Published Feb 21, 2019
Tulsa suffers complete collapse in 81-60 loss to Wichita State
Larry Lewis
ITS Senior Writer

A recipe for a Tulsa disaster: be without a key player (Lawson Korita), play unbelievably lousy defense, have a seemingly countless number of shots spin out, have no patience on offense, and have a previously awful shooting Wichita State shoot way better than it has all season.

The result was of horrifyingly embarrassing 81-60 Tulsa loss to longtime rival Wichita State in front of a crowd of 5,002 on Wednesday night at the Reynolds Center.

The bad omen for the night for the Golden Hurricane came before the game was played when key glue player Lawson Korita wasn’t in uniform. With Korita out sick, the whole Golden Hurricane team looked terminal.

Without Korita in uniform, Tulsa looked lost on both offense and defense. Even though Korita only averages 5.5 points per game, it is the little things he brings, like crisp passing and being the leader of Tulsa’s matchup zone, that Tulsa so desperately missed.

“One of the things that Lawson brings to the table is he’s a ball mover," said TU coach Frank Haith. “His stats are what they are. Some of the things I felt like we were struggling with today we missed. A guy that plays team basketball and moves the ball. He does the little things. We missed that.”

With Korita out, Tulsa (16-11, 6-8 AAC) shot a dismal 30.2 percent from the field, including four of 22 (18.2 percent) on three-pointers. Meanwhile, Wichita State hit 15 of 33 three-pointers (45.5 percent) and made 47.6 percent from the field.

This from a WSU team that came into the game making 30.9 percent on three’s and 40.7 percent from the field. Tulsa had made 45.8 percent from the field and 35.2 percent on three-pointers.

Wichita seemingly took an endless amount of wide open three’s, as Tulsa seemed to have not a clue of how and when to rotate to contest the Shockers’ shots.

“He (Korita) absolutely is the centerpiece of our zone, and in terms of execution, we definitely missed him in terms of what he brings," Haith explained.

With little used Chris Barnes starting instead of Korita, Wichita State (13-12, 6-7) scored the first bucket, fittingly on a three-pointer, and led from that time on in a game that was never close.

Tulsa (16-11, 6-8) was down by double-digits midway through the first half and never was closer than within six points in the half, trailing 42-28 at halftime. TU never narrowed the margin to single digits in the second half, although the Golden Hurricane was within 10 points early in the half and within 11 points within six minutes into the second half.

Just when it seemed Tulsa might get back into the game, shots would spin out, and the Shockers would hit yet another open three-pointer.

The strangest thing about the game was that Tulsa killed the Shockers on the boards (45-37, including 19-8 on the offensive boards), which is especially puzzling considering Tulsa’s well-documented rebounding woes combined with Wichita State’s much bigger team and normally strong rebounding.

“We outrebounded them. We only turned it over 10 times,” Haith said. “If you would have told me those two things I would have said we would be right where we needed to be.”

Leading the way for Wichita State was Dexter Dennis with 18 points, including six of nine (66.7 percent) on three-pointers. Dennis had made only 22 three’s for the season (35.5 percent). Next was Samajae Haynes-Jones with 17 points (five of 10 on three’s) although he was shooting 24.6 behind the arc in conference play.

“They were making some shots they normally don’t make, but we’ve got to run some offense,” Haith said. “There’s no 10-point play. And there were times where we were trying to get back into the game on one play.”

Tulsa was also probably overly concerned about WSU leading scorer Markis McDuffie (18.6 points per game). TU held McDuffie to 9 points on three of nine shooting, but couldn’t guard anyone else.

“We came out too amped up,” said Haith about his team. “Once they punched us in our mouth, we didn’t respond. It didn’t look like our team -- we looked tight. Just tried to score quickly without sharing the ball or playing team basketball.”

It also didn’t help that Korita’s roommate, Curran Scott, has missed practice the last two weeks with his foot in a boot. Scott has played through it, but has struggled the last two games.

Martins Igbanu led Tulsa with 17 points on seven of eight shooting from the field. DaQuan Jeffries was three of 10 from the field and finished with 10 points and 10 rebounds.

“I don’t know who that team was that played out there today. It wasn’t our team,” Haith said. “We haven’t looked like that all year. We didn’t share the ball.

“Our defense wasn’t very good. Our execution on offense was as bad as it's been all year.”

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