Story courtesy of The AthleticInside the college basketball world, coaches and others around the game have been wondering what the heck is going on at Wichita State. Fans have flocked to social media wondering the same thing.How does a 23-8 team expected to be in the Top 25 in 2020-21 lose eight scholarship players?In a conversation with&nbsp;The Athletic&nbsp;this week,&nbsp;coach Gregg Marshall laid out what went wrong inside his program and how he was able to respond by signing five players in a three-day span starting last Saturday.This is mostly new territory for Marshall. Two years ago at this time, he had lost Austin Reaves, who transferred to Oklahoma. Reaves was the first transfer Marshall had lost whom he didn’t want to see leave.While transfers have become so common in college basketball that many have taken to calling it an epidemic, Marshall had never really been bit by the bug. It wasn’t uncommon for him to hear from&nbsp;other&nbsp;coaches who would complain about the drama and discontent inside their programs. “I would look at them and go, Man, that’s too bad. I never had that problem,” Marshall said. “I honestly thought we were kind of immune to it, but undoubtedly, we were not and are not.”The mass exodus began on March 13, a day after the NCAA Tournament was canceled. Four scholarship players (Erik Stevenson, Jamarius Burton, Noah Fernandes and DeAntoni Gordon) and a walk-on (Tate Busse) put their names in the transfer portal. Three more scholarship players (Morris Udeze, Grant Sherfield and Asbjorn Midtgaard) have since joined them in the portal, and Ja’Dun Michael, Wichita State’s lone Class of 2020 signee, asked out of his letter of intent and reopened his recruitment.And because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Marshall and his staff were essentially grounded, unable to hit the road to recruit.“We had kids hit the transfer portal about the same time everything was shutting down from the virus, and part of the problem was our kids just dispersed,” Marshall said. “They weren’t dealing with you on a daily basis talking about academics or doing an individual workout. You just didn’t see them. They all scattered to wherever they went to — home or their girlfriend’s house or wherever, because the campus shut down.”From a distance, it looked as if the Shockers had enjoyed a solid season and were primed to be a top-25 contender for years to come. They were on the NCAA Tournament bubble entering the AAC tourney, and the core was built with underclassmen. For 2020-21, the Shockers were expected to only lose senior center Jaime Echenique.Marshall knew it was unlikely everyone would return. He said he expected he could lose a few other players, most notably Stevenson, who has since&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kansas.com/sports/college/wichita-state/article241187251.html" target="_blank">aired his grievances with The Wichita Eagle</a>. “That was a given,” Marshall acknowledged.Marshall also worried about Fernandes and Gordon, who spent most of the season at the end of the bench. “I was hoping that we could salvage the freshmen, but you certainly understand,” Marshall said. “They were buried. They were third string at best and they wanted to play and they’re good players and deserve to play, but the problem was we had 13 good players.”Had the damage stopped there, the Shockers still would have had plenty of talent left to merit a lofty preseason ranking and hardly anyone would have noticed. Where Marshall now realizes he had issues he wasn’t fully aware of during the season was with Burton and Sherfield, his top two point guards.When Sherfield committed to the Shockers last April,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.kansas.com › sports › college › wichita-state › article229321364" target="_blank">he was quoted in The Wichita Eagle</a>&nbsp;saying that Marshall had told him he wanted him to be the starting point guard right away and be a leader. “I didn’t realize it, but it really bothered Jamarius Burton,” Marshall said of Sherfield’s comments.Burton had been the starting point guard for the final 23 games of 2018-19, a key figure in leading the Shockers to the NIT championship game. He became even more frustrated when Sherfield started the season opener against Nebraska-Omaha. Burton came off the bench and rolled his right ankle. He missed only one game because of the injury, but he didn’t move into the starting lineup until the eighth game of the season, following a loss to West Virginia.“When you’ve started as a freshman and then to come off the bench behind a freshman, that’ll piss you off,” Burton told&nbsp;The Athletic&nbsp;in mid-January.Burton said Wichita State legend Lynbert “Cheese” Johnson told him to stay ready and kept his confidence up. “It made me grind even harder and realize that, hey, this is a business,” Burton said. “It’s a business at this point.”Burton went on to say he liked that the Shockers had a young roster and looked forward to them growing up together, but by the end, that had obviously changed.“When I tell you that I didn’t manage the personalities very well, that’s what I’m talking about,” Marshall said. “I’ve never dealt with some of the things I’ve had to deal with in this situation.”Burton started the final 23 games of the season and led the team in minutes, but he was often sharing the floor with Sherfield, who would play point guard when the two were on the floor together.“Jamarius Burton is not your typical point guard, but he is a very good player,” Marshall said. “He can play the point and he did play the point very successfully, but when I think about point guards, I think about Jason Kidd and John Stockton and those type guys. He’s more of a point guard in the mold of Patrick Beverly.“With Grant, he wanted to come in and be given the ball.&nbsp;I tried to please both of them, and in doing so, I didn’t please either one of them.”In the frontcourt for the last two seasons, Marshall has gone with a three-headed monster with Echenique as the clear starter and the other three (Udeze, Midtgaard and Isaiah Poor Bear-Chandler) battling for the other two spots. Again, Marshall was left with multiple players — Udeze and Midtgaard — who were unhappy with their roles.“I was disappointed that both left, but I anticipated probably one of them leaving, because one of them was fourth string,” Marshall said. “The other one was either second or third string behind Jaime Echenique, and that’s hard, and I definitely understand that, but I was hoping that we could salvage at least one of them.”The transfer portal has left coaches mostly powerless when it comes to transfers. Players can enter at their discretion. Previously, a player would have to ask for his release. While this maybe gave coaches too much power, it at least ensured that there was a conversation and allowed coaches a chance to re-recruit a player.This all happened so fast, especially the first wave, that the coaching staff had to move on quickly and get to work rebuilding the roster amid a pandemic.Last April 18, Marshall got off the phone with Trey Wade, who had just committed and filled WSU’s final scholarship, and the coach was ecstatic about the future. He knew the Shockers would have just the one opening for 2020-21, and he told his staff he wanted to be picky and find an impact player for that spot. In November, he got his guy in Michael.That had effectively ended Wichita State’s recruiting efforts for next season. Although the coaching staff knew you always have to stay ready, there was no way to be prepared for what came on March 13 and the weeks after.“We had to lace up our bootstraps and go to work and started making phone calls and cutting up film,” Marshall said.Before social distancing was universally applied, Marshall and his staff spread out around his dining room table that first weekend and started connecting with their contacts and searching for players.Synergy, which has tape of every possession for all Division I teams and many junior college teams, helped the coaches quickly evaluate targets.“If you like recruiting, I would liken it to being on Wall Street, down in the pits where they do the trading,” Marshall said. “It was very intense recruiting for hours and hours and hours.”When it became clear everyone would have to isolate, the staff continued their efforts from their own homes, staying connected through virtual meetings on Zoom. They built video presentations for prospects and hit the phones.“The advantage for us is in that videotape,” Marshall said. “The disadvantage for us is not being able to travel and go see them and use the private plane and roll in there and shake their hands and give them a hug. The biggest disadvantage is with the players. They’re almost forced to make decisions without going to the campus.”The biggest need was at point guard. The Shockers still have one of the best shooting guard/small forward combos in the AAC in freshman Tyson Etienne and sophomore Dexter Dennis. Wade is the ideal stretch 4 for Marshall’s system, and he has two true big-men holdovers in Bear-Chandler and Josaphat Bilau, a redshirt freshman whose potential Marshall is excited about. The Shockers needed someone to get them the ball, and their first commitment was a big one: Connecticut grad transfer Alterique Gilbert, a former McDonald’s All-American who battled injuries his first two years at UConn — playing only six games — but has been a productive player the last two years in the AAC.The Shockers rebuilt their perimeter depth over the weekend by adding three more guards. The one expected to be the most immediate contributor is Craig Porter, a combo guard who was well-regarded as a junior college prospect and won a national championship in his freshman year at Vincennes. Porter is from Terre Haute, Ind., the home of Indiana State, and WSU assistant Lou Gudino, a former ISU assistant, knew about Porter and had recruited him when he was in high school.“I’ve known Coach Gudino for a long time, and a lot of people I know trust him, and so I’m going to put that same trust in him,” Porter said. “Wichita State is known for winning, and I know Coach Marshall is going to get it done no matter what. Being able to be a part of that is a dream of mine.”Porter said Wichita State started recruiting him about three months ago, and things really picked up the last few weeks. He was a little concerned about the number of players who left, but he trusted Gudino and said the coaches did a good job building the trust with him and his parents.The Shockers also landed two athletic high school guards in Ricky Council IV and Chaunce Jenkins. Council, a three-star guard out of Durham, N.C., was a player WSU had been recruiting all season. Jenkins, who played on the B-team for Boo Williams’ grassroots program, is a late bloomer who looks to have elite athleticism. (He had the dunk below, which&nbsp;<a href="https://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/28460655" target="_blank">went viral</a>&nbsp;this season.)On Monday, Wichita State got its fifth commitment from Clarence Jackson, a wing who can play both forward spots. Jackson spent his freshman year at Polk State College, a junior college in Florida, and he has three years of eligibility remaining.Marshall is unable to comment about any of the five until each signs — the spring signing period begins April 15 — but most of the holes have been filled. Marshall would like to add one more big man and then use his two final scholarships for players who would sit out next season, most likely transfers. He does not expect any more players to leave. Dennis could consider testing the NBA Draft waters, but he has told Marshall he’ll be back.As for the future, Marshall hopes that having more veterans around — he’ll have at least five upperclassmen compared to three this year — should help. “We could have used some more veterans to kind of squelch that stuff in the locker room,” he said.Marshall also is trying to be more careful with his message in recruiting.“You’ve got to make sure that you’re not promising things that you can’t deliver on,” he said. “You’ve got to make sure that you get kids that are more about the team. I just never had to deal with this amount of it being more about individual accomplishments and getting an opportunity versus the team’s success, and I’ve got to make sure and get guys that want to do well individually, but the most important thing is the team success.”While the outlook is different than anyone expected, Marshall still has the makings of an NCAA Tournament team. As one coach said in a text to&nbsp;The Athletic,&nbsp;even with everything that was going on behind the scenes, the Shockers were in position to make the NCAA Tournament. “Marshall is a helluva coach,” the coach wrote.Marshall likes the core that stayed put. “Solid, man,” he said. “Solid.” The defections obviously shook the program, but in Gilbert, the Shockers have a guard who could address their biggest weakness last year — someone with the quickness to create separation off the bounce and make the game easier for others. And by not having as many players eligible, Marshall and his staff should have an easier time managing minutes.

Why Wichita State lost 8 players — and what Gregg Marshall did to counter it