Fred VanVleet and Ron Baker are in the NBA now, but last year they mentored Shamet through the disappointment of a redshirt season brought on by a stress fracture in his foot. Three years ago, they were two of the stars of a Shockers team that won its first 35 games and saw a perfect season ruined in an all-time NCAA Tournament classic by a Kentucky team that went on to play in the national championship game.
“That’d be cool. Ron hits me up every once in a while,” Shamet said. “Kentucky's a good team. Obviously, it’s a little different now.”
Aside from head coaches John Calipari of UK and Gregg Marshall of Wichita, and many of their assistants, there are few contestants on either side who were part of that second-round tournament game back in 2014, which Kentucky won 78-76 when VanVleet’s 3-point try missed at the buzzer. No one who played in the game is still around.
Wichita big man Shaquille Morris was redshirting that year. Senior walk-ons John Robert Simon and Zach Bush were on the bench. Kentucky seniors Dominique Hawkins and Derek Willis were on Kentucky’s roster, but not on the floor.
The current victim of Wichita’s underseeding is Dayton, which fell 64-58 in a valiant performance that included 25 points in the final game of star guard Scoochie Smith’s career but just 31 percent shooting against the Shockers’ sturdy defense. They blocked four UD shots on a single second-half possession, and guard Kyle Davis made WSU shooting guard Conner Frankamp — the Missouri Valley Tournament MVP — all but disappear. Frankamp got off only five shots and made just one, but that one was a 3-pointer with 1:27 left that extended his team’s lead from four to seven points.
Dayton coach Archie Miller suggested Wichita could have been a No. 4 or 5 seed after seeing the Shockers too close up.
“Thirty-some wins and you look at the numbers across the board – I mean, every coach studies the analytics,” Miller said. “They’re a team that can beat anybody on a neutral court at any time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t pushing toward another second weekend.”
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