Wichita State men’s basketball expected to receive boost for first AAC tournament game

It’s easy for fans of the Wichita State men’s basketball team to skip ahead in the American Athletic Conference tournament bracket and project an easy victory for the Shockers in the opening round against Tulsa.

WSU’s rivals down south have struggled mightily in the first season under Eric Konkol, as the Golden Hurricane limp into Fort Worth with a 5-24 record, a league-worst 1-17 mark in conference play and missing a handful of their players. WSU is considered 13-point favorites in the game, per KenPom.

But the Shocker players and coaches are doing anything but overlooking Tulsa, which is a different team but still the same program that ended their season abruptly in the opening round of last year’s conference tournament.

The two square off in the 6-vs-11 matchup at 6 p.m. Thursday at Dickies Arena with the game broadcast on ESPNU. The winner advances to face No. 3 seed Tulane in Friday’s 8 p.m. quarterfinal.

“All you can do is take it one game at a time,” WSU head coach Isaac Brown said. “You’ve got to win that first game in order to survive, so we’re locked in and focused on Tulsa. We played well the first two times we played them, but it only takes that one loss to end your season. We’re focused on our scouting report and our game plan and the coaches have done a good job preparing the players for that. We had a good practice, a good shootaround. We’re ready.”

WSU rallied from a 16-point deficit in its first meeting against Tulsa at Koch Arena for a 73-69 victory, then handled the Golden Hurricane much easier in a 86-75 win in Tulsa that saw the Shockers build a 24-point lead down the stretch.

Tulsa has also been playing without leading scorer Sam Griffin, who has missed the last three games due to injury, and fellow starters Keyshawn Embery-Simpson, who has also missed three straight games, and Anthony Pritchard, who took a leave of absence from the program in February.

WSU is expected to receive a boost with the return of its own leading scorer, 6-foot-7 junior Jaykwon Walton, who missed the previous two games due to COVID-19 protocol.

“That alone is going to bring back that fire we were having before he (missed time),” said WSU senior point guard Craig Porter, who was named third team all-conference by AAC coaches on Wednesday. “He’s one of those players who knows how to insert himself into a game, whether it’s scoring, rebounding or defending. He’s a high-level player and something we definitely need back.”

Given Tulsa’s current state, it is hard for fans not to look ahead and begin preparing for a quarterfinal showdown against Tulane, a team that Shockers just beat 83-76 in New Orleans less than two weeks ago.

In order to make a deep run in the AAC tournament, WSU will have to do something no other Shocker team has done before (reach the AAC tournament finals) and something this year’s iteration has yet to do (win three games in a row).

“I think the biggest thing that has stopped us from making those streaks is offensively we didn’t score the basketball,” Brown said. “You’ve got to take care of the basketball. You can’t turn it over. If we can be consistent in our scoring and not turn it over, I think we’ll definitely rebound and play with toughness. So on the offensive side, we just got to value the basketball and not turn it over. If you score 70-plus points, then you’re going to have a chance to win games in the tournament.”