The defensive lapses that cost Wichita State basketball in home loss to East Carolina

In an up-and-down season, defense was supposed to be the one constant for the Wichita State men’s basketball team.

In Isaac Brown’s third year in charge, the head coach has spent most of this season trying to impress the importance of attention to detail to a group of 12 newcomers. Progress has been slow, as the Shockers’ lack of discipline on offense has been their downfall in several losses.

But WSU learned the hard way what happens when it abandons its principles on the defensive end, as the Shockers were dealt a humbling 79-69 loss by an East Carolina team that had never defeated them before last Saturday at Koch Arena.

“It was a lack of concentration, not knowing how to finish a game,” Brown said on his radio show Monday. “I feel like these guys are fighting every day to get better, but they’ve just got to learn how to win and close games out. It takes 40 minutes, not 35, 37 or 38.”

According to KenPom.com, the loss to No. 195 East Carolina, which was picked last in the preseason American Athletic Conference coaches’ poll, was the worst home loss in conference play for WSU in more than a decade, dating back to a 56-53 loss to No. 213 Southern Illinois on Feb. 8, 2011.

Unlike its previous three losses, to Kansas State, Oklahoma State and UCF, offense was not the problem for the Shockers, which finished with their third-best efficiency of the season. Instead, the culprit was a stunning collapse of the team’s defense, which ranked sixth in the country in effective field goal percentage (41.7) but allowed ECU to score 1.21 points per possession with a 53.6 effective field goal percentage — both the worst marks allowed by WSU this season.

“We are not winning at the level we need to win at,” Brown said after WSU fell to 7-7 on the season and 0-2 in AAC play ahead of Thursday’s home tilt against Cincinnati. “We’ve got to finish out games. In order to be successful in this conference, you’ve got to play for 40 minutes, you’ve got to defend, you’ve got to rebound, you’ve got to play with toughness, you’ve got to take good shots and you’ve got to play hard.”

What made the ECU loss more confounding is that the Shockers appeared to be doing all of those things when they pummeled the Pirates in a 14-2 run out of halftime to turn a four-point deficit into a 49-41 lead. WSU’s defense was connected, Kenny Pohto (career-best 21 points and 11 rebounds) was a force inside and the offense was rolling by producing easy shots.

And then WSU’s inexperience and immaturity struck.

Jaron Pierre Jr. leaked out for a fast break that should have been an easy lay-up, but he missed the shot and the put-back for what would have been a 10-point lead. Instead of ECU being forced to call a timeout to regroup, the Pirates grabbed the board, pushed the ball up the floor and caught WSU’s defense in disarray for a transition dunk.

“That was the biggest turning point in the game,” Brown said.

The four-point swing can indeed be pinpointed as the beginning of the collapse for WSU, which failed to produce a single defensive stand on eight consecutive possessions, allowing ECU to rip off 18 points, then committed six careless turnovers in a nine-trip span that ultimately doomed the Shockers.

“We were chasing in the beginning, then we came back and went up and then we relaxed on defense,” Pohto said. “We’ve really got to work on playing the whole 40 minutes and finishing better.”

Here are five lapses that highlight WSU’s lack of attention to detail on the defensive end.

Brown was most bothered by his team’s poor transition defense following the loss and his concern was plain to see early in ECU’s run.

After a missed shot and ECU rebound, WSU’s defense appeared to be in good shape with four defenders in front of the ball when ECU’s Jaden Walker pushed across half-court.

But WSU didn’t communicate the match-ups in transition, which left Pierre guarding no one and Okafor, a power forward, trying to stop a guard going downhill. Walker turned the corner and when no WSU player was there to provide help defense, ECU had an easy lay-in.

“We didn’t get matched up and they made us pay every time,” Brown said. “Guys weren’t talking and communicating. Our transition defense wasn’t good at all and a lot of that was on me. We fixed that (Monday) in practice. We did a lot of extra running for that.”

ECU sophomore guard Javon Small has blossomed under first-year coach Mike Schwartz, averaging better than 16 points and drilling more than two three-pointers per game.

He’s the first line on the scouting report and defenses know they’re going to have to be diligent in their work to prevent him from catching fire beyond the arc. In a possession midway through the second half, WSU showed exactly what not to do against Small in ball screens.

Pierre was defending Small on the right wing when he felt ECU’s 7-foot center Ludgy Debaut set the ball screen. Instead of trying to fight through the screen or chase Small over the top of the screen, Pierre allowed himself to be enveloped by the screen and was taken out of the play. (Jaykwon Walton is particularly skilled at blowing up screens by fighting over them, an example that follows in the above clip).

WSU usually likes its centers to hedge the ball screen or at least be at the level of the screen to dissuade a ball handler dribbling into a wide-open three. This time, however, Kenny Pohto was playing full drop coverage back at the free throw line.

With Pierre failing to fight around the screen and Pohto too far back to contest, Small dribbled into an in-rhythm three that he buried to make WSU pay for its defensive miscues.

Nothing drives a coach crazy in the film room quite like watching his team score a basket and then give up a basket just seconds later on defense.

WSU committed this cardinal sin in the moments following an emphatic Pohto slam to put the Shockers ahead 54-53 with 10:18 remaining.

ECU immediately inbounded the ball and Jaden Walker scooted past WSU redshirt freshman Jalen Ricks down the right sideline, receiving a pass all the way down the floor within four seconds of Pohto’s dunk.

ECU’s speed of play caught WSU off guard, bending the defense and forcing Craig Porter to provide help defense in the corner to extinguish the threat of Walker. The trade-off was leaving Brandon Johnson, the trailing big man, wide open at the center of the three-point line.

Johnson, a 29% three-point shooter before the game, canned the open triple to deflate the crowd and put ECU back in front, 56-54, just nine seconds after Pohto’s slam.

After another highlight-reel dunk by Pohto, this one assisted on a behind-the-back dish from Porter, WSU again suffered a defensive lapse immediately following tying the game at 56.

Instead of ECU forcing the issue, this time the damage was entirely self-inflicted, as WSU’s players were confused whether they were playing man or zone defense.

Without knowing the call, it’s hard to assess where the breakdown occurs — just that there was a major breakdown and a slick, no-look pass from Javon Small found Jaden Walker open in the left corner without a single defender within 10 feet.

“Miscommunication on our part led to some wide-open threes for them,” WSU sophomore Shammah Scott said. “We just got to wake up and get locked in on that part.”

Walker’s three capped the 18-points-in-8-possessions onslaught by the Pirates and gave ECU the lead, 59-56, for good with 9:26 remaining.

The realization of the stunning home loss started to sink over the crowd with just over five minutes remaining when ECU rebounded two straight misses and finished inside to extend its lead to 66-58.

Securing rebounds to close out defensive stops has been an issue for WSU all season long, as too many players watch the shot through the air instead of staying committed to the details and boxing out.

The problem came back to bite WSU in excruciating fashion down the stretch, as the Shockers had just played an entire shot-clock-worth of superb defense and ECU had to hoist a 30-foot prayer just to beat the buzzer. But when the shot went up, WSU guard Jaron Pierre Jr. forgot the commitment to the details and turned and watched the shot sail through the air.

Meanwhile, R.J. Felton, the ECU player that Pierre was responsible for boxing out, was left free to crash the glass and he capitalized on the free runway to sky over James Rojas for the offensive rebound and kicked out for a wide-open three.

Because Rojas was left fighting for the rebound on the first attempt, he was slightly out of position when the second shot went up. ECU’s Brandon Johnson had the leverage to collect the loose ball for a second offensive rebound and muscled his way for two points inside to put the final nail in WSU’s coffin and provide another painful lesson for the Shockers on the importance of the details.

“We didn’t defend and we didn’t rebound well and when you don’t do those things, you can’t really win those ball games,” Brown said.