06-22-2017, 01:06 AM
Would you like to know why so many Shocker fans are D-Bags? Okay, let me lay it out for ya.
For as far back as anyone can remember, we've been pounding sorry-ass programs into the ground with impunity. The coaching staff found it IMPOSSIBLE to schedule home-and-homes with any decent brand school because they knew exactly what would happen if they came into Koch Arena for the return game. So until recently, we've had to subsist on eating ****, year in and year out, in conference and out. Once Creighton left, it was nothing but pure wall to wall ****. So we pounded Hidden Valley schools even harder.
This has been going on for more than a decade. Hell, back in 2007 we started taking buy games just so we could get a little test. Syracuse paid us 80k to go into their barn and beat the living **** out of them. At one point we were up by 29... or was it a 29-3 run...? I don't remember. The T.V. commentator said we broke all kinds of records for the beating we unleashed on the Orangemen inside the Carrier Dome. Scheduling was so bad that Mark Turgeon, the pride of ChicKUnville, approached Bill Self about a game. ESPN got in on the deal and said it would be prime-time. Mark agreed to play the game inside the ChicKUn Coop. UK stalled... eventually saying the game didn't make sense for them. This is the kind of **** we've had to put up with since escaping the abyss of the 90's. Everybody and their dog has tried to keep a once proud (national program) from rebuilding. Back in the 80's we were an NBA farm club sending All-American after All-American to the Association. But it was a different time now in college athletics, and it appeared nobody cared to see the Shockers rise again.
Circa 2007 and in comes a cocky chap from a tiny school called Winthrop with promises of building on what Turgeon left. His first year was a disaster. It was so bad he went into the AD's office and asked that he be fired. AD Jim Schaus reassured the young coach that he had his full support and everything would be fine. Gregg went back to his staff with new purpose and ordered them to bring in players tall enough that he'd have to look up or they would be finding new jobs. The rest is history... But the scheduling difficulties continued. We started getting into some decent exempt tournaments and things improved a little. In 2012 we won the NIT championship. In 2013, we finally got our shot to play some noteworthy teams on a big stage. We did not disappoint. Since the Final Four run we've played some brands and whipped their asses in front of God and country. Of course our egos have swollen, but it's been more like a primal aggression has awakened in many of us. We've been hungry for so long, we've know what Wichita State was capable of, what support there was in the community, our tradition. We weren't going to be happy with a few flash in the pan Cinderella runs. We wanted back in, to have a permanent seat at the table - like it once was before we were shut down by "big brother".
So here we are today, we've passed the revival stage and are now working on getting reinstated back into the club. We find ourselves in a new league with 3 brand names (one quickly fading). We're not coming in with the attitude that "Wow, we've finally made it." bull****! We're coming in to shut the mouths of all the naysayers who've continued to disrespect our accomplishments (some here in this forum) because of the conference we were trapped in. We've come to take our frustrations out on the nice people of Cincinnati, Connecticut, and Memphis in order to complete the resurgence of a once proud program. We're not really any better than we were a year ago, or two years, or five. We're the same pissed off, jilted basketball program where everybody from the towel boy to the head coach has a chip on their shoulder and is pissed off at a system that rewards association and not merit.
So you see, it's not just a game, or a challenge for another conference championship, it's the final leg of a journey that started 30 years ago after we got the death penalty, lost our blue chip train and had our program completely and utterly dismantled. Shocker Basketball was all Wichita had, people used to order their cars adorned with Shocker paint schemes and decals. Wichita State was everything to this modest, blue-collar town. It had no equal.
So let me close by quoting the great General James "Mad Dog" Mattis: "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." Perhaps we missed out on the polite and professional part, but make no mistake, the Shockers are coming to this conference to eat. Maybe we get a lesson taught to us, maybe we're not ready to take the next step. A rebalancing of expectations could be healthy, albeit unlikely. I feel this is our time now. We've swallowed enough conference ****-sandwiches and suffered through enough bad luck to last a lifetime. We've come to get the respect we've already earned by eliminating the last remaining excuse haters have to hold us down.
T
...
For as far back as anyone can remember, we've been pounding sorry-ass programs into the ground with impunity. The coaching staff found it IMPOSSIBLE to schedule home-and-homes with any decent brand school because they knew exactly what would happen if they came into Koch Arena for the return game. So until recently, we've had to subsist on eating ****, year in and year out, in conference and out. Once Creighton left, it was nothing but pure wall to wall ****. So we pounded Hidden Valley schools even harder.
This has been going on for more than a decade. Hell, back in 2007 we started taking buy games just so we could get a little test. Syracuse paid us 80k to go into their barn and beat the living **** out of them. At one point we were up by 29... or was it a 29-3 run...? I don't remember. The T.V. commentator said we broke all kinds of records for the beating we unleashed on the Orangemen inside the Carrier Dome. Scheduling was so bad that Mark Turgeon, the pride of ChicKUnville, approached Bill Self about a game. ESPN got in on the deal and said it would be prime-time. Mark agreed to play the game inside the ChicKUn Coop. UK stalled... eventually saying the game didn't make sense for them. This is the kind of **** we've had to put up with since escaping the abyss of the 90's. Everybody and their dog has tried to keep a once proud (national program) from rebuilding. Back in the 80's we were an NBA farm club sending All-American after All-American to the Association. But it was a different time now in college athletics, and it appeared nobody cared to see the Shockers rise again.
Circa 2007 and in comes a cocky chap from a tiny school called Winthrop with promises of building on what Turgeon left. His first year was a disaster. It was so bad he went into the AD's office and asked that he be fired. AD Jim Schaus reassured the young coach that he had his full support and everything would be fine. Gregg went back to his staff with new purpose and ordered them to bring in players tall enough that he'd have to look up or they would be finding new jobs. The rest is history... But the scheduling difficulties continued. We started getting into some decent exempt tournaments and things improved a little. In 2012 we won the NIT championship. In 2013, we finally got our shot to play some noteworthy teams on a big stage. We did not disappoint. Since the Final Four run we've played some brands and whipped their asses in front of God and country. Of course our egos have swollen, but it's been more like a primal aggression has awakened in many of us. We've been hungry for so long, we've know what Wichita State was capable of, what support there was in the community, our tradition. We weren't going to be happy with a few flash in the pan Cinderella runs. We wanted back in, to have a permanent seat at the table - like it once was before we were shut down by "big brother".
So here we are today, we've passed the revival stage and are now working on getting reinstated back into the club. We find ourselves in a new league with 3 brand names (one quickly fading). We're not coming in with the attitude that "Wow, we've finally made it." bull****! We're coming in to shut the mouths of all the naysayers who've continued to disrespect our accomplishments (some here in this forum) because of the conference we were trapped in. We've come to take our frustrations out on the nice people of Cincinnati, Connecticut, and Memphis in order to complete the resurgence of a once proud program. We're not really any better than we were a year ago, or two years, or five. We're the same pissed off, jilted basketball program where everybody from the towel boy to the head coach has a chip on their shoulder and is pissed off at a system that rewards association and not merit.
So you see, it's not just a game, or a challenge for another conference championship, it's the final leg of a journey that started 30 years ago after we got the death penalty, lost our blue chip train and had our program completely and utterly dismantled. Shocker Basketball was all Wichita had, people used to order their cars adorned with Shocker paint schemes and decals. Wichita State was everything to this modest, blue-collar town. It had no equal.
So let me close by quoting the great General James "Mad Dog" Mattis: "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." Perhaps we missed out on the polite and professional part, but make no mistake, the Shockers are coming to this conference to eat. Maybe we get a lesson taught to us, maybe we're not ready to take the next step. A rebalancing of expectations could be healthy, albeit unlikely. I feel this is our time now. We've swallowed enough conference ****-sandwiches and suffered through enough bad luck to last a lifetime. We've come to get the respect we've already earned by eliminating the last remaining excuse haters have to hold us down.
T
...
![[Image: tumblr_nhvykiXjbU1sajg7no1_500.gif]](https://68.media.tumblr.com/9bc22056322cc1da4cd47b7b743dcf79/tumblr_nhvykiXjbU1sajg7no1_500.gif)
![[Image: giphy.gif]](https://media.giphy.com/media/3o6Zthv5OQ6ldtuSDS/giphy.gif)
