Why Not Wichita State?

These days, high school basketball fans have four years to watch area standout players. After that, the stars of Wichita become the stars of somewhere else. For a multitude of reasons, top boys and girls players in south central Kansas have little interest in sticking around to play for the hometown team, Wichita State. The Class of 2008 in the City League had two high-profile recruits, Jordan Cyphers of Southeast and Jennifer Lane of Heights. Cyphers spurned the Shockers to play for Utah, a decision he made during his junior season - against the advice of Southeast basketball coach Carl Taylor, who attends most Wichita State men's home games. Despite leading Heights to two state championships as a four-year starter for coach Kip Pulliam, Lane, on the other hand, wasn't hotly pursued by WSU. She chose Virginia Commonwealth. The previous year, Heights post players Shekeira Copeland and Savannah Ellis took their games to Memphis. Wichita State hasn't been an option for stars outside the City League, either. Derby's Joanna McFarland signed with Oklahoma and fellow Ark Valley-Chisholm Trail League Division I post player, Lindsey Keller of Goddard, inked with Oklahoma State. The list goes on - Bailey Gee from Andover Central went to Missouri last year, and the year before Bekah Mills from Circle preceded Gee at Missouri. Gee's former Jaguars teammate, Tiffany Bias, arguably the top area player in the class of 2010, has already decided to join Keller at Oklahoma State. So why are top Wichita-area basketball players so anxious to get out of town? According to East boys coach Ron Allen, players choose to leave because they're ready to experience something new. "I don't think it's a knock against the (WSU) coaches, why the local kids are not going to Wichita State," says Allen, a former Shocker assistant coach. "I think (Gregg) Marshall has certainly done a great job being visible with his staff, contacting the high school coaches and sending literature out and those type of things. "I think it's more that the kids want to go away from home and grow up and experience life away from Wichita. I look at that being the culprit of why kids don't want to go to Wichita State, not that it's not attractive. I think it's a natural reaction for kids to say they want to grow up away from home." Pulliam said Lane didn't receive an offer from former Shocker women's coach Jane Albright, who did have several Wichita-area players on her teams, including Bishop Carroll's Taylor Steven and Circle's Kyrie Kinder. Another former Circle player, Val Siemens, transferred from Tulsa and now plays for the Shockers. Former Heights girls coach Lane Lord sent Tenia Green and Kelsy Richardson to WSU to play for Albright, but most of Albright's players came from other areas of Kansas or surrounding states. Pulliam said new WSU coach Jody Adams is doing a better job of selling Wichita State to potential recruits. "Shekeira Copeland, Savannah Ellis, Jennifer Lane - none of them got offered by Wichita State," Pulliam said. "I will say this: Jody and her staff have done a tremendous job recruiting the young kids I have now. They're consistently recruiting six or seven of the young kids I have now. I think it's going to change, which I think is great for Wichita and the kids in and around Wichita. But in the past, they haven't. They've let too many kids get away from here." In girls basketball in the area especially, the gap between the elite players and those who aren't elite is wide. A lack of Wichita-area players ending up at WSU may be because few players fit the mid-major mold. If a player isn't ending up in the Big 12, like Keller, McFarland and Gee, they're more likely to go to a small college or a junior college. Some go to junior colleges looking to improve enough during two seasons to make the leap to Division I. That isn't always advisable, however, and sometimes coaches must steer players away from that route if going to a smaller four-year school is a better option. "A lot of kids coming out of high school are thinking that if they go to junior college for two years, then I might have that opportunity to go to a bigger Division I school," Andover Central girls coach Stana Jefferson said. "I think it's hard for Division II schools with girls anymore. They want to get themselves that shot to Division I. They see that D-I title and think that's the only thing out there that's good for them. But there are some good Division II programs and some great NAIA programs." The responsibility, then, falls on high school coaches to present each option along with the consequences and benefits of them. That's a difficult task for some coaches who would prefer their players stay close to home. "To be perfectly honest, to tell the truth, I would try to steer a kid to Wichita State," Allen said. "But I have to be careful because I find myself doing that selfishly. I want to be able to go up and watch him play his college career. I have to watch that, but I would steer a kid to Wichita State. I don't have a problem with it." In recent years, playing for the WSU women became almost a joke among the top high school girls players. Perhaps even more than the desire to leave home, suiting up in Shocker gear wasn't an option because the team took several steps backward during Albright's five seasons. WSU was 9-22 last season and didn't win an away game. Under new coaching regimes at WSU for both the men and women, interest now could be renewed on both sides. Wichita State can start fresh in its recruiting of top Wichita area players, and area prepsters, who for a half-decade haven't viewed WSU as a possible destination, can examine a new face of the program. "Jody's been left in a tough spot," Pulliam said. "She's had to come in here and kids haven't been interested in WSU or even thought about WSU. So I know she's trying to build a relationship with my program and my girls to get that going again. There was a time five or six years ago, when we did have a girl or two there, that our players went to every game. In the last four or five years, our kids never went to a game because they weren't being sought after by WSU and it really didn't give them any reason to follow them."