2020-21 Expectations for Shocker Basketball – “Way-To-Early Springtime Edition”

[WuShock Reaper]

Well…what do you think? Do you have enough clairvoyance or are your crystal balls filled with sufficient things-to-come, to tell you how the next 12 months will unfold?

What do we know now?
Graduations = Jaime Echenique
Transfers Out = Jamarius Burton, Tate Busse, Noah Fernandes, DeAntoni Gordon, Grant Sherfield, Erik Stevenson, Morris Udeze
Transfers In = JaDun Michael
Non-conference Schedule = Battle of Atlantis Tournament, @Mississippi, vs Oklahoma State, vs Western Kentucky, with 7 more to be determined
Conference Schedule = probably be predicted to finish 4^th thru 6^th, so a schedule similar 2019-20 is likely for the upcoming season.

Here is how we vote two years ago:
20% - Full Steam Ahead (It’s all rainbows and unicorns on the horizon)
49% - Port of Call Needed (Change in scheduled Itinerary to board new passengers)
11% - All Stop (Someone get down to the engine room to see what just happened)
11% - Taking on Water (Need to find a safe harbor for needed minor repairs)
9% - SOS Full Panic (I’m putting on a life preserver and heading with the rats)

[WuShock Reaper]

[WuShock Reaper]

[WuShock Reaper]

[Woodrow]

I expect to hear some good news about incoming guys but it's taking way too long.

[Veritas]

Is that Conner Frankamp?

[pie n eye]

I expect to hear some good news about incoming guys but it's taking way too long.

Get that tablet out coach and take these kids on a virtual tour!

[Woodrow]

We are at 7 scholarship players for next year right now. I hope we only add 5 and leave a scholarship available for awhile. You never know when an unexpected opportunity will open up and we might be able to snag a really good one. One of our problems this year was we had 13 guys who all expected to play. An impossible situation in the AAC. We had the luxury in the MVC of getting the end of bench guys a decent amount of playing time. That's not going to happen in this conference.

[1972Shocker]

I expect to hear some good news about incoming guys but it's taking way too long.

Recruiting is currently in a dead period. They can communicate with recruits by telephone, email, text, snail mail, etc. but no face-to-face to contact. Not even if they maintain a distance of 6 feet.

[WuShock Reaper]

Wichita State Basketball: 2019-20 season overview of the Shockers - FanSided Sports

by John Vaccaro
Posted: 03/20/20, 8:30am cst

https://bustingbrackets.com/2020/03/20/wichita-state-basketball-2019-20-season-overview-shockers/

"This Wichita State basketball season was a tale of two teams. What’s to make of the Shockers overall in 2019-20?

The first half of the year for Wichita State Basketball went exactly according to plan. The Shockers went 11-1 in November and December, with the only loss coming against West Virginia. Then they won their first four games in January, including three in conference, to run that record to 15-1. They looked like a team prepared to win their conference en route to an NCAA tournament run. Then things started to go south for them. They dropped their first conference game at Temple, which by itself wasn’t too much to worry about because of the way that many top teams were struggling to win on the road. Then they returned home and were dismantled by Houston. Those two losses were the start of a 2-5 run that dropped them way down in the AAC standings and in the seedings of bracketologists everywhere.

They closed the season winning 5 of their last 8 to keep their NCAA hopes alive and get themselves the 4th seed in an AAC tournament that never ended up happening. If the NCAA tournament had been played, we likely would have seen the Shockers make an early exit. They looked set to earn an 11 seed, and probably would have gotten a tough 6 seed as their opponent. In the Busting Brackets NCAA Tournament, that opponent was Virginia, who was picked to advance past the Shockers. If the game had actually happened, that still should have been the result.

Key Players
Jaime Echenique, C, Sr.
By the end of the year, there was no question about who the most important player was for the Shockers. Jaime Echenique was 4th in the conference in blocks, 6th in rebounds, and led the Shockers in scoring. He was easily the most consistent contributor on the squad and he gave the team something else nobody else could. He gave them an inside presence. The guards struggled to regularly get to the basket throughout the year, which meant that Echenique had to be the player to force the defense to collapse. He was fantastic throughout the year and was really one of the only players that it always felt like the Shockers could always depend on.

Jamarius Burton, G, Soph.
When the Shocker offense started to tail off in the middle of the season, Jamarius Burton was the player who stepped up. He was only 3rd on the team in scoring for the year as a whole, but he had a much bigger role down the stretch. He was regularly the player the Shockers turned to late in games when they needed a bucket. He was one of the players that kept the Shockers alive when they started to struggle and he will definitely be missed next season.

Dexter Dennis, G, Soph.
While Jamarius Burton was the player that the Shockers turned to more regularly, Dexter Dennis consistently knocked down big shots late in games for Wichita State. He was a big reason why they had a lead late against Cincinnati and came up huge during the comeback win against SMU. For most of the second half of the season, if somebody hit a late 3 for the Shockers, it was Dexter Dennis. Hopefully, he sticks around for next season because he looks like he has the tools to be the leader of this team next year.

The Lows of the season
Both Games Against Houston
I could have separated these games into two separate lows, but I think they should be lumped together so we don’t have to spend too much time reliving how awful Wichita State was against Houston this season....

Loss To Temple
This is where Wichita State’s problems began to catch up with them....

Back-To-Back Buzzer Beater Losses
Neither of these games was a particularly bad performance from the Shockers, but suffering back to back buzzer-beating losses at a time when they needed some strong performances to bolster their resume was a tough pill to swallow....

The Highs of the season
Comeback Against SMU
At the end of the year, the moments truly worth celebrating were becoming less and less common for the Shockers. However, that didn’t stop them from pulling off one of the best comebacks of the season in their game at SMU. It looked like Wichita State’s tourney hopes were about to come to an end when they fell behind by 24 points with just under 15 minutes left in the game. Then the Shockers went on an incredible 32-8 run to pull themselves level with SMU and were finally able to pull into the lead with 1:14 left. They ended up winning the game by 4, keeping their hopes of an at-large bid alive...

Win Over Memphis
This was the game that really put Wichita State on the national radar. It wasn’t just that the Shockers won this game, but the way they handled a Memphis team that had only been beaten by Georgia when they were shorthanded and by Oregon in Portland. The final score really just doesn’t do this win justice....

Beating Oklahoma
This wasn’t exactly a huge win for the Shocker resume this season. They were favored to win at home and Oklahoma wasn’t exactly a team that was expected to achieve too much this year. However, this was one of their better wins during the non-conference schedule, and there was a little bit of added motivation for this one. Oklahoma featured former Shocker Austin Reaves as one of their starters. Any time you get to take on a player that left for greener pastures it’s nice to get the spite win, especially with a player like Reaves who played big minutes early in his career and was a key piece of Wichita State’s future plans....

Evaluating The Season
It’s kind of difficult to evaluate this Wichita State basketball season. By most standards, it was absolutely a success. The Shockers put themselves in position to make the NCAA tournament field and obviously improved from last season when they needed a late surge to secure a spot in the NIT. However, I can’t help but feel like this team fell short of what they should have achieved....I would still call the season a success, but it really feels like we should have gotten more out of this Shocker squad.

2020-21 Outlook
Things look pretty bleak for the Shockers right now. Replacing senior Jaime Echenique was already going to be a tough task for Wichita State, but now they also have the added challenge of replacing 7 transferring players. Those players include Grant Sherfield, Erik Stevenson, Morris Udeze, and Jamarius Burton. That means the Shockers will need to replace 4 of their top 5 scorers next season and their top 2 centers.

The other three are Noah Fernandes, DeAntoni Gordon, and Tate Busse, who were all freshmen this season and could have helped fill the void left by all of the other departures next year. In particular, Fernandes deciding to move on from Wichita is disappointing because he was a player the Gregg Marshall tried to work into the rotation at times during the season.

It’s impossible to tell what is going to happen with the Shockers next year until we see who they get to replace all of these players, but it certainly doesn’t look good. When I’ve seen this kind of mass exodus at other mid-majors they have been very difficult to recover from. New Mexico still hasn’t completely recovered from the flood of transfers that led to Craig Neal’s firing and UNLV just started turning their program around again after their departures from a few years ago

Hopefully, the Shockers can still secure a strong incoming class of Freshman and some transfers to give the team experience to lean on. Otherwise, we might see the worst season in years from the Shockers next season."

[MrsHenryLevitt]

How Dickensian!

[Awesome Sauce Malone]

Recruiting is currently in a dead period. They can communicate with recruits by telephone, email, text, snail mail, etc. but no face-to-face to contact. Not even if they maintain a distance of 6 feet.

Dead period means absolutely no contact.

Edit.. NVM you right.

[LoneStar48]

"It’s impossible to tell what is going to happen with the Shockers next year until we see who they get to replace all of these players, but it certainly doesn’t look good. When I’ve seen this kind of mass exodus at other mid-majors they have been very difficult to recover from. New Mexico still hasn’t completely recovered from the flood of transfers that led to Craig Neal’s firing and UNLV just started turning their program around again after their departures from a few years ago"

I sure hope we don't get slotted back to that level in the eyes of non-Shocker fans.

[AZ Shocker]

I'm still curious if Memphis, Cincinnati and possible even Houston are considered mid-majors by national media.

[Shockm]

"It’s impossible to tell what is going to happen with the Shockers next year until we see who they get to replace all of these players, but it certainly doesn’t look good. When I’ve seen this kind of mass exodus at other mid-majors they have been very difficult to recover from. New Mexico still hasn’t completely recovered from the flood of transfers that led to Craig Neal’s firing and UNLV just started turn.

We have a better reputation than UNLV and New Mexico. I’m not sure of what the result will be but it may be better than how you view your Shox as just any M/M. Some even have been considered us a Major.