TAMPA, Fla. It wasnt pretty and it took a banked-in shot or two, but the Wichita State mens basketball team ended its two-game slide with a 56-43 victory over South Florida on Tuesday at the Yuengling Center.
The Shockers improved to 16-3 overall and moved into a tie for fourth place in the American Athletic Conference at 4-2, while South Florida (8-11, 1-5 American) remained in last place. After losing, 54-41, in Tampa last year, WSU has now won in all but two venues in the American since joining the conference three seasons ago.
One year after WSU finished with just 15 first-half points at the Yuengling Center, the Shockers had an eerie start to their game on Tuesday. WSU missed its first seven shots of the game and was scoreless in its first nine possessions, failing to score until nearly six minutes into the game when Wade scored a layup with 14:14 remaining.
While WSUs offense never hit its stride, the defense was superb and this time it was the Shockers who held South Florida to a miserable offensive performance. WSU limited USF to 43 points, the fewest since holding South Carolina State to 39 in an 85-39 win on Nov. 11, 2016, and to 12 field goals, the fewest since holding Drake to 11 field goals in a 74-48 win on Feb. 9, 2016.
Were happy to be back in the win column, WSU coach Gregg Marshall said. Coming here last year was a house of horrors for us. Tonight we changed a couple things up to try to get us more clean looks and we were able to do that. We shot it a little better than the last two outings. The difference in the game was our defense. We held them to 12 baskets and youre going to win a lot of college basketball games when you hold the other team to 12 baskets.
Freshman Tyson Etienne led WSU in scoring with 13 points, while Dexter Dennis had 12 points on four 3-pointers, the most hes made in his sophomore season since the season opener. Jaime Echenique added nine points, five rebounds and two blocks, while Trey Wade finished with six points and seven rebounds.
For the first time in conference play, WSU won the rebounding advantage with a plus-seven effort, 36-29. The Shockers finished with just 11 turnovers against a defense that ranked seventh nationally in forcing turnovers and outscored USF 18-8 in points off turnovers.
With WSU shooting just 36.5% from the field, Dennis said the Shockers had to find other ways to win on the road.
It was hard, but winning is hard, Dennis said. You probably have the ball in your hands maybe three total minutes out of the whole game. So you have to do other things like defense and rebounding and helping teammates. I think we did a good job of that tonight.
Cold shooting from both sides left WSU clinging to a one-point lead, 36-35, midway through the second half. Thats when the Shockers made the game-defining run a 10-0 run over seven minutes to put the game away.
The run was started and ended by 3-pointers from Dennis, both when he was standing open on the wings when WSU pushed the ball. The 10-0 run also included an alley-oop from Grant Sherfield to Echenique for an easy score and two free throws from Etienne.
Just as importantly, WSU held the Bulls scoreless for more than seven minutes that spanned 10 possessions where the Shockers ended five of those possessions by turnovers. That left WSU with a 46-35 lead with less than seven minutes remaining, hardly enough time for the ice-cold offense of USF to make up the difference.
We were giving them one shot, said Marshall, whose team did not allow any second-chance points. We did a very good job on the initial defense and then we were doing a good job boxing out and securing the rebound. Last year they got a lot of second- and third- and fourth-chance opportunities. I know thats a different team for them and a different team for us, but we knew we had to do that because theyre a really tough team.
Despite its slow start in the first half, USF didnt have the offensive firepower to make WSU pay for its poor shooting like Temple and Houston did. After watching the mistakes and lack of energy in its last two games, both losses, Dennis said the players were determined not to let the same things happen again.
After our last practice, I felt like everybody just kind of wanted to forget about those two losses and move on, Dennis said. We won games earlier in the year because of defense and toughness and rebounding and when we watched the last two games on film, we didnt really do any of that at all. We could either turn it around or it was just going to stay the same. We wanted to change.
