to let Kelly get the ball and not guard him, and it worked.

Kelly, 2 FGA, 4 points, 12 rebounds, 5 assists, 1 steal and 2 turnovers. What shooter are you going to put in the game that will make up for the 12 rebounds and 5 assists?

[proshox]

One that creates a situation where there are fewer rebound opportunities:-)

I love RK, but you can’t have multiple guys on the court that do not threaten the defense. With that stated, RK would play a lot of minutes on any team i coached. He would just be balanced out by at least three and hopefully four weapons.

[proshox]

One additional item... RK is attacking offensive rebounds as if the other team is playing zone offense. He has a clear path to the goal since he isn’t initially guarded off ball.

[1979Shocker]

Kelly, 2 FGA, 4 points, 12 rebounds, 5 assists, 1 steal and 2 turnovers. What shooter are you going to put in the game that will make up for the 12 rebounds and 5 assists?

There was no one with the defensive skills that could replace Kelly. We just needed an offensively skilled Kelly. It seems like every year we have a starter that is limited on offense.

[ShockerMarch]

I joined to share my disappointment with this early loss in March.

In recent years, we have been spoiled with guards to take pride in possessions and defense. This season, our guards haven't been effective in those two tickets. What hurts the most is that we all saw this coming. Our preseason expectations were fair for us to be a champion in March. Those changed in the middle of the season. I read, and you guys posted all season long, just hoping that these two things would get better. For an unknown reason, we didn't fix any of our issues. That is what hurts the most. Secondly, I really feel for Rashard. He gave his best for four years, and we gave him a embarrassing exit in his senior year. He chose us, and I feel like we let him down. Losing our best ball handler this off-season sounds scary. My excitement for next year is only hampered by our leadership from Landry. How can our best player, who hasn't improved ball handling or defense, inspire the younger players to do what he can't? Hopefully Gregg finds a way to figure it all out. I expect WSU to punch another NCAA ticket next year. Go shocks!