Another trip to Memphis, another double-digit loss for Wichita State Shockers basketball

There would be no double-digit second-half comeback this time.

Whatever magic the Wichita State men’s basketball team conjured for improbable wins the last two games ran out at FedExForum, which continues to be a house of horrors for the Shockers following an 88-78 loss to the Memphis Tigers on Thursday night.

“I thought we played well for the most part, but I could have done more and I think we all could have done more,” said WSU senior James Rojas after scoring a career-high 19 points. “We’ve all just got to do more as a team. We have guys leaving it all out there, but we have to start putting a whole 40 minutes together.”

On Thursday, the best the Shockers could do was fragments of solid play when they turned Memphis’ pressure against the Tigers and make them pay for their gambling style of defense.

At its best, WSU led 20-12 after 12 minutes and rallied from a 13-point deficit in the second half to come within a single point twice. But at its worst, the mistakes by WSU were too much to overcome and why the Shockers find themselves with a middling 9-9 record and 2-4 start in American Athletic Conference play.

“Coming into the game, I thought they would press us the entire game,” WSU head coach Isaac Brown said. “We were able to execute when they didn’t press, but then they amped it up and they stopped letting us run our stuff and forced players to make quick decisions. They just started running and jumping and we didn’t handle it well.”

Needing stops after climbing back to within 60-59 behind two straight three-pointers from walk-on Melvion Flanagan, WSU instead was a sieve on defense. It’s hard to make a comeback when you give up 1.86 points per possession (28 points) on the game’s final 15 possessions to a Memphis team that improved to 14-5 overall and 4-2 in conference play.

More times than not, Memphis 6-foot-9 senior DeAndre Williams was there to demoralize the Shockers with baskets in the paint. If WSU was in man, Williams would bait his defender with a pump-fake and slither around him for a lay-in. If WSU was in zone, Williams would sneak into the heart of the defense and again utilize pump-fakes to score or draw a foul. Williams scored 24 of his season-high 29 points either in the paint or at the foul line.

“We had no answer for him,” Brown said of Williams. “Every time we would make a run, it seemed like we couldn’t guard him, whether it was in man or in zone. We couldn’t guard him and he was the difference in the game.”

Despite the end result looking much like the last four trips to Memphis, which resulted in WSU losses by an average of 15.8 points, the Shockers did manage to make things interesting in the second half.

After Memphis opened up a 13-point lead early in the second half, WSU once again showed its resiliency to claw back into the game.

The Shockers reeled off a 15-6 run that started on a three-point play by Kenny Pohto, featured five points from Rojas and two three-pointers by Flanagan, who once again provided the spark for WSU after not playing at all in the first half in a coach’s decision.

But WSU couldn’t finish the job because it couldn’t string together defensive stops. Memphis entered the game ranked No. 318 in the country in three-point shooting at 30.7%, but the Tigers made a season-high 11 triples on a season-best 52.4% accuracy. Kendric Davis, the reigning AAC Player of the Year, added 20 points and five assists, while Keonte Kennedy scored a season-high 16 points on a career-best four threes.

“I’m disappointed in the way we defended the final nine minutes,” Brown said. “We just didn’t defend. We’ll go back and watch the film and find out who wasn’t in the right spots. We only had 13 turnovers, but we didn’t defend at a high enough level to beat a team with two first-team all-conference guys like Memphis.”

Rojas led WSU with 19 points on just five field goals made, bolstered by an 8-for-10 performance on free throws. Jaykwon Walton added 15 points, while Craig Porter finished with 11 points, six rebounds, five assists and three blocks.

Even though WSU didn’t play particularly well, it still led 20-12 halfway through the first half following a three by Jaron Pierre Jr. But the final eight minutes of the first half looked a lot like the previous four trips to the FedExForum for the Shockers.

Memphis’ run-and-jump defense finally started to squeeze WSU, which wilted under the pressure with turnovers leading to easy Memphis baskets. Even with a late rally by the Shockers, they did themselves no favors in the final 90 seconds when they missed two open dunks and wasted their final possession of the half with a desperation heave at the end of the clock.

The Shockers are on the road again this weekend with a 2 p.m. Sunday game at SMU before returning to Koch Arena for a home date against Tulane on Jan. 25. For the sixth time in the last seven games, WSU sophomore 7-foot center Quincy Ballard missed Thursday’s game with a back injury.