SerpApi.Org
If you’re a Wichita State basketball fan, this year’s The Basketball Tournament is off to a satisfying, if somewhat confusing start.
The AfterShocks, defending champions in the tournament, picked up where they left off last year.
The team built around Wichita State alumni players hung a championship banner at their home court at Koch Arena on Monday night and proceeded to absolutely dismantle The Enchantment, a team mostly made up of players who came up through the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State.
The final score was 98-77, but the game was more lopsided than even that score indicates. The AfterShocks led 89-55 when the target score to win was set at 97, using the TBT’s Elam Ending format (just Google it).
They didn’t announce an attendance figure, but the Koch Arena, which seats about 10,500 for basketball, was more or less a third full, I’d say.
The crowd was, as usual, boisterous, harkening back to the days when AfterShocks stalwarts Markis McDuffie, Conner Frankamp and Rashard Kelly were patrolling the paint and draining threes - back before Name-Image-Likeness payments and a penalty-freetransfer portal made it nearly impossible for mid-majors like WSU to compete on even terms with the big-money programs in college basketball.
The AfterShocks even had a full pep band, made up of WSU students on summer vacation and music school alumni. “It’s great, we’re having a great time,” enthused Alex Barnett, who’ll be a fifth-year senior on the Sousaphone.
But amid Monday’s elation, there was also confusion.
The TBT changed its format this year to secure a new broadcast deal with Fox Sports.
Last year, the AfterShocks survived a 64-team field to win their first TBT title. This year, the field has been narrowed to 14 teams to be more TV-schedule friendly.
The prize money is doubled. The AfterShocks split a winner-take-all $1 million last year. This year, it’s $2 million.
TBT also split the teams into to two divisions. Eight teams make up the “alumni bracket” (organized around college teams) and six are in the “non-alumni bracket,” representing a gamut of interests from Christian missionaries to a chain-link fencing manufacturer.
The non-alumni teams will be slugging it out in Las Vegas in a knockout format I’m not even going to try to explain.
The alumni side is a more traditional setup, although the first round was expanded from single-elimination to a best-of-three series.
Assuming the AfterShocks beat The Enchantment either Thursday or Friday, they’ll be headed to a single-elimination game on Monday versus JHX hoops, the KU alumni team, or Purple Reign, the K-State alumni squad.
After listening to fans in the stands murmuring about how is this all going to work, I asked Zach Bush, a former Wichita State player turned AfterShocks coach, how the team was dealing with the changes.
“Maybe ideally it’d be the old format where you got 64 or 68 teams, whatever it was,” he said. “But we’re just grateful for the opportunity. We get to play for $2 million prize, so we’re not going to act, you know, stuck up or pretentious about it.”
Even though there are fewer teams, this could be as big or a bigger climb to the top than last year was for the AfterShocks. Some teams have consolidated rosters to get stronger and K-State and KU squads both boast some former high-level NBA talent.
“If we’re fortunate enough to get through this series, you have an in-state rivalry with KU or K-State, and that’s potentially Michael Beasley (Purple Reign), Mario Chalmers (JHX) on the other side, so really good basketball. It hasn’t changed that much. You know, we’re still going to have to win five or six games to win this whole thing.”
The AfterShocks have a chance to get home-court advantage throughout the tournament, but they’ll need help, because the TBT determines home team based on regional ticket sales.
This year, TBT front-loaded the schedule, matching The Ville, (Louisville alums), and La Familia (University of Kentucky alums), creating a marquis clash of rivals sure to outdraw Wichita versus New Mexico.
In the competition for home-court, “Louisville and Kentucky are higher in the pecking order than us,” Bush said. “If one of those, if we would meet up with them, we would have to go there. If not, if we keep winning and Syracuse (Boheim’s Army) or Seton Hall (Hall In) comes out of those four teams, we could continue to host.”
The championship game will be the winner of the alumni bracket versus the winner of the non-alumni bracket - alumni gets home court.
So we’ll get to cheer on the AfterShocks at least two more times in the friendly confines of Koch Arena, maybe more.
But don’t forget to save a little fan energy for Syracuse and Seaton Hall - at least for now.
