The Sunflower v.122 i.43

MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2018 • VOL. 122, ISS. 43

THESUNFLOWER.COM

WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY’S INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1896.

Student Fees Committee deliberations date set, groups can give ‘supplemental presentations’

‘They’re still champions

there’s no doubt about it’

BY CHANCE SWAIM

MATT CROW/THE SUNFLOWER

Wichita State center Shaquille Morris, a senior, watches a video of the six graduating seniors highlights Sunday in Koch Arena.

BY ALIYAH FUNSCHELLE

A

single basket was the only thing that came in between No. 11 Wichita State and a share of the conference regular-season title.

On an inbounds pass with less than 10 seconds remaining, senior guard Conner Frankamp was left to take the game-deciding shot.

Frankamp’s shot didn’t fall, leaving No. 10 Cincinnati clinch The American’s regular-season title outright by one single point. Regardless of the outcome, Head Coach Gregg Marshall had no regrets in having Frankamp shoot that crucial shot.

“Cincinnati’s five-men are very athletic, and long, and do a good job with their feet. I thought it was going in, I just had that much faith in Conner,” Marshall said.

“Obviously he didn’t make a three tonight, but he’s one of the best shooters I’ve ever seen in my life.”

After the game, Marshall ensured

Tracking student fee changes Student fee increases for fixed-line items (right), based on the original recommendations by the Student Fees Committee, show Student Affairs would have increased the most. Funding for The Sunflower, under the recommendations handed down in the original request, would have decreased by 65 percent in the last five years.

Frankamp knew he had faith in him and doesn’t want his shooting confidence to diminish. Marshall said if he had to do it over, he’d have Frankamp take the shot again.

“I said ‘Well that’s not the last one you’re gonna take,’” Marshall said. “I would do the same thing again. I would give him the opportunity to make that shot.”

When Marshall went in the locker room, he expressed his love for the team, but also put a positive twist on losing on senior day.

“I just told them I loved them. I told them as a coach I wish I could’ve drawn up one more play, one more basket somehow,” Marshall said.

The positive spin came from Marshall’s personal experience, and the only other time he had lost a game on senior day: Evansville in 2013.

Despite losing on senior day and watching their regular-season and tournament conference title slip through their fingers, the 2013 team bounced back and made it to

1-YR CHANGE

STUDENT AFFAIRS

$109,917

CAMPUS REC

$12,925

EOF

the Final Four.

“That’s just a message to them that they’re still champions, there’s no doubt about it,” Marshall said. “They’re champions in every form shape, however you want to cut it. On and off the court, those six seniors are still champions.”

Marshall said the players bought into his story, and now they’re ready to take on the rest of March. The players don’t want to get stuck on the loss and want to do what they can to move forward.

“Marshall did a really good job of making light of the situation,” sophomore guard Landry Shamet said. “I think we all understand where our heads have to be and what we have to do from this point forward.”

Shamet said the players can’t think too much into the loss with what the rest of March brings.

SEE BASKETBALL PAGE 4

1-YR %

$6,955

5-YR CHANGE

4%

$913,961

47%

3%

$145,142

16%

$12,297

5%

$341,296

6%

$17,574

6%

3%

RSC

$155,750

SGA

$22,900

SUNFLOWER

$50,000

48%

$103,000

$7,599

.0008%

$444,530

TOTAL

3%

5-YR %

8%

Increase

Decrease

65%

5%

SOURCE: STUDENT FEES BINDER

The Student Fees Committee will reconvene in public this Friday, according to an email from University Budget Director David Miller. Groups that want to give a “supplemental presentation” to their original one from last week will get eight minutes to make their case.

The supplemental presentations will not be scheduled. Instead, an official representative from each group wanting to present can show up between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. to provide additional information to the committee during an eight minute time-slot. The meeting will be held in Santa Fe Trail Room, RSC 233.

Deliberations will begin at 11 a.m.

“Students, Faculty, and Staff are welcome to attend in the gallery during both sessions, but will not be permitted to speak or ask questions; this period is meant for the purpose of the committee deciding the recommendations,” Miller said.

Organizations were given either 15 or 30 minutes to give their original presentations. Student Affairs presented for 45 minutes. SGA presented for 15 minutes.

After the presentations concluded, the Student Fees Committee met behind closed doors last month to deliberate how to allocate student fees.

Now, the committee is reconvening in public to reconsider requests made by campus organizations — after a proposed cut to The Sunflower “raised First Amendment questions.”

After the closed meeting, the committee suggested drastic cuts for some programs, including The Sunflower’s operating funding by 50 percent.

Funding for other programs would have increased with the proposed budget, like Student Affairs, which was recommended an increase of $118,811.

Vice President for Student Affairs Teri Hall is the chair of the Student Fees Committee.

An hour before the student senate meeting Wednesday, where the student fees recommendation would have undergone a first reading, Wichita State President John Bardo emailed a statement to Hall, calling for the Student Fee Committee to reconvene and hold its deliberations in public, “so that the campus and the community know we are committed to the First Amendment and the freedom of speech required in a first-class university.”

The Student Fees Committee — a group of students from student government and university administrators — met behind closed doors, barring reporters from The Sunflower and the Wichita Eagle from entry to the student fee deliberations, claiming WSU’s general counsel advised that student

government is not a state agency and student fees are not state funds.

Claiming the committee is not subject to the Kansas Open Meetings Act, university administrators and student government members discussed how to allocate $9,642,314 in mandatory fees students pay in addition to tuition each year.

Last Monday, The Sunflower wrote about how members of the Student Fees Committee might be retaliating for its investigative reporting. That evening, the committee released its recommendations, cutting The Sunflower’s operating funds in half and its request by nearly two-thirds, from $158,000 to $55,000.

INSIDE

TASTE OF LEBANON

Q&A WITH THE CAVVES

ARCHEOLOGY & THE BIBLE

THE LAST HURRAH

N&J Cafe passes the test.

Music critic John Darr sits down with one of Wichita’s up-and-coming local bands.

This religion class combines disciplines.

Senior men’s basketball players say goodbye to Koch Arena.

CULTURE • PAGE 3

CULTURE • PAGE 3

CULTURE • PAGE 3

SPORTS • PAGE 4

OPINION

2 | MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2018

www.thesunflower.com

THE STAFF EDITORIAL

Editor-in-Chief Chance Swaim Managing Editor Jenna Farhat Culture Editor Marissa Campbell Sports Editor Matt Crow Opinion Editor Evan Pflugradt Projects Editor Ray Strunk Creative Director Madeline Deabler Photo Editor Brian Hayes Digital Editor Nicole Byrne

ADVERTISING

Advertising Manager Christian Yost

ADVISING

Faculty Adviser Amy DeVault

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Send letters to the editor to editor@thesunflower.com or submit at thesunflower.com. Please keep letters to 400 words or less. All letters are edited for clarity and length. Please include your name, WSU affiliation and a phone number for verification purposes.

Our Mission

The Sunflower — both in print and online — will be a timely resource of information about the Wichita State University community. It will report on news, issues, activities, academics and athletics, in addition to offering a forum for discussion, reviews and commentary. It will also be an effective learnig experience for students, who will have the final authority over what is published.

Legal

The Sunflower (published for use by WSU students, faculty and staff) is private property and unlawful removal or use of papers is prosecutable. One copy may be taken for free. Additional copies must be purchased for $1 each. The Sunflower is also partially funded by the Student Government Association at WSU. The opinions expressed in The Sunflower editorials, columns, guest columns, reviews, advertisements, letters and editorial cartoons are not necessarily those of the staff, publications board, student body or university. The Sunflower reserves the right to edit or reject any submission. We also reserve the right to edit or reject any advertisement.

The Sunflower will not knowingly publish advertising that is false or misleading. If you have a question about an ad or a classified, call the Wichita Better Business Bureau at 316-2633146.

Thinking Abortion?

Alternatives: Free Testing 265-0134

Students, Faculty, Staff:

Student Affairs and SGA should lead with generosity, not greed After deliberating in a closed meeting, the Student Fees Committee recommended cutting The Sunflower’s funding by $50,000, a clear attempt to censor the student newspaper for critical coverage by threatening ability to function. President John Bardo made the right decision by calling for the committee to reconvene in public.

But where do we go from here? Even considering to cut the paper’s budget in half is an intimidation tactic. It sends a clear message to all current and future Sunflower staffers: if The Sunflower writes stories questioning university decisions, its funding will be up for grabs.

Bardo recommended the fees committee “holds its deliberations in public, so that the campus and community know we are committed to the First Amendment and the freedom of speech required in a first-class university.” In the same statement, he said he believed the committee “acted within the rules of the Kansas Open Meetings Act” by having a closed meeting. Clearly, the “First Amendment questions” were not related to the meeting being closed.

Let’s not ignore the real problem. The First Amendment

question arises because The Sunflower’s funding was inequitably cut. The total budget for fixedline items, like The Sunflower, has increased by 5 percent in the last five years. That’s wrong — plain and simple.

Two years ago, The Sunflower took a $53,000 cut — a third of its allocation — when the total amount for fixed-line items fell $179,566. A member of that year’s fees committee sent a letter to the editor last week explaining that cut was “intended to be a temporary reduction for one fiscal year only, and to restore funding to the necessary level of $158,000 the following year.”

That didn’t happen, despite the fact fixed-line item allocations increase last year by $369,398 — more than enough to restore the newspaper’s funding.

So where is all of this extra money going?

In the past five years, including the behind-closed-doors recommendation, Student Affairs’ funding would increase by 47 percent, or $913,961. In that same time period, Campus Recreation would increase by 16 percent, or $145,142.

If you don’t count the Collegiate Readership Program, a program that brought local and

Dear Editor, The possibility of cutting off funding for Mikro is disheartening to many WSU alumni.

Publications such as The Sunflower, Mikrokosmos, and Mojo Literary Magazine provide us a persuasive and diverse array of positive voices in trying times, but they also serve the practical purpose of preparing students for real life and work after academia. Even as I write this letter, student and faculty editors are preparing to represent Wichita State University with a piled-high table of WSU publications at the annual convention of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP)—a meeting that features hundreds of readings or workshops attended by over 12,000 writers and editors, and one of the best recruiting tools for colleges and universities in the country. You couldn’t buy one

FROM

Pamela McMaster Yenser national advertisement for WSU with the tiny cost of supporting a year of WSU student publications. Besides, this is a great venue for MFA students to make professional connections and interview for jobs. How can students participate without a lit magazine? Mikro was my first poetry publication and my first editing experience. It was the ticket for me and for my husband Jon Kelly Yenser (English BA, WSU, Kansas; English MA, UW, Washington) to meet amazing students and authors, to travel the world, and to stay in contact with far-flung

Regents:

Mr. Bardo:

How much does WSU really pay Tomlin?

members of the alliance board paid for their “service”

WE STAND

Martha Graham said,

Stop whoring my

TAKE BETTER SELFIES

Stop whoring my

If Journalism

—Pamela McMaster Yenser, Freelance Literary Editor (English BA, WSU, Kansas; English MA, PSU, Kansas; Creative Writing MFA, UI, Idaho)

After SGA said The Sunflower’s ad section wasn’t putting in efforts to sell ads, Sunflower readers bought classifieds to show their support

Ms. Espinoza

GAIN INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS! Take WSU Photography classes!

friends. Both of our careers have involved communication and writing. Since leaving in 1967, we both have been journalists, university teachers and administrators, fundraisers, editors, and widely published writers of stories and poems--the skills for which we learned first at WSU. I even conquered my shyness in speech and traveled on the debate team. Kelly and I have thrilled to see our children Becca and Jessup benefit from many years of higher education.

It is time now for us to make sure the next generation receives the kind of support we enjoyed.

How lucky we were to be in the right place at the right time.

Their time is now.

‘EFFORTS’

Do your job and clean up the mess in morrison hall

with the Sunflower - The Butler Lantern

national newspapers to campus that SGA chose to remove from its budget, student government’s other funding would increase by $39,600 from this year to next year.

Vice President of Student Affairs, Teri Hall, is the Student Fee Committee chair. Her associate vice president is also on the committee. All of the students on the committee are SGA members.

According to the minutes from the closed deliberation meeting, all Student Affairs services were “deemed vital.” They included non-student salaries. SGA’s office expenditures are increasing “due to personnel, scholarships, election increase, etc.,” and a salary increase and advertising money for the Student Advocate position was recommended.

It’s interesting how that works.

The very organizations entrusted to equitably distribute student fees decided their own organizations deserved more money than those who had no say in the matter. The only organization with a platform to question that decision was recommended a massive, intentionally-destructive cut.

Can you say self serving?

Some student senators have asked if students would be willing

Letters to the Editor

Let’s fill the RSC “open meeting” in supports of our student newspaper.

and Ms. Link: How can you Look in the mirror?

www.thesunflower.com

“Censorship is the height of vanity.”

campus to corporate sponsors at my expense

FINALLY!

“Lapdog Lou’s” CYA statement reeks of insincerity

How much are

campus to corporate sponsors at my expense

A proud alum

I have Wichita Koch University shirts for sale

Reprisal and

Dear Editor, I hope this message finds you doing well. I’m writing in response to the disconcerting news that funding for Wichita State University’s graduate student publications was recently cut. As a literary editor and publisher who started acquiring the practical skills needed for employability while still a grad student, this decision will inevitably have a negative impact on our MFA program’s placement rate, as well as severely limiting the recruitment of new students. Many of our grad students chose to attend a program which houses literary journals, as this is a crucial aspect of their professional development. I would advocate that the university reconsider, if at all possible, the decision to cut funding for our MFA student-run publications.

—Respectfully, Kristina Marie Darling, Lecturer, English Dept.

Magic Is Something We Make, Simple, But Significant

Donors:

“Shock the world” and stop contributing to the deceitful univ.

I WONDER

where the integrity went?

Democracy

Degrees For Sale

To create is to resist; to resist is to create.

WE STAND

WSU BA and MFA Best Offer

“Often fools,

Keep on keeping on, Sunflower #RealNews

with the Sunflower - The Butler Lantern

cowards, liars & the selfish hide in high places” -BHM

Stop whoring my

Could this be the downfall.... of Bardo and his minions! YES!

Haven’t heard anything yet...

Should I just move on?

Paige,

TAKE BETTER SELFIES

Censorship

Congratulations!

Why should you

Bardo! Sociology is

reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself.

You got their attention.

Love, another Sunflower alum

go to jail for a crime someone else... noticed?

We stand with

Poetry Genius MIA!

HEY JOHN BARDO!

Albert Goldbarth is gone.

Why is he missing from WSU?

FROM

Kristina Marie Darling

intimidation are not innovative OR nice.

is Good, It is Controversial, by it’s Nature-Julian Assange

The Sunflower - Butler Lantern

to pay more in student fees to adequately fund The Sunflower, but that’s based on a false assumption. If student fees increase for next year, it will be to fund the organizations like Student Affairs and SGA whose budgets are bloated, not The Sunflower having its funding restored.

If cuts need to be made, they shouldn’t come from the group that already took a one-third cut.

They shouldn’t come from great recruiting tools and fun student groups that already operate on minimal budgets. Cuts should come from administrative organizations that can afford to take a cut while still serving their roles on campus.

But the truth is, no cuts need to be made from fixed-line items.

That budget is projected to increase. Certain organizations just need to not increase by as much.

Student Affairs and SGA should re-affirm their commitment to the students they serve and set an example for future leaders in their positions. When they put together next year’s student fees allocations, they should forego funding increases for their own organizations until the other organizations receive the funding they need to thrive.

—Sunflower Editorial Staff

GO SUCK AN EGG!

GAIN INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS! Take WSU Photography classes!

a STEM field too! As a sociologist you should know.

Dear John Bardo,

You’re an embarrassment to sociologists everywhere.

campus to corporate sponsors at my expense

A proud alum

Keep on keeping on, Sunflower #RealNews

CULTURE

www.thesunflower.com

MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2018

N&J Cafe

|3

JOHN DARR/THE SUNFLOWER

The Cavves perform on Final Friday.

Five questions with The Cavves Wichita surf-rockers The Cavves released their excellent, infectious debut EP “Learn to Swim” earlier this year. I sat down with lead singer, songwriter and guitarist Sophie Emerson to talk about the recording process and the work that goes into The Cavves’ dancefloor-igniting performances.

I WAS ABLE TO TRACK DOWN AN OLD INTERVIEW OF YOURS WHERE YOU SAID YOU WRITE 99 PERCENT OF YOUR MUSIC IN YOUR HEAD. SO WHEN AND WHERE DO YOU WRITE MOST OF YOUR MUSIC? MATT COOPER/THE SUNFLOWER

A lamb gyro from N&J Cafe.

Microcosm of the Melting Pot N&J Café is set along the low-key, used car lot and laundromat-laden drag of Lincoln and Edgemoor. This place has long been a staple for Wichita locals who want a taste of something traditionally Lebanese.

John Srour, bakery gourmand of Zahle Lebanon, started the Mediterranean restaurant after moving his family to Kansas in the 80s. Since that time, N&J Café has been the culinary suggestion of more than a few Wichitan foodies with a propensity toward Middle Eastern cuisine.

BEST APPETIZERS

• Hummus & pita chips — Chickpeas, tahini, tomatoes, olives, oil, lemon juice and garlic breath for the rest of the evening. I wouldn’t recommend a hummus if it wasn’t particularly choice.

• Baba ghanouj — If you are unfamiliar with Middle Eastern cuisine this one might sound a little strange, but it’s worth a try. It comes with a puree of perfectly roasted eggplant and tahini which is then served with either chips or fresh baked pita bread. It’s pungent, but sweet and garlic-filled at the same time.

• Kebbe balls — This is another one that might seem a little different

if you’re not accustomed to dishes from Levant. Kebbe at N&J comes in the form of fried cracked wheat balls made with ground beef, onions, pepper and pine nuts served with garlic sour cream sauce.

stomach despite containing no meat whatsoever.

• Lamb gyro — This one is a pita wrap which cradles a mixture of slow cooked, rich, tender lamb capped off with onions, tomatoes, spices and a traditional cucumber accented yogurt filling. The gyro is pleasing if you want something in a wrap that is off the beaten path from your standard chicken or beef shawarma.

• Crumbly baklava — Pistachio, walnut or almond baklava at N&J comes made with flakey filo dough, nuts and honey. In terms of dessert, it comes in modest portions, but again, it’s cheap and extremely flavorful.

DISHES OF NOTE

COST

• Chicken shawarma — The basics at N&J are surprisingly good and the shawarma is no exception.

The sandwich is served wrapped in pita with a mix of grilled, peppery chicken, onions, lettuce, tomatoes and garlic shawarma sauce. It’s cheap. It’s tasty. It gets the job done.

• Falafel sandwich — It comes as a pita wrap filled with fried patties of chick and fava beans. It’s vegetarian, yet tastes of rich beef or lamb and leaves you with a full

Sure the shish kabab and mixed grill of chicken, steak and kafta are a little on the expensive side at $16.25. Otherwise though, nothing on the N&J menu is particularly taxing on the customer’s wallet. The shawarma, both chicken and beef, are only $7. Appetizers range from $5 to $7 unless you want the combo of hummus, baba ghanouj, tabouli, grape leaves, cabbage rolls, kebbe and falafel which is $11.75. All and all, N&J is economical.

MATT COOPER FOOD CRITIC

90 percent of the album was written alone in my bedroom. The other ten percent was written in my car listening to our influences – I like to write parts over tracks I’m inspired by so that the music becomes our own in a way. If you find something you can really connect to, it’s pretty easy to write your own line over it if you’re in the right mindset at the time.

YOUR SONGS OFTEN HAVE THESE EXPLOSIVE RHYTHMIC MOMENTS THAT SIGNAL TRANSITIONS BETWEEN DIFFERENT SECTIONS IN EACH TRACK. WHAT KIND OF SECTIONS DO YOU FOCUS ON MOST DURING THE SONGWRITING PROCESS?

One of my favorite ways to introduce a song is to begin with a soft dynamic section and then have every other instrument join in at once. I really like using new patterns as much as I can. I’m certain I reuse some parts but I don’t care.

[Laughs] YOUR FIRST RECORD CAME OUT EARLIER THIS YEAR. IS THERE A PART OF THAT PROCESS THAT STANDS OUT AS ONE OF THE BEST?

There were a few. I remember Troy, who plays bass, telling me that he came up with all of the parts like a day of recording. I was like, you suck. Because I wish I could come up with all of those lines that quickly. He’s super talented and he loves to improvise. I remember there was one bass line at the end of “Sun City” — I heard it for the first time

JOHN DARR

MUSIC CRITIC sitting in the studio — and it stuck out to me like, oh my God, that’s so cool – can I write a synth part over that? That ended up being one of my favorite parts on the album. And Troy – that piece of shit — he wrote that the day of.

Also – the section with gang vocals. We went to practice them at College Hill Park under this one tree near where I went to school.

I have a lot of memories from under that tree. We got the vocals all figured out and the next day we went into the studio. It was funny because I had to sing my lines all myself but at the same time, I had all my dudes with me.

WERE THERE ANY PARTS THAT WERE REALLY ROUGH?

With vocals, I came in with only a couple ideas for harmonies.

I turned to Scott (Spriggs), our producer, after recording a lot of the leads and asked, do you have any idea what to do over this? The process made me a little better at hearing something and knowing what to do over it.

WHAT IS THE MARK OF A GREAT GUITAR LINE?

I saw this one interview with this band called Residual Kid that I’ve held onto for a while. They used to use a process similar to what we’d do – we’d record riffs with our phones. But they said they stopped doing that, and I was like, what?

And he said, if it’s not memorable to me, it’s not memorable to anyone.

Now I know I’ll be more proud of a riff if I write something and I still remember it in four days.

SATURDAY, MARCH 10 @ 8PM SUNDAY, MARCH 11 @ 3PM

BRIAN HAYES/THE SUNFLOWER

Rachel Yanko poses with her poster, in Ablah Library, she made as part of the “Archeology and the Bible” class.

‘Archeology and the Bible’ class gives students new perspectives on religion

BY MARISSA CAMPBELL

In many religion courses at Wichita State, students will learn about one specific religion or study one specific text in relation to a religion. For women’s studies and religion professor Rannfrid Thelle teaching a class that delves into the intersections of religion is important.

In Thelle’s course “Archeology and the Bible,” students learned about the intersection between the Bible as a text and the material relations of archeology as signifiers of the past.

“There’s a long history of why people have been interested in the archeology of the Middle East or the biblical lands,” Thelle said. “It would only have had that kind of interest over the last couple of hundred years because of the Bible and the importance of the Bible in western culture.”

Thelle assigned a final project where students compared actual artifacts with what is said in the Bible.

Rachel Yanko, anthropology graduate student, chose the topic of Jericho’s Wall to focus on.

“I really wanted to show what

Jericho meant in the landscape of the time rather than just in the biblical reference of it,” Yanko said.

“Then I found that the biblical reference was so iconic in our everyday life, politically, not just religiously, and in song, that there was so much more to it than just the actual story in the Bible and then what the archeologists found.”

For the final project, students created posters presenting their research and held a conference in Ablah library. During the conference, students could come by and talk oneon-one with the presenters to learn about their projects and research.

Thelle and Nathan Filbert, a library research assistant, were also available to speak with passersby about the class and project.

“Something that I really took from the class and from these presentations is that it opened up a new perspective for looking at things,” Carly Bahner, a psychology student, said.

“A lot of times people will focus so much on trying to prove or disprove stuff, but that’s not what archeology is about. It was cool to realize that that’s not always the point.”

Stewart Goodyear, piano

The Wichita Symphony Orchestra Presents

FIRE & ICE Century II Concert Hall

$10 STUDENT TICKETS with Student ID, 1 ticket per ID starting Monday, March 5

BUY STUDENT TICKETS at the door or by calling 316.267.7658.

SPORTS

4 | MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2018

www.thesunflower.com

Marshall’s largest senior class says goodbye to Koch Arena

BY ALIYAH FUNSCHELLE

Sunday morning’s No.10/11 showdown was a day full of lasts for Wichita State: it was the last game the six seniors would ever play in front of the Charles Koch Arena crowd.

Senior center Rauno Nurger said he wanted to enjoy the home crowd for the last time. “It’s been fun playing in front of these people for the past four years, so that’s a really special thing.”

Although The Shockers lost, senior forward Rashard Kelly was happy with the effort from not only the players, but the coaching staff and fans as well.

“Everybody on the court, coaching staff, all the fans . . . We appreciate you guys,” Kelly said.

This year’s senior class is notable for their size. The group is Head Coach Gregg Marshall’s largest ever, and Wichita State’s largest in 42 years.

Marshall said he still thinks of the senior class as champions despite not earning the regular-season title.

“They’re champions in every form shape, however you want to cut it,” Marshall said. “On and off the court, those six seniors are still champions.”

The seniors left their mark when it comes to personal success, and were also able to serve as mentors and role models for the rest of the team.

“There’s a lot you can learn from these guys, both on the court and off,” Shamet said. “I’m proud of them and these are my guys. I

BASKETBALL FROM PAGE 1

BRIAN HAYES/THE SUNFLOWER

Wichita State’s Rashard Kelly, Zach Brown, Shaquille Morris, Rauno Nurger, Darral Willis Jr. and Conner Frankamp at Koch Arena. pose while being honored on senior day at Koch Arena.

wouldn’t want to be doing this with anybody else.”

Although the seniors’ time playing in Koch Arena is over, they acknowledge there’s still work to be done to be able to accomplish a deep run in March.

“We’ve just been through it. My teammates, coaching staff and family, I’m just thankful for every

single person. It’s crazy that it’s over here,” senior center Shaq Morris said.

“We still have more work to do and put in.”

The brackets were announced for The American tournament Sunday evening. No. 2 seed WSU will face either No. 7 seed Temple or No. 10 seed Tulane Friday evening.

“Tomorrow when the sun comes up, it’s another day, a new opportunity for us to move forward. You can’t dwell on something like this.”

Senior forward Rashard Kelly agreed that The Shockers can’t get caught up in what could have been, especially when it’s a onepoint game.

“The camaraderie as a team, we never hung our heads and we fought the whole time. Cincinnati is a great team and a great program,” Kelly said. “Yeah, the outcome should’ve been different, but it wasn’t today.”

“We gotta put our hard hats on and go back to work, that’s it.”

Getting back to work is exactly what The Shockers have to do with a swift turnaround from conference play to tournament play.

Wichita State will likely be a No. 2 seed, with brackets being finalized Sunday evening. The Shockers will play on Friday in Orlando.