Danny Spewak (@dspewak) is an RTC correspondent. He’s covering the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament in St. Louis through Sunday.

Three Key Takeaways.

Carl Hall Will Get Yet Another Shot at Creighton (Photo credit: AP Photo).

1. That Wichita State Defense: It is quite possible the Shockers played the best 12-minute defensive stretch of any team in college basketball this season. Illinois State did not make a field goal until Tyler Brown’s wide-open layup in transition with fewer than eight minutes to play in the first half. Wichita State led 17-1 out of the gate and punished the Redbirds on the defensive end. They didn’t get a single open look in the opening minutes of the game, and when they managed to actually find a shot, it either air-balled or barely hit the rim. Wichita State’s guards are just so fast and so athletic on the perimeter. When they’re really guarding and playing with energy and momentum, Demetric Williams, Tekele Cotton and Malcolm Armstead are like a pack of hyenas. There might not be anybody better in the country. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that Ehimen Orukpe and Carl Hall were like The Incredible Hulks in the paint, too, especially at the onset of the game. 
2. A Microcosm of Illinois State’s Season: Things could not have started more poorly for the Redbirds, but they overcame the horrific offensive start and actually put a scare into the Shockers. Once they settled down offensively, got stronger with the basketball and played a little more patiently, the shots started to fall and Jackie Carmichael went to work. In the blink of an eye, a 15-0 ISU run helped tie the game, and the Shockers led by just two points at halftime. Of course, the game got away from Illinois State in the second half as the offense began to stall again. Wichita State’s physicality proved too much, and it was a frustrating way for the Redbirds to exit Arch Madness after advancing to the title game a year ago. Even after losing coach Tim Jankovic to SMU – and remember, he took point guard Nic Moore along with him – the Redbirds looked like a team with championship aspirations. Carmichael has NBA potential, and the rest of the crew was back from a young roster that seemed to really grow up during the 2012 MVC Tournament. But first-year head coach Dan Muller’s squad sputtered, starting Valley play 0-6 and never quite recovering. There were flashes of that championship talent, mainly during a victory at Creighton in early February. It’s why many believed the Redbirds had an outside shot to win this thing as a six seed, and it’s why that 15-0 run in the middle of the first half had the thousands of Shockers fans in the building wiping their foreheads a little bit. Illinois State’s magic run never materialized, though, and now Muller is left wondering how he’ll recover in Year Two.
3. Wichita State’s Depth Is Starting to Form: Marshall’s team is finally healthy. And it’s completely healthy— meaning absolutely every key contributor is back. That’s been evident during the first two games of this tournament, as Marshall has flooded subs in and out of the game at every possible turn. He’s basically playing two lines of players, and all of them get after it on the defensive end and rebound the heck out of the ball. Much was made of Carl Hall’s return during the middle of MVC play, but look no further than a guy like Ron Baker as an example of the kind of depth Marshall has at his disposal. Marshall has hailed his return from injury as an important factor in the Shockers’ development, and after making a bunch of key plays in the quarterfinals, he scored seven points in the semis on Saturday. Marshall played 10 players against the Redbirds. Is it a coincidence that Illinois State wore down in the second half?

Star of the Game: We’re giving the game ball to the entire Wichita State defense. Yeah, that’s probably a cop out, but it’s absolutely necessary in this instance. The Shockers manhandled Illinois State on every level, especially at the beginning of the game. “I mean, they couldn’t score,” Marshall said. “They were having a hard time putting the ball in the basket, and this is a prolific scoring team.” Tyler Brown, who lit up Northern Iowa on Friday and made four threes in the first five minutes of that quarterfinal game, was shut down by Tekele Cotton on Saturday. That’s the kind of effort everybody gave, and it’s why the Redbirds’ offense fizzled in the second half.

Sights and Sounds: Gregg Marshall has a lot of pull with the officials, apparently. After the officials called a charge on one of his players and took away a basket, Marshall exploded on the sidelines. Bright red face and everything. A few seconds later, they changed the call. “I’m even helping the referees,” Marshall said to the radio producer at the scorer’s table.

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1. We would be remiss if we did not start off by mentioning the absolutely ridiculous set of games that we got to see on Saturday. Sure, there were a few duds (Florida absolutely destroying Missouri), but for the most part they were all solid games with the day capped off (for all, but our west coast followers) by a great game with an unbelievable finish (Butler shocking Gonzaga with the buzzer-beater). Bennet Hayes already wrote an excellent recap of the action for us so we won’t get into get into that. We will just say that after a week filled by phony people and lies it was refreshing to just get back to sports and nothing more than that.
2. If you are looking for a rundown of the entire week and not just the weekend, Seth Davis apparently was so excited about Saturday’s action that he got out his weekly Fast Breaks out early enough to make it in our Morning Five (or maybe it was the lack of big games yesterday). As usual Seth does a great job touching on some of the players (Tekele Cotton) and teams (Colorado State) that many people might have missed with all the craziness of the weekend not to mention the non-sports sports stories of the preceding weeks so if you weren’t glued to the television and Internet all week and have a legion of Twitter followers giving you updates and have the phone numbers of every major coach in college basketball it is well worth your time.
3. The efficiency numbers for teams this year will have already changed (check for daily updates on KenPom), but Luke Winn published an interesting post on Friday taking a look at the efficiency numbers of Elite 8 teams from the past five seasons. In doing so he establishes some general rules for efficiency numbers that teams tend to achieve when they make deep runs. Obviously there will be some exceptions, but in general teams tend to achieve certain levels of efficiency both on the offensive side and defensive side of the ball. Looking at the examples that Winn gives tends to fit in with how we viewed many of this year’s title contenders, but it should also raise some concern for teams that are considered solid threats to make it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
4. After quite a bit of speculation the NCAA took the first step towards streamlining its rule book with the intent of making it “a more flexible manual based on common sense”. Most of the changes will be barely noticed by the average fan, but should limit the number of seemingly pointless investigations and violations that the NCAA is inundated with that probably have no real effect on the competitive balance of college athletics. Among the changes are reducing regulations on texting recruits, allowing an increase in the type of material a program can send a recruit, and allowing schools to pay for medical expenses.  As you can see from the above link there are many more changes and it will result in about 25 pages being removed from the NCAA’s rule book. The changes are set to go into effect on August 1.
5. We knew it was coming and on Friday Maryland’s Attorney General filed a motion attempting to move the the ACC’s lawsuit against Maryland from North Carolina to Maryland. The lawsuit is over the exit fee of $53 million that the school is supposed to pay the conference. The Attorney General is essentially claiming that the ACC (based in North Carolina) does not have jurisdiction over anything in the state of Maryland and that the ACC’s lawsuit is “an antitrust violation and an illegal penalty”. The ACC has responded by withholding Maryland’s share of ACC’s revenue payments as  “collateral”. We are not sure how successful conferences have been in collecting exit fees when schools/states actually go to court to challenge them, but it will be interesting to see what happens if they do so.