FORT WORTH, Texas -- The Wichita State Shockers take on the Cincinnati Bearcats this afternoon in the American Athletic Conference semifinals.
First tip is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday. The game is scheduled to be televised on ESPN2 with Kevin Brown and Dan Dakich making the call.
The winner advances to Sunday’s title game (2:15 p.m. CT, ESPN).
OPENING TIPS
●Picked seventh in the preseason, Wichita State is regular season champion for the first time since joining the American Athletic Conference.
●The Shockers are the No. 1 seed while Cincinnati is the No. 5 seed.
●WSU rallied from a 12-point deficit in the final 12:26 to defeat South Florida, 68-67, in Friday’s quarterfinal opener. Tyson Etienne scored 20 points, including the game-winning free throws with eight seconds left, and Morris Udeze (career-high 11 rebounds) delivered a game-saving defensive play with four seconds left when he drew a charge on USF’s David Collins.
●Cincinnati held off No. 4 seed SMU, 74-71, behind 19 points from Jeremiah Davenport.
●WSU has reached 11-straight conference tournament semifinals since 2010, including three-in-a-row in The American. The Shockers are in search of their first title game appearances after dropping close games to Houston (2018) and CIncinnati (2019).
●WSU defeated the Bearcats earlier this year in Wichita, 82-76, but their Jan. 27 return trip to Cincinnati was canceled due to the Bearcats’ COVID-19 shutdown.
●In a span of just three months, Isaac Brown went from “coach for a year” to “coach of the year” in The American. Brown was named interim coach on Nov. 17. WSU removed his interim tag on Feb. 26.
●Sophomore guard Tyson Etienne -- the AAC’s co-Player of the Year -- is averaging 17.3 points and 3.1 threes-per-game on 39.5% accuracy.
●Point guard Alterique Gilbert was a third team all-conference pick. He averages 10.2 points and leads the team in assists (4.1) and steals (1.6).
●Ricky Council IV (AAC All-Freshman Team) has been a major scoring weapon off the bench, averaging 18.3 points-per-40-minutes.
●Junior guard Dexter Dennis (March 8 AAC Player of the Week) is one of the nation’s elite defenders and has averaged 12.5 points and 2.1 threes on 40.5% accuracy during WSU’s eight game winning streak.
●WSU last tasted defeat more than seven weeks ago (Jan. 21 at Memphis).
●WSU appeared in seven-straight NCAA tournaments from 2012-18 and reached the 2019 NIT semifinals. The Shockers were a consensus NCAA at-large pick in 2020 before the season’s cancelation.
●WSU had 10 AAC postponements due to COVID-19 protocol -- all of them initiated by opposing teams.. Three teams separate WSU from the Coaches Poll top-25. The Shockers are the equivalent of No. 32 in the AP.
●WSU has reached the semifinals in each of its last 10 conference tournaments (2010-17 MVC, 2018-19 AAC).. WSU has dropped close games on each of the last two semifinal Saturdays. In 2018 it was a 77-74 loss to Houston in a battle of nationally-ranked teams. Rob Gray scored 33 points to lead UH. In 2019 the Shockers pushed No. 25 Cincinnati to the wire in a 66-63 loss.
●WSU is 9-1 in games decided by five points or less.
THE SERIES WITH CINCINNATI
●This is series game No. 38. Cincinnati leads 24-13.
● WSU won the last meeting (Jan. 10) in Wichita, snapping a six-game series losing streak.
●The Shockers’ Jan. 27 return trip to Cincinnati was canceled due to the Bearcats’ COVID-19 shutdown.
●UC won both meetings in 2018-19 by a combined four points and swept all three 2017-18 matchups, capped by a 66-63 thriller in the semifinals of the 2019 AAC tournament in Memphis.
●Both sides went wire-to-wire in the 2017-18 national rankings and split a pair of high-stakes matchups. The Shockers ended No. 5 Cincinnati’s nation-best 39-game home winning streak, but the Bearcats returned the favor in the regular season finale, defeating the 11th-ranked Shocker in Wichita to claim the AAC title outright.
--goshockers.com--