shox stay unbeaten with a 67-48 win over Ill St. to go 16-0. Fred Van Vleet in his last 4 games has 23 assist and 0 turnovers which is crazy. He now leads the nation in Assist/turnover ratio at 4.83 and reminder he is only a sophomore.

It's crazy how smooth FVV is.

His handles and shot are so nice. He's a pretty special player.

I am just enjoying the ride these boys are taking us on. Great season so far. GO SHOX!

What a comeback!!!!!

I thought we had you guys beat damn it.

Good win shox, MSU is pretty good this year

ya you guys definitely have a good squad, and hopefully stays that way. Its much better place when both msu and wsu are both relevant. As for the game, any other team would have folded, but these guys are so tough and calm. They believed they would win even down by 19 with 12 to play.

I expect a deep NCAA run from the Shockers this year. They may be the best team the Valley has ever had. Of course, two of my teams blew large leads in big games in one week. :banghead:

Good luck the rest of the way. I hope this ends up being the Arch Madness final.

I never get to watch the MSU games. Became a fan during the spoonhower era. Took my wife to a game as one of our first dates.

She must have figured it can only get better from here!:D


For some reason, we have had several Missouri State games broadcast up here but not the Shockers. Maybe since the Shocks are ranked so high, ESPN is blocking it for the their "ESPN Full Court." Bastiches!

The Tribune isn't even printing the MO Valley standings, maybe due to the suckage of the 3 Illinois teams, not sure. They printed them last year.

It's a conspiracy!

Shox are now in the top 5 in both the AP and Coaches Poll!!!

Woot! GO SHOX!

Shox get another one last night 72-50 over Bradley and really it wasn't even that close. Now on to Ind St at home on Saturday on ESPN 2 at 3 pm. Ind St is prolly the 2nd best team in the mvc and if they win tonight will bring in a 5-0 conference record. It is also Hall of Fame day, Robert Elmore and Jason Perez are both getting inducted to the Shocker Hall of Fame among others.

I remember Robert Elmore, good for him.

yup and I guess his brother Len Elmore will be there to call the game and will accept the award for him at Halftime

Shox make a statement today, as they put an ass whipping on Ind St 68-48, as they now take sole possession of first place in the MVC.

Fantastic win and great statement. One team I want to bury twice this year ...the freakin Purple Aces. GO SHOX!

Great game. WSU is playing far better basketball than they were at this time last year.

Anyone have any news on Bakers injury? He came back and looked good but I never got anything from the broadcast as to what the injury was

Anybody else see our boys getting interviewed by Holly Rowe at the KU game? I thought they handled themselves nicely. We are lucky to have great representative for our team.

Why were they even there. Weird

Showing support to Andrew Wiggins is my guess.

And to possibly see a game at the Mecca of CBB.

Salame, you are one weird poster.

Odo laye!!!

Yep...they were with the Wiggins family. They handled that polling question very well. Fine representation of the team on national tv. :thumb:

Tekele Cotton with the dunk of the year?

It's a thing of beauty!

http://i.imgur.com/20plIRp.gif

BTW for people that dont know, that was a 6'2 player dunking over a 6'9 player

I have wondered if there was a connection, but wasn't sure. I had heard it was a leftover coat of Elmores' that ended up being given to Cliff Levingston that was a source of some of the NCAA sanctions.


20 wins, 0 losses, go Shocks!

Wichita State Shockers are just kicking ass. I love it. GO SHOX!!!

Whoa, bud. That's ****ing sick.

Check it out -

Lunardi's latest Bracketology.

Shockers #2 seed to KU's #1. That's the strength of schedule talking, but frankly I'd prefer to see my Hawks as the 2 seed and WSU as the #1. I don't really want WSU coming into the game with an even bigger chip on their shoulder.

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

Another thing funny about that bracket is Creighton listed as the 4 seed in the same region

WSU :thumb::bravo::bravo::bravo::bravo::bravo:

Tekele with a little encore dunk, as the shox just with another 17 point drubbing on the road to move to 21 and 0!!!

Yeah, I thought they handled themselves well with Holly Rowe's stupid ****ing questions. Holly Rowe is ****. Seriously. I can't stand that shit.


I'm betting WSU is #3 this week.

moved to #4 in AP and #3 in coaches. We got Loyola tonight at home, its on espn3 or cox 22

That was not a pretty win. I think coach started subbing too deep into the bench in the first half and part of the second. I know he needs to build up the bench but it messed with the flow of the game it appears.

At least we won...22-0!

Looking forward to Evansville. We need to make a statement Saturday. GO CHIEFS!

:clap: I can watch that dunk all day long. Dunk of the year thus far.

Shox take care of business against evansville to go to 23-0. Big week of road games coming up this week starting this Wednesday at Indiana State and then at UNI on Saturday. If we can pull these games off this week, then I honestly think we will go through the regular without a loss. Gotta take it 1 game at a time tho. GO SHOX!!!!

Yep, great, great win! Nice to get past the Aces. Now stay focused on the next few games and we may just win out. Loving the ride and loving my Shox!

Number 2 in the nation and number 1 in your heart the shockers!

Wow...thanks for that! I completely missed the coaches poll. Even the Shockernet.net guys didnt metion #2 in the coaches poll!

There is a low probability of them losing in the conference. Maybe in the MVC tourney, but I doubt a conference game.

How is Bakers ankle? It seems to be nagging.

Bakers ankle is nagging, but its one of those things where he probably wont be completely healthy until next year. Although it might be a good thing that MVC conference tourney starts at the beginning of March, so we will get about 10 days or so til the NCAA tourney starts.

Indiana State and Northern Iowa on the road this week are not pushovers. If they win those two games I'd tend to agree they have a great chance of running the table.

Baker said on Saturday his ankle was 90%

Great Read!!!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports...shall/5202599/

Wichita State's Gregg Marshall puts teeth into coaching
Eric Prisbell, USA TODAY Sports 5:04 p.m. EST February 4, 2014
USP NCAA Basketball_ Evansville at Wichita State

(Photo: Peter Aiken, USA TODAY Sports)
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WICHITA, Kan. — Gregg Marshall, the coach of one of two remaining unbeaten men's college basketball teams, leans forward in his soft office chair, opens his mouth wide and lifts his lip.

"These are fake teeth, by the way," the seventh-year Wichita State coach says. "When you get your teeth knocked out a couple times, they can't save them after that."

BRIEFING: Why Wichita State's worthy of No. 1 seed

Marshall, 50, is the architect of an unlikely national title contender whose players embody his distinctive personality, considered fiercely competitive even in an industry laden with intense peers. The essence of that spirit is found in stories Marshall recounts about those teeth. He last shattered some 25 years ago when he accidentally embedded them around another player's eye socket during a men's league game in Richmond.

But the incident witnesses most marvel about occurred a few years earlier, when Marshall, who had graduated high school as a 6-foot-2, 145-pound guard, was still wire-thin at then-Division II Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va. If there was an image that encapsulates Marshall's rough-and-tumble playing career, it was the guard occasionally wearing a plastic protective facemask during the season that his assistant coach says made him look like The Lone Ranger.

During one summer pickup game, Marshall and teammate Rod Wood, cut from the same competitive cloth, exchanged no-call fouls and blockade-like screens before physicality escalated and emotions boiled over. When Marshall charged at Wood near midcourt, Wood connected with an overhand punch that landed squarely on his nose, knocking Marshall to one knee.

"I was bleeding like a stuck pig," Marshall says. "He rocked my world, broke my nose and my face splattered."

Marshall sprang to his feet and made a bull-like charge at Wood, lifting him up, slamming him to the court and pinning him. They kept connecting with punches. Blood gushed from both. Teeth broke.

BRACKETOLOGY: Projecting the field of 68

Their coach, the late Hal Nunnally, always enforced fighting rules intended to be a deterrent: If two players wanted to fight, everyone else went to the other side of the court to continue drills. If a third man entered the fight, he would be dismissed from the program.
2014-2-3-wichita-state

Wichita State Shockers head coach Gregg Marshall talks with guard Fred VanVleet (23) against the Evansville Aces during the first half at Charles Koch Arena. The Shockers won 81-67.(Photo: Peter Aiken, USA TODAY Sports)

But this fight was different, more serious. There was no defense, no bear hugs, no end in sight. Only repeated haymakers thrown by two diminutive, fiery guards.

"It was like better than MMA," Marshall says. "It was a bad, bloody deal." As Wood recalls, "We were both pretty much knocked out on our feet."

It grew so vicious that for the first time in his career Nunnally summoned assistant Jeff Reynolds to break it up. Nunnally frantically hollered for the team manager to get towels, which were handed to Marshall and Wood as if they were boxers. In his measured Southern twang, Nunnally yelled, "Not for them! My floor! Get the blood off my floor!"

COACH'S CORNER: 1-on-1 with Gregg Marshall

Marshall and Wood walked shoulder to shoulder into the locker room. They squinted through the blood to stare into the mirror above the sink and saw faces temporarily remade by deep lacerations and re-formed noses. Wood was concussed.

Finding both showering, Reynolds told them he had been petrified because he thought they ultimately would have killed each other on the court. What came next that day still makes Reynolds shake his head.

Fifteen minutes after breaking up the worst basketball fight he has seen in 32 years of coaching, when he asked both players what in the world got into them on the court, they slowly tilted their heads in the shower, smirked and started laughing.

"The most amazing thing, it was like just another day at the office type deal …," says Reynolds, now the director of basketball operations at Marquette. "Sometimes people say a team reflects the personality of their coach. Gregg's teams have done that. As a player, he had an edge. As a coach, he has an edge to him. And he has never lost that edge."

'No safety net'

Second-ranked Wichita State (23-0) is not the Little Engine that Could. The Shockers bear little resemblance to the 2005-2006 George Mason team, which appropriately fed off its school band's rendition of "Livin' on a Prayer" during its improbable Final Four run.

Marshall knows his Wichita State players play clean, don't fight and don't commit flagrant fouls. But they are gritty and tough-minded, fueled, much like their coach, by uneasy career journeys.

"One of Wichita State's slogans is to play angry," says Wood, a close friend of Marshall who is the head coach at the University of Mary Washington. "I think he coaches angry … He didn't come from a hierarchy under Mike Krzyzewski, Dean Smith or Larry Brown. You have to do things twice as good to get looked at half as much."

PREVIOUSLY: Marshall gets salary boost

Marshall says he still coaches with a fear of failure because he has "no safety net." His father's not a coach. He didn't play in the NBA. And he does not have roots in one of the nation's blue-blood programs. If he lost his job, he says, he can't immediately find refuge on the staff of a Hall of Fame coach.

"I don't have a guy," Marshall says. "Before I became a coach here, I was advised by some people to stop being the head coach at Winthrop and go be an assistant for (Tom) Izzo, Krzyzewski or Roy Williams. Then I'd have the successful head coaching tenure however long you have it because now you have the lineage."

Over the years, Marshall's honesty, competitiveness and demeanor have been interpreted by some as prickly and arrogant. There may be some truth in that, Marshall says. He doesn't care.

"Whatever," he says. "You know what? That may be the case. Nothing has ever been given to me. I've had to fight and scratch and claw for every single thing. Does everybody in the world of basketball think I'm the greatest thing? No. But does everybody think (John) Calipari is the greatest thing in the world? Does everybody think (Rick) Pitino is the greatest thing in the world? Does everybody think Krzyzewski is the greatest thing in the world?"

There's a reason why Marshall is enamored with junior college players who endure winding, hardscrabble careers before they step foot on a Division I campus. They've ridden for hours on team buses headed toward obscure junior college games and can't identify with players who have been anointed stars as pre-teens. It's a metaphor Marshall understands.
2014-1-3 gregg marshall

Gregg Marshall and the Wichita State Shockers are one of two remaining undefeated teams.(Photo: Peter Aiken, USA TODAY Sports)

During his first assistant coaching job at Randolph-Macon in the mid-1980s, Marshall wore several hats. He helped with laundry and mopped courts. As a recruiter, he had to walk into players' homes and tell them the program would be Division III in three years, which meant he could offer a partial scholarship for three years but, as seniors, players would have to pay full tuition.

"That," he says, "is a hard sell."

Will Blackwell, a former a high school prospect in Winston-Salem, N.C., says Marshall was so personable, "I knew the second I met him that I was going to go to Randolph-Macon because of Coach Marshall." Blackwell became Marshall's first-ever signee, and after he committed, Marshall even stayed over at Blackwell's Winston-Salem home during recruiting trips to the area.

Intensity simmered, as well. After one game, Blackwell told Marshall that if he was not capable of dunking, he didn't know if he'd want to play basketball. Marshall immediately turned to Blackwell and hollered, "Maybe you don't love the game!" And after three decades, Blackwell, 45, remains so loyal that he visited Marshall in Wichita last month.

Marshall also learned attention to detail. He sent 250 letters to high school coaches but failed to personalize them, addressing each on the typewriter, "Dear Head Basketball Coach." Nunnally made Marshall call all 250 schools to ask secretaries for names and correct spellings.

"I get letters now from people applying for a job where my name is misspelled, one 'G' or one 'L,'" Marshall says. "I just go, 'Yeah, whatever.' I throw them in the trash; I don't even respond. Would you?"

Selling his wares

In 1987, Marshall put out feelers to every low-major Division I program in the nation to be an assistant coach. He received zero offers, so he walked away from the coaching profession after earning his master's degree in Sports Management from the University of Richmond and accepted an internship he'll never forget.

He worked six days a week at Amelia Island Plantation in Florida. Companies like Procter & Gamble would bring 500 of their brightest people, and Marshall would entertain. He was a cabana boy by the pool. He dressed up in a gorilla suit for a safari that guests enjoyed. He organized scavenger hunts. He was a craps dealer on Casino Night.

"I was like, 'Oh, my god,' " Marshall says. "In six weeks, I called Coach Nunnally and said, 'Man, I made a mistake. I want to come back and coach. Help me.' "

One off-day, he walked back home from Fernandina Beach and found two messages on his answering machine: One from Belmont Abbey College's Kevin Eastman, another from Coastal Carolina's Russ Bergman. Marshall chose to work for Eastman, now an assistant with the Los Angeles Clippers.
Wichita-State-Fared-11-9-13

Marshall gives advice to WSU star player Cleanthony Early during a game this season.(Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY Sports)

After a year, Marshall was off to the College of Charleston to work eight years as an assistant under John Kresse, who recalls Marshall absorbing some losses so hard that afterward he would enter the restroom and vomit. Kresse also recalls Marshall's keen eye for evaluating talent and acumen as a recruiter.

"He could sell the player, his parents and the family dog," Kresse says. "They came to the College of Charleston because of Gregg Marshall."

Wood still jokes with Marshall, "'I can't leave you alone with my wife because you'll recruit her. She doesn't even want to be with you.' He is always on. He is always recruiting. Always a step ahead of everyone else."

At Charleston, Marshall dated his future wife, the former Lynn Munday, who once told her family that she met a great guy who had a great job that paid him almost $20,000 a year. When Marshall took the Marshall assistant job in 1996 for $45,000, Marshall told his wife, "Our prayers have been answered. You don't have to work. I've got this great job."

That was only the beginning.

When Marshall got his first head coaching job at Winthrop, he made $60,000. When he left there, he says, he had a 10-year, $400,000 a year contract on the table. Every year, he had made the job a better one.

Chris Jans, now Wichita State's associate head coach, regrettably turned down an offer to be an assistant on Marshall's Winthrop staff and now says, "I could tell he had the 'It' factor. His approach was going to be, 'Every waking minute, how am I going to make this program better?' Building relationships in the community, getting people excited, one handshake at a time."

At first, Marshall says, he didn't have any of the 'Cs' at Winthrop: courtesy cars, computers, clinics or camps. He also remembers 500 fans showing up for his first game in a 6,100-seat arena. His biggest opponent? Fan apathy.

So Marshall acted as a hands-on marketing director. He trekked around Rock Hill, S.C., carrying rolls of little red tickets, stopping in delis and mom-and-pop stores to say, "Hi, I'm Gregg Marshall. I'm the new basketball coach. Here's a ticket to our next game. In fact, here's four. Bring three friends. If you don't like it, don't come back. But give us a chance."

Lynn would do the same, lifting their toddler son Kellen out of his car seat, walking into local businesses and handing out the little red free-admission tickets. "Basically begging people to come and support the players," Lynn says.

"He doesn't have a silver spoon," Reynolds says. "He has come up the hard way. He has been at the Division II level. He has been at the NAIA level as an assistant. He has mopped floors. He has made literally nothing. There are very few like him that are still in the business that have been able to sustain it and use his system at every level and have success."

A decade ago, a family friend who is a psychologist told Lynn that there was something she had to understand about her husband: He is never going to be content work-wise. He has an insatiable appetite for improvement.

"Over the years, I have gotten used to it," she says. "It's kind of frustrating sometimes. But that's one of the things that makes him really good at what he does."

Popularity not a goal

In June 2006 came what Lynn says is the hardest decision her husband has ever made.

Marshall accepted the head-coaching job at the College of Charleston and received a spirited introduction. But after the Charleston news conference, Marshall called Kresse to say he had some doubts about the job.

As Kresse says, "He realized he left his heart at Winthrop."

He decided to stay at Winthrop. The news of Marshall's change of heart was announced before a packed room of Winthrop supporters; a standing ovation brought tears to his eyes.

"It was very, very emotional," Lynn says. "One day there's a big headline in the paper saying he took the Charleston job. The next day it says he didn't. Sometimes people are afraid to say, 'I think I made the wrong decision.' He was not afraid to do that."

Marshall led Winthrop to seven NCAA tournament appearances in nine seasons.

After struggles his initial season at Wichita State, success continued. Before the Shockers won the National Invitation Tournament in 2011, Wood recalls standing with Marshall in his high-rise Marriott Marquis hotel room, both looking out at Times Square, when Marshall realized how far he had come.

"Isn't this crazy?" Marshall told Wood. "Can you believe this?"

And it's only gotten crazier. Marshall says he never would have believed 25 years ago that he would one day receive interest from schools such as UCLA and N.C. State – historic men's basketball programs – only to respectfully opt to remain in Wichita.

"He is building a mini-dynasty at Wichita State," Kresse says. "He certainly has a very lucrative contract for whatever level you call that. I think it's a little higher than mid-major, for sure. He's on this rollercoaster ride from Winthrop to Wichita State, which has led him to the pinnacle."

Steve Forbes, a Wichita State assistant, says Marshall is one of the few coaches in the profession who can do it all: recruit, coach, communicate with the media and build relationships in the community.

Declining to name all the schools, Marshall says he has received several firm job offers from schools in the big five conferences, some offering close to $2 million a year. The closest he came to leaving Wichita State, he says, was probably in 2011 when he says N.C. State offered him the job.

"They didn't want him enough, did they?" Wood says of other schools that pursued Marshall. "That makes me angry, because they messed up. They should have wanted him more. It should have been an offer he could not refuse. I think he's the best college coach in America."

Now, Marshall says he earns $1.865 million a year before incentives. His team flies chartered flights to road games. He can have use of a private plane for recruiting. And he has listened to fellow coaches who told him not to mess with happiness.

Doc Sadler and Greg McDermott both told Marshall to be careful what he wishes for, Marshall recalls. McDermott had gone from Northern Iowa to Iowa State and was teetering at the time. Sadler had left UTEP for Nebraska and was in the same predicament.

Marshall understands that cautionary tales abound: Todd Lickliter left Butler for Iowa, where he was fired. Dan Monson left Gonzaga and struggled amid sanctions at Minnesota in the wake of former coach Clem Haskins' academic fraud scandal.

"You think he (Monson) would rather be back at Gonzaga now?" Marshall says. "He's at Long Beach."

When Marshall appeared on "The Dan Patrick Show" before last season's Final Four, the first question Patrick asked was about the suggestion that Marshall's personality made some BCS schools hesitant to hire him. That bothered Marshall at the time, he says, because he didn't think it was appropriate to go on the record about all the jobs he has been offered or about the interest he received during the NCAA tournament.

Marshall's wife says critics "don't want this guy, Gregg Marshall, to be successful. So they are going to say, 'Yeah, he's kind of an ass. He's kind of arrogant.' It reminds me of middle school."

Lynn says criticism of Marshall has been so sophomoric in the past that fans even lampooned him for using too much hair gel, a slight that occasionally prompted Lynn to turn around and respond, "His hair is like really straight, okay. He has to put product in it!"

And with his team vying for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament and a return trip to the Final Four, Marshall remains as competitive as ever.

"I sleep well at night," Marshall says. "I do my job and I try to win. Yet do I try to beat the (expletive) out of the other coach? Hell, yeah. And yet, am I responsible for a lot of coaches in the Big South and maybe the Missouri Valley getting fired? Yeah. Do you think you'd like that person?"

Marshall leans forward again in his office chair, shakes his energy drink and takes a gulp. Three decades after Marshall took the court at Randolph-Macon in that Lone Ranger mask, he still operates with that razor's edge, if not all his original teeth. As the Shockers inch closer to an unbeaten regular season, figuratively, his fists remain clenched.

"It's a competitive world, man," he says. "It's not a popularity contest. I am myself. I am honest. I am open. And I am trying to win. If you don't like that, if I somehow rub you the wrong way, that's okay. That's not my goal. My goal is to serve this university and these basketball players, and to be the best I can for them and my family."

Great and tough win last night in Ind St!!! Chadrack was clutch last night with his free throws.

It was a pretty good game. A lot different than the game at Koch. They were pretty physical guarding VanVleet.

Go SHOX!!!

Shox won again last night 82-73 to go to 25 and 0!!! I guess this was presented on ESPN game day yesterday.

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=104...espnapi_public

My BIL just scored tickets to Tuesdays game from a client if his and he decided to take me instead of his wife. 5th row behind the Shocker bench supposedly.

ohh nice, nice seats although any seat in CKA is nice

I liked Marshall's quote about scheduling -- something like if you're not a fan of our schedule, call us, and we will put you on it.

You have to love Marshall. :evil:

yup said in a radio interview

100.3 The Team ‏@1003TheTeam Feb 7

Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall, moments ago on our airwaves "To anyone complaining about our schedule - call us. We'll put you on it."

That's pretty awesome.

oh yeah, Marshall in is interviews is brutally honest and never gives a "coaches speak" answer. Its why he can rub certain people the wrong way. He always has the Us against the World mentality, but its that mentality that has made him one the top coaches in the nation and his teams play like it.

ready for win #26 tonight!!!!

Just bought some lower level tickets to the 2nd/3rd tourney in St Louis. Now they better send the shox there

SHOX are rolling.

Gregg Marshall is in Bristol today making the rounds at ESPN headquarter. The DVR is going to be busy today!

Yep...enjoying the ride!

I love Barry Hinson. He really nailed it about those folks doubting the Shockers...

http://www.kansas.com/2014/02/11/328...on-doesnt.html

Leave it to that great American orator, Barry Hinson, to spell out what makes Wichita State such a good basketball team.

“I’ll tell you what they are,” the Southern Illinois coach said after his team’s 78-67 loss to the Shockers that was closer than the 11 points indicates. “They’re versatile. They remind me of a rover in softball because those guys can play any position. The thing that’s scary about them is that if one guy’s not scoring (Nick) Wiggins makes a three. If Wiggins doesn’t make one, (Ron) Baker does. Cleanthony (Early) goes off and gets points. (Tekele) Cotton scores a bunch off Northern Iowa. Every night they’ve got somebody different stepping up.”

But with Hinson, there’s always more. The coach who gave ESPN its programming for a week after an SIU loss at Murray State in December, showed the same passion when he was asked why the Shockers, despite being 26-0, are viewed with such skepticism nationally.

Here we go.

“Oh, you want to go that route,” Hinson said. “Here’s what I’m going to say about that. If Wichita State loses a game and they just don’t drop them one spot in the poll and still give them a No. 1 seed, then I’m going to be really upset.

“Arizona loses one and only drops one spot. Well, you better give that same respect to Wichita State if they lose. You better give that same respect to our league. I don’t want to see that and I’m tired of sitting here … I don’t give a flip about bracketology. But I hear Wichita State’s not a No. 1 seed? What more can they do? What do you want to do, beat people worse than they’re beating them? Gregg (Marshall) is sharing minutes. They’re undefeated. I mean, good gracious.

“That’s one of the top two teams in the country right now. How in the world can they not be a No. 1 seed even if they lose a game.”

It was at this point that the pitch in Hinson’s voice had reached a level only a voice coach could recognize.

And he continued.

“I’m fired up for the Shockers. I’m fired up for the Missouri Valley Conference. It’s a burr in my saddle when people talk like that because let me tell you something … if Texas is 26-0 and they get beat, they’re still talking about them being a No. 1 seed. Why can’t it be the same for Wichita State?”

That’s vintage Hinson. There’s no one who loves the Valley more. In what has been a difficult year for the conference, who else but Hinson is able to summon that kind of passion and vitriol for his league and his league’s best team?

Now, he would have loved for the Salukis to have been the team to have tested his hypothesis about a one-loss Shocker team. And SIU came close. It’s a much better team than when the two met in Carbondale in early January and if the Salukis had done better than 14 of 24 from the free-throw line, we might be talking about that first loss.

“I thought Wichita State was beatable tonight,” Hinson said. “I do think we let an opportunity get away.”

The Shockers muddled through the first half with starting guards Ron Baker and Fred VanVleet spending significant time on the bench with two fouls. They really never played at a high level, although WSU scored 46 second-half points.

But SIU shot 47.1 percent, which irks Marshall, the Shockers’ coach. The undersized Salukis stayed with WSU on the boards, losing that battle by only three. Wichita State got by on being a better team, not necessarily playing like a better team.

“That was probably a C-minus for us,” Marshall said. “At best. But Southern Illinois gets a lot of the credit for that.”

The national college basketball pundits are sure to swish this one around in their mouths for a while and come to whatever determination they come to. Because of the Valley’s perception, which is more real than its spokesman, Hinson, would admit, it’s difficult to evaluate the Shockers.

But 26-0 stands up well to any review. It’s tough to scrutinize unbeaten and Wichita State has always had a way, under Marshall, to figure out how to win games that look to be in jeopardy. It’s how they’re coached.

Hinson is a believer.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2014/02/11/328...#storylink=cpy

Another good article...
http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/11...preciated.html

February 11
By VAHE GREGORIAN
The Kansas City Star

WICHITA — Wichita State’s encore performance from its Final Four splash a year ago is at 26-0 and accelerating after it fended off Southern Illinois 78-67on Tuesday at Koch Arena.
Travis Heying | AP

The Shockers are ranked second in the coaches’ poll and fourth by The Associated Press. Just as surely as they meet the eye test, they stand up to cold analysis at fourth in the most recent NCAA RPI.

And now they’re five games away from being the first major-college team in a decade to enter the postseason unscathed.

Yet for all that, Wichita State is in a curious perception vacuum right now even amid a world of instant and constant analysis.

How good are the Shockers, really, many seem to wonder … even with a core of players back from last year that should confer automatic credibility and makes this year’s version capable of making a deep NCAA dent.

Instead, if they had lost to Southern Illinois, and they could have, the Shockers surely would have been dramatically downgraded in the polls.

They’re underappreciated for reasons they can’t control but that have little to do with their caliber of play.

In part, it’s because it’s otherwise been a tepid year among its Missouri Valley brethren.

In part, it’s because Wichita State isn’t a brand name in the game and it’s largely made up of players who were overshadowed as prospects … as symbolized by Nick Wiggins being a Shocker senior reserve whose younger brother Andrew is expected to be a top NBA draft pick after one season at Kansas.

Whatever the reasons, it shows up like this: If the Shockers are less than flawless in any given game, well, then, how good can they really be?

It’s easy to fall into that, all the more so because they’re undefeated and thus more subject to scrutiny.

Watching them grinding before pulling away late against the Salukis, who had won four in a row but were 6-15 before that, provided plenty of room for skepticism about their trajectory.

But those relentless evaluations, none of which mean a thing until season’s end, miss the point.

There were plenty of other reasons that could go into a sluggish game like this at a time like this for the Shockers.

Maybe they were tight? Could they be getting bored? Might they have been due for a letdown, especially after winning back-to-back road games last week, including at their top Valley competitor, Indiana State? Doesn’t SIU get some credit for its improvement?

Most likely, it was some form of all of that at once.

In one sense, the result left coach Gregg Marshall somewhere between grim and glum as he assessed the game afterward:

“Just survived,” he said. “A C-minus,” he called it.

But that doesn’t mean Marshall suddenly is fretting over his team. He understands the larger scheme, and he believes his team is mature.

In particular, he believe it’s embracing being one of only two remaining undefeated teams instead of feeling any heaviness or distraction from it.

His players, he said, have subscribed in a general sense to what actress and Wichita native Kirstie Alley told them before the game Tuesday.

“ ‘Don’t read your reviews, the positive ones and the negative ones; go out and play your game,’ ” he quoted her saying. “So you’re getting it from a Hollywood star who knows sometimes you can read too much of what you guys write.

With a smile, he added, “Not that you’re not great writers.”

Much as he’d like it to continue, Marshall knows this isn’t about an undefeated regular season. Ultimately, that would be a fine distinction.

But this is all about girding for the NCAA Tournament, which the Shockers entered last season without even being ranked only to burst through to the Final Four for the first time since 1965.

It’s about getting better as they go and not stagnating or thinking that an unblemished record means they’re playing untarnished basketball.

“Hopefully, we’ll play better than this against Evansville, or it will be over Sunday,” Marshall said.

Most of all, he knows this:

In the rhythm of a 35-game season, maybe 25 games a team plays are “basically you.” Five or so might go a little better, he said, five or so not as good.

And so to date, he added, “You’re not going to play the perfect game 26 times.”

That doesn’t mean the Shockers don’t have a high ceiling or that there’s anything wrong.

But as far as others see them, they’re in limbo now until the NCAA Tournament, which whether or not they have a pristine regular season is what their ultimate signature will be.

ROFL That is AWESOME!

Good read.

You gotta love barrah!

His postgame intereview, pretty funny lol

http://www.kwch.com/sports/barry-hin...z/-/index.html

Shox going for win #27 today at evansville at 4 pm on Fox sports MW. Play Angry!!!

Kim English seems to think Missouri would beat Wichita State.

must be hanging out with DGB

Your team is in the clear until at least Arch Madness, and I doubt they will take the foot off the gas there. I'll need to see the brackets to make sure, but I can't think of four teams that are better right now. If I were you, I'd expect to make the Elite Eight at a minimum.

Evansville giving them a game, but barring a huge run, this one is made in the shade.

Our local coop had a board retreat in Wichita and ran into Gregg Marshall. They said he was really cool. But they had to ask him, "Do YOU know Ron Baker?" We get that shit all the time from everybody ever talks to anybody from Scott City.

It was nice to have a good experience with the coach.

ya evansville always has gave us problems for whatever reason. You can tell Baker got a extra rest since we didnt have a game since Tuesday. He had a little extra bonce to his step including 2 dunks.

Jeff Goodman really said this LMAO

Jeff Goodman ‏@GoodmanESPN 17m

@DrewBridgesBB Take away Fred VanVleet and Tekele Cotton and see how Wichita plays.

Wichita State Shocker basketball, a tradition since 2013

Seriously, used to root for WSU when I would notice them playing but then I heard their toolbox coach open his mouf

Explain?

LOL. You could say that about almost any team.

The regional cover for SI

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bg2W48-CYAAHmqf.jpg