Wichita State vs Oklahoma Game Thread

[ShockingButTrue]

I agree with Revenant. No NIT this season. Should be good enough for the NIT next season though. Unfortunately, this season the Shocks are going to act as conference spoilers. Not good enough for the NCAA Tournament or the NIT, but just good enough to eek out a few wins over fellow conference teams that are on the NCAA Tournament bubble, thereby knocking those teams out of contention, and into the NIT. We're about to face some serious hate from the AAC. But hey, look at the bright side; it's not the 1990's.
:encouragement:

This current roster and level of play will be doing good to be a tournament team when they're all seniors, meaning the freshman class that is. NIT in the near future, maybe.

[JVShocker]

Was not a fun game to watch. Shox are woefully short of personnel and probably having some unspoken trust issues. There are not a lot of good passers on the team. Who can anyone trust to catch a pass anyway. I really struggle with the lack of senior leadership. I wish there was some idea of what was going on when we're on the O side of the court. But really the D was just not there. Don't recall the exact score, but Marshall pulled 2 guys that I like to see, and they're playing hard, but to Marshall they didn't do something right. Inserted 2 subs and the deficit quickly bloomed to 20. Not gonna lie, so I'll just say I like a certain type of basketball that a couple of guys Don't play well. Watching the game, all I could think of was I wish I had an APP that told me they weren't in the game, so I could actually watch the game without screaming.

[CBB_Fan]

This was still a winnable game through some time in the second half. Just like in the Baylor game, when we collapsed we stopped playing anything that can be graced with the name of basketball. That's attitude and mentality, not talent.

What I want to see is a team that even when overmatched fights hard to get to rebounds, find open shots, and deny our opponent easy driving lanes. If we had done that this game, we wouldn't have let a 34-42 game slide into a 36-64 game in a matter of 6 minutes and we might even have ended the half-time up. We probably weren't ever going to beat OU with those shooting splits, but that needs to be lesson the team learns from this.

[bleednblackngold]

Unfortunately, our place in the upper tier of college basketball wasn’t on real solid ground (we aren’t a blue blood) and putting us in the position to need a “reset” year is extremely risky and setting us up to have another one in four years is just plain scary. It’s a slippery slope in college athletics and a program like ours has a very small margin of error.

Very poor take. Bad game. Move on. As noted we will have growing pains.

[WSUwatcher]

For all those suffering from hysteria -- and there a number, and you know who you are -- let me just mention that I've seen NBA champions, as well as NCAA champions, lose a game by 30+ points. It's one game, and stuff happens. There probably won't be another time this season that Dennis and SHJ combine to go 0-15 from the field, and you know Marshall isn't going to put up his team with getting outrebounded like that.

The sun will rise tomorrow.

[WUs Your Daddy]

Very poor take. Bad game. Move on. As noted we will have growing pains.

Tell me where I’m wrong.

[bleednblackngold]

Tell me where I’m wrong.

The whole post Debbie Downer! Scary/slippery slope/small margin for error! Have you watched this program over the last ten years? Track record seems fairly good. Most other elite basketball teams have a “down” year on occasion. Have patience bro. I hate losing also but come on! Give it another month then let’s see where we are at

[jcdshocker]

We were bad. Plain and simple. The sun came up this morning and it is a new day. This young team will be a roller coaster ride all year long. I can’t imagine being worse than we were in the second half yesterday. Just like we probably can’t play any better than the first half of the Baylor game.

Have faith true Shocker fans, this team is talented but very inexperienced. We are better than we showed yesterday. And we will bounce back.

[Topshock]

We had a game yesterday? From reading the comment apparently it didn't go very well.

I'm about to get a permanent seat on the Shocker Fever anti SHJ crusade bus. He just doesn't seem to have the ability to excel against the better teams.

Guess it's a sign of the times with OU's Reeves knowing Shocker players and WSU's TA knowing Sooner players in the handshake line.

Like Wudrwu said earlier, it is amazing we haven't had a reloading period for such a long time. It's here now, due to several factors with the departing assistant coach's poor performance's one large reason.

Make no mistake GM will ruthlessly build another top 20 team and enduring games like this will make it all the sweeter when it happens. He will keep the best parts of this team and next years stellar recruiting class and add to it. When he is done the unbalanced classes probably won't be much problem. Thought it was telling in his post game comments when he said we already have two assistants out recruiting and we will find players that can make shots.

[im4wsu]

Thought it was telling in his post game comments when he said we already have two assistants out recruiting and we will find players that can make shots.

Comparing Erik Stevenson's stats for his first D-1 eight games with Conner Frankamp's (greatest shooter the Rug and 3G have ever coached) first D-1 eight games and his first eight games as a Shocker shows two things, CF was not very good his first eight games in D-1 and there was wuite an improvement after maturing a year and a half. If ES works real hard and gets that kind of improvement, let's all hope so!

CFvsES.png

[Dan]

Erik may never be the pure shooter that Conner was, but he’ll be way better as a defender and rebounder.

[pinstripers]

Make no mistake GM will ruthlessly build another top 20 team and enduring games like this will make it all the sweeter when it happens. He will keep the best parts of this team and next years stellar recruiting class and add to it. When he is done the unbalanced classes probably won't be much problem. Thought it was telling in his post game comments when he said we already have two assistants out recruiting and we will find players that can make shots.

Yeah, heard that...........Good Lord I hope we are lookin at a juco or two

[1972Shocker]

When you shoot poorly you tend to look bad. When your shooting is terrible you tend to look terrible.

The Shocks FG%/3PT% over it's last 3 halves of basketball have been 33.3%/11.1%, 28.1%/25.0%, 20.0%/9.1%. That trend is obviously not our friend.

Ironically, the half prior to this stretch the Shocks shot 43.6%/39.1%, played lights out defense and rebounded like men.

Clearly 3G has some great compare and contrast material to show his guys. Whether or not they figure it out remains to be seen. However, they have shown they are capable of playing good basketball. They just have not shown that they can play good basketball consistently. I guess that is what makes for the wild roller coaster ride we were warned was coming.

[Shockm]

I tried to tell everyone that scoring/shooting was our Achilles heel. I thought we’d win 18 games (bottom end). I may have been a little high.

[abdullah_sharif]

oklahoma had this one in the bag when it was 40-30 with 16:58 left in the 2nd half. check out the win probability and look for patterns. i call this one the descending triangle.. the call is on the breakout from support at 9% (probability of shox win).

[GreatWhiteBuffalo]

So is the Thor experiment over? Might seem like an odd question given the thread, but I just can't help but think he is just what he is. Maybe a redshirt this year and hope for the best next year?

Trying to write off this game as young kids not knowing how to win yet...hoping that's all it is.

[1972Shocker]

By Thor I assume you mean Asbjorn. He won't be redshirting this year since he has already played in 7 games unless he has an injury or illness before he plays in 3-4 more games and can qualify for a medical redshirt.

If he was going to redshirt he probably would already have done it. Remember 3G has said he does not dictate redshirts to players. Whether 3G has suggested that who knows.