Taking a Moment to Look at Wichita State's Run and Future

With the loss to Miami, everyone is now under the assumption Wichita State’s run as one of the best programs of late is now over. I’m here to say, don’t buy into that story just because of the losses of Fred VanVleet and Ron Baker.

Yeah, FVV is a top-7 point guard in the country and they helped turn Wichita State into Wichita State. Let’s take a moment to appreciate their careers. They made the Final Four as freshmen (while not being major players on that team – in the sense of what they turned into) and followed that up with an undefeated regular season and losing in one of the best NCAA Tournament games played against an underseeded Kentucky team. They showed you can compete with anyone in the country, no matter what program you are at. They changed the way the committee, media and casual fan takes a look at mid major programs.

So why should you continue to believe in Wichita State as one of the better programs in the country? First off as long as Gregg Marshall is the head coach there they will compete. Now don’t confuse this with me calling them an elite program – they aren’t Kentucky, Arizona, Duke, Carolina or Kansas. But, they are in that next tier. Marshall is one of the 10 best coaches in America and until a school (cough cough North Carolina) brings him away, they will float around the top-25 and be the favorite to win the Missouri Valley.

There’s also plenty of talent on the roster. There’s still Landry Shamet (who was forced to miss pretty much the whole season this year), Markis McDuffie (chose Wichita over Maryland) and Shaq Morris (who just played incredibly well against Miami).

It’s simply lazy to say Wichita won’t be good next year because of losing FVV and Baker. Marshall has done this before when he lost Cleanthony Early – who is arguably as good skill wise as FVV and better than Baker.