The RoundHouse | 10/16/2019 7:41:00 AM

 
Grant Sherfield looked at his phone and saw the text from coach Gregg Marshall. It included a picture of Sherfield in a basketball uniform.
 
Sherfield laughed. He knew when he signed with Wichita State that Marshall would challenge him. The picture showed Sherfield a year ago at Sunrise Christian Academy and looking, well, a little less athletic. Pudgy, as Marshall tells it.
 
"That was . . . before I lost all that weight, and got ripped," Sherfield said. "Coach challenged me and I accepted the challenge."
 
Marshall's challenge came with specifics beyond muscles and cardio. He sees Sherfield, a freshman guard, as an heir to Fred VanVleet's legacy as a physical, relentless defender. 
 
"He's cut his body up," Marshall said. "I challenged him to be a Fred VanVleet-type. Try to dictate the game from a defensive standpoint. Be in unbelievable shape to pressure the ball, get deflections. Put some fear in that ball-handler's mind. He's taken that challenge."
 
Sherfield (6-foot-2, 189 pounds) lived in Wichita until sixth grade. He attended high school in Fort Worth before spending his senior year at Sunrise. He signed with UCLA. After a coaching change there, he looked for another school and wanted a coaching staff that would push him.
 
"If you don't want a coach to be at your neck and challenge you every day to get better, I don't know why you play the game," Sherfield said. "He told me this summer, when we first got here, I needed to get in better shape. I took on that challenge and I met it. He told me to be more active on defense, and I met it. Every time he challenges me, I'm going to try to surpass it."
 
Marshall said Sherfield likely leads the Shockers in deflections during practices. His teammates notice the defense.
 
"He's picking up on our defense schemes very quickly," sophomore guard Jamarius Burton said. "He's getting his hands on a lot of balls."
 
Sherfield is part of a group of freshmen guards who need to help the Shockers this season and give them a strong group for the future. Marshall considers Sherfield a point guard who can also play shooting guard. Tyson Etienne's first position is shooting guard and he also can run the team. Noah Fernandes is a pure point guard. 
 
"Those guys are very good, very competitive, very talented and they can all shoot it really well," Marshall said. "But how freshmen handle the situation, how they handle the basketball coming out of the chute will be very, very important to see."
 
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Women's coach Keitha Adams is working with four returning starters and seven of the top eight scorers from last season. That is a much different situation than in 2018-19, when the roster featured nine newcomers.
 
"We're very goal-driven and we know what we want to accomplish," she said. "A year ago, it was 'Let's figure us out, let's figure things out.' When you have so much to learn, it's hard to focus on a lot of goals. It's nice to get out there in practice and them know things. A year ago, they didn't know anything."
 
Adams wants that experience to show up on offense. The Shockers shot poorly last season and averaged 56.9 points a game. The Shockers know that figure needs to rise, as does their 38.8 shooting percentage. Wichita State held opponents to 37.8 percent shooting and 61.7 points a game, so the foundation for defense exists.
 
The Shockers want to force turnovers and disrupt opposing teams to help their scoring. 
 
"Playing up-tempo is something we're going to try to present more this year," Adams said. "I think they definitely like the freedom and the pace of playing up-tempo . . . fast-breaking more. In order to do that, though, you have to be really good defensively and you have to really rebound."
Wichita State's strength is in its backcourt with sophomore starters Carla Bremaud and Seraphine Bastin returning and senior Ashley Reid healthy and the talk of fall practices with her improved confidence and shooting. Bastin and Reid are capable of pushing the pace to create baskets.
 
"If you guard and you rebound and you take care of the ball, you can put yourself in a position to win," Adams said. "We've got to take better care of the basketball. We've got the pieces to be competitive and play that way."
 
The Shockers (12-18, 5-11 American Athletic Conference) are picked ninth in the American's preseason poll released on Monday.
 
Burton is the incumbent point guard for and he spent much of the summer smoothing out his shooting stroke. Defenses often dared him to shoot last season and he wants to render that strategy ineffective.
 
Coaches told him he pulled the ball back behind his head too far. That created a slow release and a hitch in the movement.
 
"I tried to get a lot of reps of keeping the ball in front and letting it be more fluid," he said. "It definitely feels better. I feel like I've gotten good results."
 
Burton, a sophomore, started 28 games last season and averaged 6.0 points. He made 10 of 38 three-pointers and shot 39 percent from the field.
 
Burton and sophomore Erik Stevenson are the experienced Shockers in the back court. Marshall likes their physical improvement.
 
"They've cut their bodies up," he said. "They're a little quicker, more explosive, but they haven't lost any strength. They've slimmed down from what they were last year, so in Erik's case, he's able to guard better, which was a struggle last year. These guys will hopefully be able to finish better around the basket."
 
Stevenson played in all 37 games and started 11 last season. He estimates he lost around 14 points and notices improved quickness. That should help on both ends of the court.
 
"It has made the game a lot easier for me," he said. "I worked on dribbling and shooting, but the big thing was becoming consistent on offense and defense – getting tougher, getting quicker."
 
The Shockers won nine of their final 11 games last season and advanced to the NIT semifinals. They expect the lessons learned over the highs and lows to carry over to this season.
 
Through much of the season, the Shockers played inconsistent defense and committed too many turnovers. When they corrected those deficiencies in late January, improvement came quickly.
 
"It just showed us how hard we've got to play each game (in order) to win," sophomore Isaiah Poor Bear Chandler said. "It took a little bit. That's why we started off with a losing record, but after (that) it just all started to kick in."
 
The Shockers held four of those 11 opponents under 60 points and three more under 70. They committed 10 or fewer turnovers in six of those games and 13 or fewer in nine.
 
"We've got to do the little things," Stevenson said. "We didn't make a whole lot of shots collectively last year. What we learned last year is that, even though you might be missing some shots, if you can defend and rebound, you can still win games."
 
Sophomore Dexter Dennis exemplified that improvement late in the season. He averaged 11.1 points over the final 14 games. At Indiana in the NIT, he made 5 of 7 three-pointers on his way to 17 points and blocked six shots.
 
He worked on improving his ball-handling and passing over the summer. He can help the offense significantly if he can make plays for teammates from the wings. He knows opponents will guard him closely because of his excellent three-point shooting (40 percent last season). 
 
"I've just been trying to become a better player off the bounce for me and my teammates," he said. "My teammates come at me every day because they know I'm trying to be better at that."
 
Paul Suellentrop covers Wichita State Athletics and the American Athletic Conference for university Strategic Communications. Contact him at paul.suellentrop@wichita.edu.