WICHITA, Kan. _ After a no-energy showing in its road loss at Temple on Wednesday, two days off and a return home didn't solve those issues for the Wichita State men's basketball team against Houston on Saturday.
The Shockers were once again stagnant on offense, lacking crisp movement, cutting, passing and screening. That led to a lot of dribbling and a lot of forced, contested and missed shots.
Add it all up and it resulted in a rare double-digit loss at Koch Arena, as the 16th-ranked Shockers lost, 65-54, to Houston in their second defeat of the week. WSU dropped to 15-3 overall and 3-2 in American Athletic Conference play, while Houston improved to 14-4 overall and 4-1 in conference play.
"I don't know what's crept into the ointment, like a fly in the ointment," WSU coach Gregg Marshall said. "All I can say is that I've told them, 'You guys have got to get over your feelings. If you're worried about you and you're worried about how many points you're scoring or how many shots you're getting or how many minutes you're getting, then that's not healthy. And we've got a lot of guys doing that. I feel that and I know that.
"Until we work that out, we're not going to be as good as we can be. But we've got more things going on behind the scenes that I'm not familiar with and it's spread. It's like a crab grass in your beautiful lawn."
WSU's offense finished shooting 30.4% (17 of 56) from the field, 28% (7 of 25) on 3-pointers and 54.2% (13 of 24) from the free-throw line. WSU actually outrebounded Houston, which entered as the No. 1-ranked offensive rebounding team in the country, in offensive rebounds, 14-8. But ice-cold shooting torpedoed any chance of WSU winning on Saturday.
The Shockers only had one scorer reach double-digits with Tyson Etienne, who scored 10. Jamarius Burton scored nine, but did so with nine shots, while Jaime Echenique added eight points and six rebounds and Erik Stevenson had seven points. Houston, which shot 42.9% from the field, had four in double-digits, led by Fabian White Jr. with 14 points.
"We saw a number (ranking) by our name when we were watching film and we were reading our press and drinking the Kool-Aid," Stevenson said. "We've got to get back to being the hungry dogs when we weren't ranked, weren't being talked about."
Marshall said the team had a long meeting in the locker room following the loss. Marshall confronted the players about their lack of energy and effort the last two games and asked how he could help. Frustrations were vented and WSU's team leaders said their piece. It remains to be seen how the team responds, but the issues were addressed after the loss.
"Do we want coach to do something different? Do we need to do something different?" Stevenson said. "(Something different) obviously needs to happen. We're going to figure it out. We've got to look in the mirror and take it like a man. We're still a young team, but it's time for us to grow up. We have some adversity now, so how are we going to handle that?"
The Koch Arena crowd sat in stunned silence as they watched Houston turn a 10-point halftime lead into a 22-point advantage, 47-25, within six minutes. Up until that point, it had been an even more lifeless performance by WSU's offense, which produced 25 points in the first 26 minutes of the game.
But WSU at least showed some fight. Grant Sherfield drilled a 3, then Stevenson followed suit with a 3 of his own to trim the deficit to 49-33 with 11 minutes, 24 seconds remaining. That set up for a frenetic final 11 minutes of the game, as WSU started gambling with its full-court press and pushing the tempo.
The Shockers' final push came late when they produced a defensive stand, then Etienne drilled a quick 3-pointer to trim Houston's lead to 59-50 with 1:58 remaining. It was the first time WSU had come within single-digits the entire second half, but the Shockers would not come closer than nine after that.
"There's a lot more standing around," Burton said. "We've got to keep the ball moving, players moving even if they don't have the ball. I feel like right now we're stagnant and we just need to keep the ball moving."
Marshall said after the Temple loss that it looked to him like his team was "sleepwalking." And that's exactly how the Shockers looked in the first half against Houston, too.
A prime example was when Sherfield sent a one-handed pass to the sideline without urgency that was picked off by Houston's Nate Hinton and turned into an easy dunk at the other end that gave Houston a 17-10 lead with 12:33 remaining.
Really WSU's only rally of the first half came with a 7-0 spurt midway through that trimmed Houston's lead to 23-22 with 6:23 remaining. WSU ran a baseline out-of-bounds play for a Etienne 3-pointer in the corner, then Houston turned the ball over immediately. On the ensuing possession, Isaiah Poor Bear-Chandler made his first jumper of the season to cap the rally and force a Houston timeout.
With the crowd engaged and looking for a defensive stop and a go-ahead score to explode, WSU could not deliver. In fact, the Shockers followed with some of their most brutal basketball of the half.
WSU missed four straight shots _ two of them blocked and the other two forced to beat the shot clock _ and watched as Houston scored all four times down in reeling off eight straight points for a 33-24 lead with 3:29 remaining.
Houston took a 35-25 lead into halftime, as the Shockers shot 28.6% from the field, 22.2% on 2-pointers and 41.7% on free throws.
"We both have good teams, but we're both kinda young," said Houston coach Kelvin Sampson. "They have some great wins and during a season, you're going to have some ups and downs, especially if you're young."
