by Kevin Burton
Well, at least it’s over.
The 2024-25 version of Wichita State basketball bowed out yesterday, when the Shockers lost an American Athletic Conference tournament quarterfinal game to Memphis 83-80.
The team went 19-14 this year and will not go to a post-season tournament. They were far from sublime, not even ridiculous. Somehow they managed to become something even worse than that. They were nondescript, uninspiring, irrelevant.
They were like crackers without enough salt, “spicy” nachos without any bite. They left you making a mental note not to order that again.
This is my problem, not theirs. I shouldn’t be looking to carpetbagging athletes who maybe hadn’t heard of Wichita until recently, for a source of regional pride or anything at all. If you said to me, “turn the radio off and get a life,” I could only shrug and concede the point.
But there will be no March Madness, onset-of-spring shot of adrenaline in Greater Wichita, at least not springing forth from that lot.
My Wichita State hoops obsession of recent years was actually one part regional pride, maybe four parts what my college friend Matt called “a wicked anti-establishment streak.” It was underdog pride, love for the little guy.
I am a little guy, a disabled man with some level of talent and ambition, like a mid-major basketball program, just trying to get an even break and have a chance to succeed.
I explained it to my brother once thusly: “I love Kansas State, and I like Kansas, but I am Wichita State.”
And it hasn’t been that long since Wichita State gave us Kansans and little guys a handful of thrills.
Wichita State beat Alabama 66-57 to win the 2011 NIT and followed that up with something even better.
Guards Fred VanVleet and Ron Baker led a class that brought unprecedented success to Wichita State. The group won nine NCAA tournament games in four years. That included a trip to the Final 4 and another trip to the Sweet 16, dispatching Kansas to get there.
If you at all a fan of college basketball, you remember those years and Wichita State being one of the most interesting teams to pop up on a bracket. They could usually be counted on to punch above their weight class.
Around these parts, we ate that up. And people around the country got it too.
The Monday after Notre Dame eliminated the VanVleet-Baker team as seniors, Michael Wilbon on Pardon The Interruption said, “Baker and VanVleet forever!”
Couldn’t have said it any better myself.
Based on that team’s success, and a perceived lack of regular-season competition, Wichita State severed an affiliation with The Missouri Valley Conference that had lasted more than seven decades, to join the American. At the time, people were talking about the American being good enough to join the power five conferences, in a “power six.”
“President John Bardo said that Wichita State University has accepted today’s invitation to join the American Athletic Conference,” read a release on the university website April 7, 2017
“This is an event of great importance in defining the future of Wichita State,” Bardo said. “Two years ago we set out on a fact-finding process to determine the best way athletics could help position the university for enrollment growth and enhance WSU’s reputation as an academic and research institution.”
“It became clear to us that The American offered the best combination of universities that share our academic and cultural values and research focus.”
“The University of Tulsa, Southern Methodist University (in Dallas) and the University of Houston are located in areas of Oklahoma and Texas that make up part of the prime areas where we want to recruit students.
“In addition to those cities, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Orlando, Tampa, Memphis, Philadelphia, Storrs/Hartford, and Greenville, North Carolina, are all cities that our athletes, alumni and fans will enjoy visiting, and we’re looking forward to welcoming them to Wichita,” Bardo said.
“This gives us an opportunity to regularly test ourselves against traditionally strong competition — and to do so on a grander stage,” said then WSU Athletic Director Darron Boatright said.
How’d that work out?
Bardo and Boatright are both long gone from their respective positions at WSU. Many of the schools referenced in that 2017 news release, Houston, SMU, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Connecticut, have left the American for “grander stages” to coin a phrase.
The American has replaced those schools with the likes of North Texas and Rice.
I think of Rice and I’m thinking of broccoli and cheese, not “Power Six” basketball.
In fact when WSU began to struggle in the American, I joked, “is it too late to get back in the Valley”
This year as a consumer of WSU and AAC basketball, I saw some dreadful, unwatchable games. I had a vague feeling of “is this really better than the Valley?”
As it turns out, it is not.
When I checked this week, the RPI rating service had the Missouri Valley Conference –ranked as the 9th best, the American, 11th. The NET service had the Valley 10th, the American 11th.
So the Shockers grand stage tour has taken them to a worse conference that they are not exactly dominating.
So tomorrow we’ll be sitting out selection Sunday in Wichita, and who knows for how many years to come.
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