ESPN's Men's College Basketball Front Page Article WSU

[Ta Town Shocker]

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/

[WstateU]

http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/98636/look-back-look-ahead-missouri-valley

[SHOCKvalue]

Awesome!

[Bluzrover]

Love Brennan's take on the Shox' season. I particularly liked this section:

"Has any team as good as the Shockers suffered so long from such a reputation gap? In October, Wichita State was a nice little post-Final Four story with a great group of returning players and a well-deserved little boost in program profile. In December, after wins over Saint Louis, Tennessee and Alabama, the Shockers were a fun "hey, they'll be favored the rest of the way!" talking point. In January, they were an easy concept to argue against. ("No way they'll get to March unbeaten.") In February, they were already defending themselves from -- or at least being the subject of -- debates about schedule strength, about No. 1 seeds, about their theoretical record in a theoretical Big Ten.
All the while, mind you, competition-adjusted analytics were telling us the Shockers were one of the best five or 10 teams in the country. Not the best, necessarily, but one of the best. And it still took until March to finally prove it.
Weirdly enough, they proved it in a loss. The 40 minutes of basketball that followed Marshall's biblical exhortation was the best of the season, and the best of the tournament -- a tournament that was already better than its own impossibly high standards. (Oh, to relive that first weekend! I'd be willing to part ways with a toe. Maybe two.)
Kentucky 78, Wichita State 76 began with some brilliant Shockers offense, gave us bruising Wildcats rebounding and surprisingly grown-up cohesion, featured an NBA-ready Cleanthony Early in a masterful second half (3s, drives, step-back sticks, you name it), saw Kentucky's Harrison twins control the game with physical thrusts to the rim, and ended with a 25-foot Fred VanVleet jumper on a sideline out of bounds that would have caused us to have a full-blown mental meltdown had it somehow gone in. It's a month later, and we still haven't caught our breath."

[jocoshock]

Love Brennan's take on the Shox' season. I particularly liked this section:

"Has any team as good as the Shockers suffered so long from such a reputation gap? In October, Wichita State was a nice little post-Final Four story with a great group of returning players and a well-deserved little boost in program profile. In December, after wins over Saint Louis, Tennessee and Alabama, the Shockers were a fun "hey, they'll be favored the rest of the way!" talking point. In January, they were an easy concept to argue against. ("No way they'll get to March unbeaten.") In February, they were already defending themselves from -- or at least being the subject of -- debates about schedule strength, about No. 1 seeds, about their theoretical record in a theoretical Big Ten.
All the while, mind you, competition-adjusted analytics were telling us the Shockers were one of the best five or 10 teams in the country. Not the best, necessarily, but one of the best. And it still took until March to finally prove it.
Weirdly enough, they proved it in a loss. The 40 minutes of basketball that followed Marshall's biblical exhortation was the best of the season, and the best of the tournament -- a tournament that was already better than its own impossibly high standards. (Oh, to relive that first weekend! I'd be willing to part ways with a toe. Maybe two.)
Kentucky 78, Wichita State 76 began with some brilliant Shockers offense, gave us bruising Wildcats rebounding and surprisingly grown-up cohesion, featured an NBA-ready Cleanthony Early in a masterful second half (3s, drives, step-back sticks, you name it), saw Kentucky's Harrison twins control the game with physical thrusts to the rim, and ended with a 25-foot Fred VanVleet jumper on a sideline out of bounds that would have caused us to have a full-blown mental meltdown had it somehow gone in. It's a month later, and we still haven't caught our breath."

So incredibly awesome. ..

[1972Shocker]

Good report.

[Bluzrover]

I'm sure I'll go back to this all summer long to remind me just how good our program is these days and in the absence of real basketball news.