Men's Basketball | 3/7/2026 7:33:00 AM
By
Paul Suellentrop
Kenton Paulino told
Karon Boyd that he held the basketball too far away from his body, making his shot inconsistent.
Boyd craved that feedback. Plenty of coaches told him he needed to make more three-pointers. Paulino, Wichita State's associate head basketball coach, told him how to make that happen.
"Coach Paulino - who played college basketball and had a great three-point shooting percentage – he's experienced and he knows the game," Boyd said. "I always had people telling me, 'Your shot needs to be better.' That doesn't help so much, because I know that, too."
Boyd transferred to Wichita State, in large part because he considered his skills stagnant and wanted instruction. He joined fellow seniors
Kenyon Giles,
Emmanuel Okorafor and
Michael Gray Jr., to form the bulk of a newcomer class that can look at victory totals and renewed interest from fans as a legacy.
"They were better than my expectations, and my expectations were high," Mills said.
WSU (20-10, 12-5 American) plays FAU (17-13, 9-8) at 3 p.m., Saturday at Koch Arena (ESPNU). A win locks up second place for the Shockers, their highest conference finish since winning the title in 2021. The 20 wins are the most since 2019-20.
Giles, Okorafor and Boyd will be honored before Saturday's game (2:45 p.m.) for their senior day. WSU is applying to get Okorafor another year of eligibility with a medical redshirt. Gray has already been granted another season due to an injury-shortened season in 2021-22 at George Mason.
The transfer portal has not been kind to Shocker basketball in recent seasons. This group shows Shocker fans, in coach
Paul Mills' third season, how it can work to the program's benefit. Giles is an electric scorer. Boyd is the physical, hard-working defender and rebounder. Okorafor starts at center and provides an athletic, experienced partner for junior
Will Berg in the middle.
Mills recruited his first big transfer class on the fly after taking the job in late March 2023. With more financial resources, more experience using the portal, a bit of success from last season's NIT appearance and more time, Mills and his coaches rebuilt the roster with more of the types of players he wants to coach.
That showed up in summer workouts, in how hard the Shockers competed in practice and in the number of Shockers who came to Koch Arena early in the morning for extra work.
Love – not just like – of the game is his first requirement.
"The No. 1 thing you have to have is enthusiasm," Mills said. "You're not going to win with people who like it, because that eventually fades. You have to have people in that room that are excited to be there. They're excited about working out. They're excited about their teammates. They're excited about all things basketball."
Guard
Dre Kindell loves basketball so much he regularly drove 109 miles to Koch Arena last spring to practice on his own while finishing his semester at Barton Community College. He slept the in the locker room at least once. Mills could tell Giles loved basketball because he often got Giles' voicemail.
"I called him quite a bit," Mills said. "It was just rare that he wasn't in the gym, about to work out, or just finishing."
Boyd came to Wichita State open to coaching and spending time in the gym tightening up his mechanics to make his shot more consistent. He made 21 three-pointers in his two previous seasons at East Tennessee State on 19-percent accuracy. At WSU, he is 34 of 103 (33 percent).
That improvement, he said, tops his advice for Shocker coaches in recruiting. It's important to talk to many sources about a player's love for the game. It's important to get to know an athlete.
WSU can point to Boyd's improvement, just as it can point to others such as
Xavier Bell and
Quincy Ballard. Paulino's homework on Boyd's shot made a big impression – it showed the Shocker coaches took him seriously and formulated a plan for his game.
"We have a lot of (graduate assistants) and managers and coaches and they'll get in the gym with you, one on one," Boyd said. "You don't see that with a lot of coaches. They will pull you in to watch film. You get a lot of perspectives and a lot of angles you don't normally see."
Boyd, Giles and Okorafor will walk out of the Koch Arena tunnel for their final regular-season home game and see the results of what they've worked for – fans in seats unoccupied earlier in 2026. Watching a gradual increase in attendance is gratifying for them.
"It's amazing how invested (fans) are in this program," Okorafor said. "It's like a big family."
Boyd notices the increasing popularity over the past month as the Shockers stacked up wins. People want to talk basketball when they see him at a restaurant. Children want autographs. He is asked to pose for pictures.
"It's a realization how much basketball means to Wichita and the culture," he said.
Mills checks a seat in the upper rows of Koch Arena before every game. That seat is his gauge on how well Shocker basketball is doing. So far, he said, that seat has been empty. Today, perhaps, that changes.
That seat is important for many reasons. More fans mean Koch Arena is louder, more fun, more of a community experience. More fans also help with fund-raising, an inescapable part of college athletics and crucial to Mills' aim to further improve the Shockers.
The saying in coaching circles is that players, Mills said, win games. Administrations win championships.
"In college basketball in this environment, you cannot win without the backing of your administration," he said. "On account of that, we can be competitive in the talent space. You don't do that if you don't have support from above. Because there's a support now, we have a responsibility as a staff to go find enthusiastic, talented kids who possess terrific character, and we've been able to do that."
Legacies are often different in college athletics today. Wichita State's senior class did a lot of work in a short time to make their contribution meaningful.
Paul Suellentrop writes about Wichita State athletics for university Strategic Communications. Story suggestion? Contact him at paul.suellentrop@wichita.edu.
