Shocker Basketball Is Back: Charles Koch Arena Opens Another Season
Wichita State's men open the season this week in the Roundhouse, where November basketball comes with expectations, a loud student section and a fan base that treats the sport as a birthright.
There are college towns, and then there is Wichita, where basketball season at Wichita State functions as a second civic calendar. The Shockers open the new season this week at Charles Koch Arena — the Roundhouse — a 10,500-seat bowl famous for selling out and for a decibel level visiting teams mention unprompted.
Wichita State's program carries a résumé few mid-majors can match: a 2013 Final Four, an undefeated regular season in 2013-14, and a move to the American Athletic Conference that raised the program's profile and its degree of difficulty. The Shockers' identity — defense, rebounding, guards who pressure the length of the floor — has survived coaching changes because the fan base demands it.
November's nonconference schedule is where rotations get built. Coaches test lineups, freshmen learn the speed of the college game, and the Koch Arena crowd gets its first reads on whether this team defends like the ones in the banners.
The Shockers share the city's winter sports attention with the Wichita Thunder hockey club and high school basketball, but nothing in Sedgwick County moves tickets and mood like a Shocker winning streak.
Home games at Koch Arena are staged with the full production: the pep band, WuShock — among the most recognizable mascots in college sports — and a pregame atmosphere the athletic department has refined into ritual.
Tip-off weeks do not decide March. But in Wichita, they decide the conversation until spring, and the Roundhouse is ready to have it again.
