PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas
Paul Mills didn’t bring Wichita State to the Bahamas for the sunshine.
He brought the Shockers for games like the one on Wednesday when they open the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament against Saint Mary’s at 6:30 p.m. Central time on ESPN2.
It’s exactly the kind of early-season, high-caliber test on a national stage that Mills wants for the Shockers.
“These are the tests you want,” Mills said. “You want to be able to play in these games.”
Why Saint Mary’s is likely WSU’s toughest opponent
It’s likely that Saint Mary’s the best team on WSU’s schedule this season.
The Gaels have appeared in four straight NCAA Tournaments, are coming off a 29-win season and enter this week 6-0 with one of the most efficient offenses in the country. They’ve scored 80-plus points in six straight games and are the nation’s top 3-point shooting team at 45.6%.
“They’re extremely efficient,” Mills said. “They know where the ball needs to get to and they do not overcomplicate things. They’re really good at sharing it… It’s going to be a heck of a test for us, but it’s something we’re really looking forward to.”
Saint Mary’s holds opponents to 28.8% from the 3-point line, while WSU is making 38.8% of its shots beyond the arc. Whether Kenyon Giles, Mike Gray Jr. and the Shockers can find clean looks will go a long way toward determining whether they can hang with a team that shares the ball as well as anyone in the country.
But setting could play a role. The ballroom-style Imperial Arena often affects perimeter shooting, and the Gaels haven’t yet shot outside their home gym this season with all six wins coming in Moraga.
“We haven’t been away from home, so this is going to be a good test for us,” Saint Mary’s coach Randy Bennett said. “Now we’re onto the next phase. We’ll learn a lot about ourselves these next three games.”
The lessons WSU learned from Boise State loss
WSU enters with a 4-1 record, as the lone loss — a 62-59 stumble at Boise State — revealed something useful for Mills.
“We just need to respond to (adversity) a little bit quicker than what we did at Boise,” Mills said.
The Shockers have shown they can solve puzzles at home. Solving them on the fly against a fringe top-25 opponent on a neutral floor is a different challenge entirely. But the players believe the Boise experience hardened them for moments like this.
“It definitely tested us,” guard Mike Gray Jr. said. “We’ve had adversity hit already. So anything that happens in this game, we’ll be ready for it.”
WSU-Saint Mary’s is a collision of elite rebounding
Perhaps the biggest subplot is the rebounding war.
Few programs have rebounded as consistently under Bennett as Saint Mary’s, which tracks as one of the nation’s elite defensive rebounding teams nearly every season.
Offensive rebounding has been a pillar of success for WSU, a team that is retrieving 41% of its misses and rely on those second-chance points to stabilize the offense. Wednesday will reveal whether they can generate them against one of college basketball’s most disciplined frontcourts.
“They’re a very good rebounding team and they look like it,” Bennett said of WSU. “They’re quick and athletic and go to the boards hard.”
On the other end, WSU has been good, but not great at defensive rebounding, a concern against the Gaels’ massive front line. Saint Mary’s features 7-foot-3 Andrew McKeever (10.5 rebounds), 7-foot-1 Harry Wessel (5.4 rebounds) and 6-foot-8 breakout scorer Paulius Murauskas (18.3 points, 7.0 rebounds).
Mills has challenged his entire roster to raise its physicality to match Saint Mary’s size and discipline.
WSU is still largely unproven and this week in the Bahamas, starting with a massive challenge on Wednesday, will be quite the measuring stick for the team.
Mills has emphasized that the team’s success starts with its own habits.
“Anytime you come into a tournament, the most important team is yours,” he said. “We need to focus on us… and make sure we’re doing all of the things necessary to win the tournament.”
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Taylor Eldridge
The Wichita Eagle
Wichita State athletics beat reporter. Bringing you closer to the Shockers you love and inside the sports you love to watch.
