The RoundHouse | 10/5/2019 2:14:00 PM

 
Ashley Reid, Carla Bremaud and Seraphine Bastin played together last season for Wichita State women's basketball team. They lived through that team's offensive struggles. They know how to fix it this season.
 
In Saturday morning's Black & Yellow scrimmage at Koch Arena, the Shocker guards provided a hint of how coach Keitha Adams plans to juice an offense that averaged 56.9 points a game. Reid, Bremaud and Bastin, now all with a season of NCAA Division I experience, are expected to pass and shoot the Shockers into more scoring. 
 
Their Black team lost to Yellow 22-19. 
 
"They're some familiarity and comfort level there that they have with one another," coach Keitha Adams said. "Ashley was real aggressive in attacking the basket. The Black group got into the paint almost every time down."
 
Reid, feeling healthy and confident after an inconsistent junior season, scored eight points and handed out two assists. She and Bastin pushed the ball and created several good scoring opportunities with their quickness and ball-handling. 
 
"We had trouble scoring last year," Reid said. "We're really focusing on fast breaks."
 
That quickness offers the Shockers a path to better offense. Reid, on several occasions, used a crossover dribble to get into the lane and pass to bigger teammates. Bastin also used her quickness to drive.
 
"They're always first in our sprints," Adams said. "When you work hard, go hard every day, good things happen."
 
Bremaud, a sophomore, didn't make a basket in the scrimmage, but her shooting ability plays effectively off the two ball-handlers. She won the three-point contest that started Saturday's event. Bastin, a sophomore who started all 30 games last season, scored seven points and grabbed four rebounds.
 
"Coach wants us to push the ball, go really quick, get easy buckets," Bastin said. "We have good chemistry. But we still need to work on it, because we need to be leaders for this team."
 
The men's scrimmage started with two turnovers, causing coach Gregg Marshall to call timeout, leave his seat across court from the benches, gather everyone at half-court and demand a better effort. The Shockers practiced for more than two hours on Friday and two hours Saturday morning. Tired legs and a few nerves didn't surprise Marshall.
 
Yellow defeated Black 21-19. Both teams turned the ball over seven times. Sophomore guard Erik Stevenson did not play because he was taking a test, Marshall said. Freshman guard Noah Fernandes sat out as he recovers from a bone bruise in his left foot. Marshall said he expects him to return in a week-to-10 days.
 
"They were a little sluggish," he said. "We've had a lot of good practices. This morning wasn't very good and it carried over. It wasn't very good in the scrimmage. Maybe some of the new guys were nervous about being out there and doing this. But that's just the progression that you go through. You have to eventually draw back the curtains and let people see what you're doing."
 
Junior transfer Trey Wade scored eight points, making 3 of 6 shots, for Yellow. He caught Marshall's eye with his defense on sophomore Dexter Dennis.
 
"He's had a pretty good fall camp," Marshall said. "When he plays with a lot of energy and is flying around, that's when he's at his best."  
 
Junior Asbjorn Midtgaard scored seven points for Black and scored on a roll to the basket from Jamarius Burton that highlighted the scrimmage. He can relate to the adjustment for the six newcomers who played in front of a Koch Arena crowd for the first time.
 
"I remember it," he said. "It was kind of breath-taking. I had never felt that crowd on me. It's a different thing. Every time you do stuff, you can hear the crowd react to it."
 
Paul Suellentrop covers Wichita State Athletics and the American Athletic Conference for university Strategic Communications. Contact him at paul.suellentrop@wichita.edu.