Last season, the American Athletic Conference led the nation in close games. If the conference trends that way again, Wichita State coach Paul Mills likes the way the Shockers are built.
"There are four seasons," Mills said. "Your non-conference prepares you for conference, conference (play) determines what you do in the conference tournament. Those two combined determine whether or not you participate in post-season. We learned a lot during the non-conference."
The Shockers (10-3) open AAC play at Temple (8-5) at 6 p.m. Friday (ESPN2).
The examples of what the Shockers learned about a successful path showed up often over 13 non-conference games.