They are crushed in Cochran.
And morose in Mableton.
For the Wichita State Shockers, the home team in this Georgia-based Final Four, almost pulled off a super-sized NCAA tournament upset Saturday before falling to Louisville 72-68.
Granted, Wichita, Kan., is nearly 800 miles from Atlanta, as the combine rumbles.
And those who call that distant land home are a strange race, if the young fans of the Wichita State Shockers are typical. They marched into the Georgia Dome on Saturday, two hours before their Final Four appointment with Louisville, dressed like a 4-H Club gone rogue.
Some of that whooping tribe wore foam headwear shaped like stalks of wheat.
Others had their pollen-colored T-shirts decorated with the vaguely oxymoronic sentiment: “Play Angry.”
“Fear the Wheat” was another prominent rallying cry.
Yet, as curious and far-off as Wichita State may seem, it and its whole-grain following really were as close to a home team that Georgia would have. As the state that would host the crowning games of the NCAA basketball tournament yet place not a single team in the field, Georgia was left searching for any kind of personal connection to the events in the Dome.
The Shockers obliged far more than the Final Four’s other three entrants, bringing to the Dome’s raised court two homecoming stories of some heft.
(Once Louisville’s Kevin Ware — the other local in the field, from Rockdale County High — was lost to his famously broken leg, Wichita State had the provincialism market cornered.)
The Shockers supplied two starters claiming Georgia hometowns — guard Tekele Cotton (Marietta via Whitefield Academy) and forward Carl Hall (Cochran, Bleckley County High).
The two battled grimly into the night, often facing two of the tougher matchups on the court. For Cotton it was hanging with someone faster, Louisville’s Russ Smith. For Hall it was facing up with someone three inches taller, with a wingspan that suggests he should have “Delta” printed on his jersey instead of Louisville, Gorgui Dieng.
“It didn’t matter playing home or not, getting to the Final Four was something that not a lot of people do,” Cotton said. “We are a special team, and now we have to work to get back here next year.”
In his final college game, the well-traveled Hall finished with 13 points and five rebounds. Cotton had nine and four. They leave with a story of how they led 10-point favorite Louisville by as much as double figures into the second half before succumbing to the Cardinals’ pace and pressure.
Wichita State is a multi-national stew of players. It reeled them in from Africa, Canada and seven states in addition to Kansas. Part of the Shockers’ wide-angle approach included tapping into the rich vein of Georgia players.
Sophomore Cotton was discovered by Chad Dollar, the Atlanta-born assistant at Wichita State last year before coming to Georgia Tech. What a salesman he must be to get a kid from a small private school in Mableton to take a flyer on Wichita State.
Hall, a senior, was in Hutchinson, Kan., playing in the junior college national championships when he drew some attention from the folks in nearby Wichita. The Shockers got themselves a grown man — he is 24 now — who has lived a real life.
Playing at Middle Georgia College in Cochran — about two hours south of Atlanta — Hall continued suffering fainting spells that he first experienced in high school. He was diagnosed with a heart condition called neurocardiogenic syncope, which certainly sounded like a good reason to give up basketball. He took a job in a now-closed lighting plant, working the graveyard shift and going to school by day. Nearly two years away from the game, he was cleared to play again and worked his way, somehow, to Kansas.
He would never look back at the possibilities. “I’m at risk every time I touch the court,” he said Friday. “That’s something I can live with. I’m comfortable with myself and got myself in great condition to help me with that situation.”
Before their first visits to the Great Plains, neither player had any idea where Wichita State was or what it was exactly they would meet when they found the place.
“It was a lot different than I thought it was. I thought when I arrived I would just see grass, but it’s fun,” Cotton said Friday. He perhaps supplied a slogan for future recruiting brochures: “Wichita State — More than Just Grass.”
Hall wouldn’t have ended up there had the Internet not come along in time to show him what a Wichita State Shocker was. He also had to be assured his long dreadlocks — which he snipped before the start of the tournament — would fly in Gregg Marshall’s buttoned-up program in the heartland. Once Hall got his locks approved, he was a Shocker.
By extension, various other Georgians were learning about the place this week.
“There are about 15,000 shockers fans in Cochran,” Hall declared, his estimate exceeding the town’s population. “They’re excited, trying to support me.” His Bleckley County High changed its nickname from Royals to Shockers for the week in his honor. Over at the Piggly Wiggly, they were baking customized Carl Hall and Shocker cupcakes.
Meanwhile back at Whitefield Academy, the students were writing notes of support for Cotton and putting together treat baskets for his team.
“It brought tears to my eyes when I walked in the school and saw the basket (of letters),” said Cotton’s mother, Leza Jones.
There would be more tears for a narrow defeat Saturday, not exactly the way a homecoming is supposed to play out.
All through the season, Marshall asked his players, “Are you satisfied?” At each step, they’d answer not yet.
But can’t Cotton be satisfied now, having helped to bring a ninth-seeded team so close to home and so close to a national title?
“Still not satisfied,” he said.
Painful business this tournament, this metaphorical separating the wheat from the chaff.
