8.2.24

Nothing deters this AfterShocks player from joining his teammates

The challenges of air travel are nothing new to Rashard Kelly ’18, a professional basketball player who has played for teams in Russia, Italy, Turkey, Lithuania, France and for the Tasmania JackJumpers in Australia. But getting to Wichita to play as a member of the AfterShocks in the regional semifinal game of The Basketball Tournament (TBT) on Monday, July 22 may have been his biggest travel challenge to date.

After the July 19 global tech outage caused airlines to reschedule, delay or cancel thousands of flights, what should have been a routine Sunday flight to Wichita turned into a hybrid flying/driving cross-country trek that took Kelly nearly two days, stops in five different cities, a flight from Pittsburg to Dallas and 11 hours of driving. But he made it to Koch Arena an hour before tipoff on Monday evening.

“No way I was going to miss this,” he said about joining the AfterShocks, a predominantly Wichita State alumni squad that competes in TBT’s 64-team, single-elimination, $1 million winner-take-all event that has featured regional games in Koch Arena since 2019. This year, the championship game was played on August 4 at Philadelphia’s Daskalakis Athletic Center.

Kelly, a power/small forward who signed in 2023 with the pro team ADA Blois of the top-tier league Betclic Élite in France, had missed the AfterShocks’ TBT opening-round win on Saturday in Koch Arena to attend his mother’s wedding in Virginia. His teammates pulled out an 86-71 win over Midtown Prestige, a Wichita-based semi-pro team, to advance to Monday’s semifinal game against Team Colorado.

“Coming back here means everything to me,” said Kelly, who hails from Fredericksburg, Virginia. “I know we all have family from where we’re from, but being back at Koch Arena and seeing so many familiar faces, this is always family to me.” Powered by just three hours of sporadic sleep, he took to the court with his AfterShocks teammates, coached by Zach Bush ’17. Within 20 seconds of checking into the game, Kelly tallied his first rebound and went on to net 10 points for the AfterShocks, who were led in scoring by former Shocker standout Markis McDuffie ’19, a small forward who poured in 17 points.

But it wasn’t quite enough. The AfterShocks lost the game, 65-61, snapping a streak of three consecutive regional championships for the alumni team. Despite the defeat, Bush, McDuffie and Kelly, whose Shocker playing days overlapped for two seasons in 2015-16 and 2016-17, were excited to again be competing together — along with other Shocker alumni players Conner Frankamp ’18 (point guard), Alterique Gilbert fs ’21 (point guard), Trey Wade ’21 (small forward) and Darral Willis Jr. ’22 (power forward) and assistant coaches Garrett Stutz ’12 and John Simon Jr. ’17/19 — in the Roundhouse. And they’re already making plans for taking another shot at the TBT championship next summer.