More Moody madness: Wichita State basketball pulls off bizarre comeback win at SMU

Something about Moody Coliseum seems to produce the wildest games in Wichita State’s brief history in the American Athletic Conference.

It’s hard to fathom something topping the Shockers’ record-setting 24-point comeback from 2020, but Sunday’s 71-69 victory for the Wichita State men’s basketball team over SMU gave it the old college try.

The latest chapter of Moody madness saw both teams trade their own improbable 15-0 runs in succession down the stretch.

For how impressive it was for WSU to reel off 15 straight points with its best player, Craig Porter, on the bench with four fouls, it was perhaps even more impressive how quickly the Shockers managed to squander a 13-point lead by allowing SMU to rip off 15 unanswered points in just over two minutes to take a 67-65 lead with 1:40 remaining.

“It was very painful to watch,” WSU head coach Isaac Brown said of the two-minute stretch when his team committed five turnovers. “That (2020 game) did cross my mind when they came all the way back, but our guys stayed together and they battled and they pulled it out.”

While WSU didn’t need Porter for the comeback, it needed the senior to help close out the win.

Porter’s 15-footer tied the score at 67 with 1:18 left, then he drew a foul on a three-point attempt and made three straight free throws to put WSU in front for good, 70-69, with 35 seconds left.

“Craig is the guy that I wanted to have the ball in his hands down the stretch and he was excellent with the game on the line,” Brown said. “I could have run a play, but it may not end up in his hands. I just felt more comfortable giving him the ball (for an isolation play). He stepped up when we needed him and that’s why we put the ball in his hands.”

SMU had two go-ahead chances in the final 30 seconds, but WSU’s defense forced contested misses both times on three-pointers by Zach Nutall and Zhuric Phelps.

Somehow, some way, WSU maintained its perfect (4-0) record at Moody Coliseum in the AAC era and improved its season record to 10-9 and conference record to 3-4, while SMU dropped to 7-13 overall and 2-5 in AAC play.

“We always show fight, but our problem is we turn off the energy and turn it back on when we feel like,” said Nutall, who scored a SMU-best 17 points, in a statement that very well could apply to either team. “We’ve been trying to figure out a way to do that for 40 minutes straight.”

WSU made 44.9% of its shots and was led by Jaykwon Walton’s 18 points, while Jaron Pierre Jr. added 10 points. Porter finished with 11 points and four blocks.

When Porter exited the game with his fourth foul in the first five minutes of the second half, the Shockers trailed by seven points.

WSU has crumbled without Porter on the floor this season but made important progress showing it can function without its star point guard during a 21-3 run to take control of the game.

Senior James Rojas (12 points, 10 rebounds) scratched, clawed and bullied his way to three straight baskets in the paint to provide the initial burst for WSU. But the Shockers also had contributions from players like Shammah Scott, Isaac Abidde and Isaiah Poor Bear-Chandler, who have rarely played recently yet made crucial plays for WSU during the stretch.

Scott, who had played three minutes in the last two games, scored four points and doled out three assists to keep WSU’s offense humming without Porter, while Poor Bear-Chandler added five points and three rebounds and Abidde scored a three-point play and came up with the game’s most important rebound in the final seconds.

If WSU showed its best quality — its resilience — during the rally to stretch its lead to 65-52 with less than four minutes remaining, then its worst quality — lackadaisical play — was on full display for the next two minutes.

“We sped them up and made chaos,” Nutall said.

“Our pressure affected them,” first-year SMU coach Rob Lanier said. “We got some good traps and our guys executed it with the appropriate level of urgency because we were down 13.”

When SMU cranked up the intensity and applied its full-court press in desperation, WSU wilted under the pressure. The Shockers committed five turnovers — all before crossing halfcourt — in a two-minute span, missed two free throws and one shot and then fouled a three-point shooter for a four-point play.

In just over two minutes, WSU managed to write a step-by-step guide to how to blow a double-digit lead down the stretch.

“I was very disappointed because that’s something that we work on every day,” Brown said. “We didn’t call enough timeouts and I put that on me. But (dealing with the press) is something that we’re going to go back and work on (Monday).”

That’s not the kind of adversity the Shockers wanted to overcome to prevail on Sunday.

But in a season where WSU has found itself trailing at halftime in all seven conference games, the Shockers aren’t in a position to be too picky about how their wins come.

As the final staff member stored their bags into the team’s bus to head back to Wichita, they exhaled and had one final message that wrapped up WSU’s experience on Sunday.

“A win’s a win.”