Without star senior point guard Fred Van Vleet on the perimeter for Wichita State, the Shockers went from being a team ranked among the nation’s top fifteen or twenty teams to one that couldn’t even receive a vote in the AP poll.
That’s what going 1-3 with losses to USC, Alabama, and Iowa will do to you.
But now that he’s back in the lineup and presumably healthy for the first time since the season actually began, WSU might not be as done with their NCAA Tournament hopes as too many had suddenly assumed them to be.
All this thanks to a defensive clinic put on against visiting UNLV, a team that had been playing as well as anyone in the country outside of the top ten rankings. The Rebels had finally found their mojo with all of the talented, long, athletic pieces they’d put together, but no one could break through for them against Van Vleet and the Shockers.
Van Vleet put on a show, scoring 17 points and chipping in four rebounds and four assists on the day, accounting for more than 44-percent of WSU’s offense against a stout defensive frontline. Yes, that is absurd for a guy just one week off of an injury.
If he can continue playing anything like this, Gregg Marshall’s group has a chance to be the dominant force that we originally expected them to be in the Missouri Valley Conference. However, with the strength displayed by squads like Evansville and Northern Iowa already, Van Vleet may need to be even better than he was against the Runnin’ Rebels.
