Pick your poison: Overlooked Shockers G Cotton is deadly in St. Louis
ST. LOUIS -- The Quiet Man grinned mischievously. Tekele Cotton leaned forward in his locker stall and whispered into the digital recorder resting at his hip.
"I'm just here," Wichita State's soft-spoken off-guard said, playfully echoing NFL bad boy Marshawn Lynch, "so I don't get fined."
He leaned back and grinned again, satisfied with his work. The Shockers sitting around him cracked up.
Tekele Cotton got in the last word. At Scottrade Center, Tekele Cotton usually does.
Quick. Name Wichita State's top guard scorer at Arch Madness since March 2014. Ron Baker? Nope. Fred VanVleet? Sorry, Charlie.
It's Cotton, the 6-foot-3 defensive specialist: 56 points, or 14 per contest. VanVleet is averaging 13.3, Baker 12.5.
"I'm pretty familiar with this building," Cotton said after dropping a dozen on Southern Illinois on Friday afternoon as the eighth-ranked Shockers grinded out a 56-45 win at the Missouri Valley Conference tournament quarterfinals. "I pretty much like it."
And it pretty much likes him back. In his last four Arch Madness tilts, the Georgia native is shooting 11 for 20 (.550) from beyond the arc. In his last five Valley tourney games dating to the 2013 championship game, Cotton's averaging 12.8 points while draining 12 of 22 treys (.545).
"We did not want VanVleet or Baker or the bigs to beat us because of what happened prior," Salukis coach Barry Hinson said. "We said, 'We're going to make Cotton beat us today.' And, quite frankly, that's what it came down to."
Pick your poison. Every bottle burns ya. One way or another.
"I just think he's able to step it up another level," teammate Evan Wessel said of Cotton. "He's just a great team player. When we needed him, he's hitting shots, and obviously, his defense is always there."
In the second half, he was charged with muzzling the Salukis' top perimeter threat, guard Anthony Beane. The Salukis' speedster drained two treys on three attempts in the first period, but was just one for six from the floor and oh for two from beyond the arc over the final 20 minutes.
"Beane's a good player, and he's going to get his shots -- he's shot 200-some more shots than the guy who's second on the team -- so he's going to get some points," Shockers assistant Steve Forbes said. "But I think Tekele has proven, time and time again, why he's the Defensive Player of the Year in the Valley."
Pick your poison. They all get there. Eventually.
Sure enough, Friday's first Arch Madness quarterfinal offered the usual trappings: An 8/9 game survivor with more zip early on, already used to playing at game speed and hoping to land a quick punch or two before the favorites could get loose. The top-seeded Shockers missed 11 of their first 15 attempts from the floor and five of their first six tries from beyond the arc.
"Coach just told us to go north and south (to the basket)," Cotton recalled, "and we'd all seen that."
"Coach thought we were a little stagnant, kind of standing around," Forbes added.
So out went standing around, in went the full-court press. With six-and-a-half minutes left in the first period, down 15-11, coach Gregg Marshall turned the screws, and the Salukis were immediately, for lack of a kinder word, neutered.
The Shockers went on an 11-0 run, punctuated by Shaq Morris' two-handed monster slam with 4:30 before halftime, putting the tourney's top seed up 22-15. During a four-minute stretch that started with 6:22 left in the period, SIU scored one point and turned the rock over five times.
"Really, you noticed that we struggled against their press?" Hinson said. "Huh. I didn't notice that with the three timeouts I called in the first half.
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"We just -- we were paralyzed because we got afraid, and we (panicked) and we were just paralyzed. If I had to tell anybody that was going to play against them (anything), you just go play. You've got people out there that are dealing with a lot bigger issues than a 1-2-2 press. Just do what you do and do it the best you can.
"I was pretty good until we opened up duck-hunting season and threw a couple of ducks as passes. I didn't panic. I just lost my composure. I'm a Baptist; I'm going to have to go to confessional tomorrow because of a couple words that I used during that span."
Pick your poison. Even when your ducks are in a row, they don't stay airborne long.
"We were down and they came out punching and we had to punch (back)," said Cotton, who joined the Shockers' 1,000-point career scoring club Friday. "Had to keep punching."
Despite Baker (five points at the break, one for four from the floor, three assists) and Darius Carter (one first-half point) looking fatigued or flat, Cotton (nine points at the break), VanVleet (seven first-half points, two first-half steals) and Morris (three first-half boards) were enough to get the baton across the line.
"I just try to win games," Cotton said. "That's all I try to do -- just whatever I've got to do to win. Just (had to) be a little aggressive. And it's fun around this time. We all have fun, and that's what it is, really. Just trying to have fun."
Pick your poison. They'll all wind up killing you in the end.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter at @SeanKeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com.
