St. Louis, MO – Wichita State is headed to the ‘Final Four’. Let that sink in for a minute. For all those seasons since 1979 when Larry Bird and Indiana State went to that final weekend of college basketball games, the Missouri Valley Conference has always been glad just to be in the tournament and maybe win a game or two.
Now, suddenly, or ‘shockingly’ Wichita State is headed to Atlanta with ‘the big guys’. Mid-major schools aren’t supposed to get this far. WSU hadn’t been to the ‘Elite Eight’ since 1981 and hasn’t made it to the national semi-finals since the 1960’s, but here they are.
Coach Gregg Marshall has done a masterful job with a team picked to finish third or fourth in the Valley. His passion and utilization of the kind of talent on his team, has been brilliant. We know they had some big regular season wins, but as he told me at the MVC tournament, his team wants to win championships.
With the CBS cameras in his locker-room he reiterated that tonight. That tonight’s game was a championship game. Well, it was. The Shockers took it to an Ohio State team that looked early like they had never been in this kind of intense environment before.
The Buckeyes fought back and frankly I thought WSU became too passive on the offensive end and helped OSU back into the game. None-the-less, Wichita State won it and is going to Atlanta.
Can anyone point to someone that battles with more passion than Carl Hall? Is there a better ‘big game’ player than Malcolm Armstead? Two key players in this fantastic run have been freshmen Ron Baker and Fred Van Vleet. The team is 7-1 since Baker rejoined the line-up and Van Vleet has saved his best play of the season for this dramatic stretch drive.
Cleanthony Early (12) & Tekele Cotton (12) joined Van Vleet (10) and Armstead (14) in double figures in the quarter-final win. Baker scored nine points, making ALL NINE of his free throw attempts and most of them in crunch time. He will be one of players to watch in the MVC next season.
With the win, WSU picked up a school record 30th win. A season for the archives!
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