It's only December, and Wichita State's March already looks bleak

It's a credit to both Gregg Marshall and the Wichita State men's basketball program that we've gotten so used to penciling the Shockers into the NCAA tournament.

We no longer consider them a prototypical mid-major; their resources are excellent, they schedule tough and they can beat just about anybody in the country on any given day.

But this season appears to be a bit different. This is not exactly what we're used to seeing out of Wichita State.

For starters, the Shockers are 5-5, with losses all on the road or at neutral sites to Tulsa, USC, Alabama, Iowa and, as of Saturday, Seton Hall. Some of those came while Wichita State played without Fred VanVleet, which is worth mentioning because the selection committee will mention that.

The Shockers' best win so far, by a considerable margin, is against Utah.

They're not shooting the ball all that well (they rank in the bottom half of the country in effective field goal percentage and three-point shooting, per KenPom.com) and it's strange watching this team struggle considering both the talent and experience of VanVleet and Ron Baker.

In short, this is not the kind of nonconference performance we're used to seeing with this program. We're used to Wichita State cruising through this time of year relatively unscathed, with a large enough cushion for an NCAA tournament at-large bid that it could float on it.

Instead, it's time to wonder if the Shockers could even sneak into the big dance without winning the Missouri Valley Conference tournament. That is legitimate question.

If the margin for error is not completely gone by now, it's at least uncomfortably slim for this team. Certainly come March, at-large bids and the bubble are all affected by the landscape; other teams' wins and losses can have far-reaching impact. So, without predicting what tournament contenders will look like then, it's hard to be definitive about Wichita State's chances right now.

But they don't look good. And that feels very unfamiliar.

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