WICHITA — Inside athletics director Darron Boatright’s office is a basketball autographed by almost every national championship-winning coach in men’s Division I history. He’s been told it’s one of a kind by the same Hall of Famers who agree to sign it. The names include John Wooden, Mike Krzyzewski, Bob Knight, Dean Smith, Jim Boeheim. The list goes on.

Staring at his prized possession from across the room with a gleam in his eye, Boatright turns and deadpans: “I hope Gregg’s the next one to sign it.”

National championship expectations are no longer wishful thinking for this once mid-major program. Not that they ever were to the team’s high-profile coach, Gregg Marshall. In many ways, it’s been a reachable goal ever since the Shockers made it to the Final Four in 2013 and nearly went undefeated the following season. Wichita State’s sudden-yet-opportune transition to the American Athletic Conference — one of the sport’s power conferences — in 2017-18 is indicative of that.

A few hours later in Charles Koch Arena, workers meticulously paint over the Missouri Valley logo on Devlin Court in ominous black — making room for the AAC logo. Marshall, with his arm in a sling from a summer shoulder injury (a torn rotator cuff), gazes at the renovation from above as if he’s Darth Vader overlooking the final construction of a Death Star.

“It’s almost here,” Marshall says of WSU’s inaugural season in a new league after 72 years of tradition in the Valley — still captured in banners throughout the stadium.

Marshall credits now Maryland coach Mark Turgeon for reinvigorating the program to national relevance before Marshall left Winthrop to carry the baton to greatness — and eventual dominance — with countless MVC championships and more NCAA tournament success than plenty of power programs.

That freshly emboldened AAC logo, also conveniently decorated on “we’re American” banners draped all over campus, is figuratively the finishing touches of a program transformation. Yet it’s also the beginning of an era in which a Sweet 16 finish might be seen as more of a disappointment as opposed to a breakthrough. The timing for the big transition couldn’t have come at a better time. Marshall expects his team, ranked No. 8 in USA TODAY Sports’ preseason Coaches Poll for 2017-18, to be perhaps his best team ever.

So do the players.

“Why can’t we win a (national) championship? Why shouldn’t that be the goal?” says junior forward Markis McDuffie, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder in 2016-17. “We have everyone back. And we’re as hungry as ever.”

Senior guard Conner Frankamp, who is from Wichita and played for a season at Kansas before transferring back home, has watched WSU’s renaissance from afar and now up close.

“When I committed to Kansas in high school, the programs were at different places,” Frankamp says. “Now, I feel like Wichita State is on the rise as a powerhouse program.”

And every powerhouse program needs a powerhouse fan base to fuel the fire. Players and coaches admittedly cannot go to a restaurant in town without getting a “what do you think of the American?” question.

“The reception from us joining the American has been through the roof. Everybody — and I mean everybody — has been super hyped,” Marshall says. “I thought there’d be some old heads who had grown up with the Valley and that’s all they knew. I thought we’d have some folks who thought the change is not good. But I haven’t heard one negative comment about the whole deal.”

Marshall says the impact of joining a power conference was evident when he was on the recruiting trail this summer. Yet the reality of what it all means in the immediate future really kicked in when he and Boatright looked over the team’s 2017-18 schedule for the first time. Before facing the likes of Connecticut, Cincinnati and SMU in conference play, the Shockers have a rigorous non-conference schedule that features road contests at Baylor and Oklahoma State, as well as facing top-notch competition in the Maui Invitational.

“Can we mix in a game against (Bradley)?” Marshall quips of a Missouri Valley team it beat by an average of 25 points in three games last season.

Boatright adds, “You look up and down the schedule and see murderer’s row. Then you realize, this is now called conference play. And we have a non-conference schedule that was based on a Missouri Valley conference slate, to boost our RPI for the committee. So there are no nights off.”

‘No limits’

If Marshall, the fiery coach who once told a five-star recruit his attitude wasn’t good enough to play for him, is the program’s Darth Vader, consider Boatright the behind-the-scenes Emperor orchestrating moves of power. Boatright, who ironically grew up a Kentucky fan and has a background in basketball coaching at Alabama, speaks daily with Marshall. It was Boatright and his small administration, under the direction of school President John Bardo, who spent 18 months quietly planning the school’s move to the AAC — or as Boatright jokes, the athletics department’s “secret science project.”

During the conference change process, which finalized in April and started in August for all 13 of Wichita State’s Division I sports teams, Boatright says he kept Marshall up to speed with the progress — although offering vague details.

“We knew that Gregg wanted to be in a different conference,” Boatright says. “He really thought the program would be better served. We knew his personal feelings. But I never wanted to put any of our coaching staff under that stress of what we were doing to get it done.”

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Boatright is quick to point out, however, that Wichita State’s continued development is a product of Marshall’s leadership. Whereas most university athletic directors expect — or demand — success from their men’s basketball coach, Boatright says Wichita State follows an inverse model in which the entire department feeds off Marshall.

“I wish I could say it starts with me, but it doesn’t. It starts with him,” Boatright says. “What people don’t understand about Gregg Marshall is that he very much embodies the program. He’s the guy who’s on his knee picking a staple out of the carpet because it looks bad. ... He’s doing that because he expects the next person to do that, too. He holds everyone accountable. It’s not, ‘Look at me I have to do this because nobody else is.’ It’s just what we do here. Nothing is beneath any of us.”

Boatright scoffs at the idea of Wichita State needing to switch to a power conference to keep Marshall from leaving for a bigger program someday. Marshall, 54, is making a comfortable $3 million in base salary, which made him one of the top-10 highest-paid among last year’s 68 NCAA tournament coaches, and that number soon increases to $3.5 million a year (stretching to 2021). But his name has been linked to such coaching vacancies as UCLA and Indiana over the years.

“People always say, ‘What keeps coach here?’ So far, it’s been because he’s been allowed to operate and receive whatever he needs to be successful,” Boatright says. “At the end of the day, I think that’s what any coach wants.”

Marshall has developed a well-oiled athletic machine in a town with no major sports.

“This is a very aggressive and progressive community, we have a lot of dreamers and successful entrepreneurs,” Boatright says of Wichita, naming off Koch Industries — a company that branches into such areas as energy, refining, manufacturing, trading and investing — and a handful of other companies to make his case.

“We have a lot of financial support to the point where Wichita State does things that people don’t think are possible in Wichita of all places. There’s no limits in Wichita. That’s the mind-set this community was built on. Everyone here wholeheartedly believes that the big time is not a place, but it’s a state of mind. They feel, ‘Why not Wichita?’ Why can’t we do something big here? And Gregg has fed that desire for them with a love affair that this community has with sports and basketball in particular.”

‘Done hiding’

Landry Shamet walks into the Shockers locker room sporting an Ace Ventura-like flower shirt. He’s also wearing a boot on his right foot to nurse a stress fracture that will likely keep him sidelined for the time being. (He's likely to be ready for the season-opener in November). He’s eating Chick-fil-A for lunch but more excited about dinner, when he’ll eat salmon and a cherry pie that Marshall’s wife, Lynn, cooks him. It’s a tradition — having players over for a home-cooked meal — that Marshall says was cooked up by Lynn.

“Her explanation was that these guys need to see you when you’re not in a basketball setting, as some cyborg yelling,” Marshall says. “They need to see you in a recliner, petting your dog and around your kids. Some of these guys come from far away to play here and we take them in. She said, ‘If you’re gonna say you’re family on the court, you gotta let them know you care about them in their world.’”

Shamet says that philosophy has fostered a togetherness that’s led to an off-the-court “brotherhood.” Shamet is the Shockers’ preseason All-American point guard and next likely NBA player, following in the footsteps of guards Ron Baker (New York Knicks) and two-time Missouri Valley Player of the Year Fred VanVleet (Toronto Raptors).

A rising sophomore, Shamet outperformed future NBAers De’Aaron Fox and Malik Monk in Wichita State’s season-ending loss to Kentucky as a redshirt freshman. The Shockers, expected to have a down year in 2016-17, blossomed from a good team to a great team after Shamet took over at the point midway through the season.

“He gave us that spark,” Marshall says. “With the ball in his hands, he was better — because he started going north to south more — and the rest of us were better — because he was creating scoring opportunities for everyone else.”

Shamet and virtually every key player from last year’s 31-5 team returns.

“A lot of people in college basketball might be scratching their head,” Shamet says. “I know, if I’m at another school, I’m thinking, ‘Wichita State? Why are they top 5? They were a No. 10 seed last year in the (NCAA) tournament and lost in the second round.’ Part of it is nice to get some recognition rather than doubt. Even when Ron and Fred were here — after they went to the Final Four, it was always, ‘OK it’s a fluke. It won’t happen again.’ Then they go 35-0. There’s continually been this doubt surrounding Wichita State.

“I feel like the biggest difference, with us going to the American, is we’re done hiding now.”

The Shockers’ No. 10 seed in last year’s NCAA tournament, in which they barely drifted off the NCAA tournament bubble despite sporting a 30-4 record on Selection Sunday, has followed a constant theme of on-paper analyses. Citations of RPI and strength of schedule have overshadowed Wichita State’s prowess. For instance, Marshall’s team was one of the nation’s best in KenPom’s defensive efficiency. The Shockers also bulldozed the MVC’s co-conference champ (Illinois State) by 41 points.

“My reaction to joining the AAC was like, now we can actually get what we deserve,” senior big man Shaquille Morris says, frustrated with his team’s No. 10 seed in last year’s NCAAs. “At the same time, it made me want to grind even more. In the five years I’ve been here, this is the most I’ve seen people wanting to get better individually — so we can be better as a unit.”

Despite a lack of player turnover, Marshall was forced this offseason to replace WSU’s two longest-tenured assistants: Chris Jans, who went to New Mexico State, and Greg Heiar, who left to become an assistant at LSU. Their departures paved way for the hire of former Central Florida head coach Donnie Jones, who brings a repertoire that features in-depth knowledge of AAC teams, deep South recruiting ties and experience as a national championship-winning assistant coach at the University of Florida. Like Marshall, Jones brings a fiery demeanor to ignite players.

Shamet says the team’s constant chip-on-the-shoulder mentality won’t change because of a bigger conference or higher national expectations — mostly because Marshall’s coaching tenacity is the key ingredient to their team psyche.

“Coach is a perfectionist, whether we are playing the best team in the country or the worst,” Shamet says. “The Valley was super underrated. They had some guys who could flat out coach. The difference in the AAC is now you’re going to have teams well coached and also see freak athletes and 7-footers coming off the bench.

“Last year, though, we could beat a team by 20, and coach would find a five-minute segment where we got outscored to make us run. He doesn’t allow us to get comfortable, which won’t change. That’s why we’re always built so well come March.”

McDuffie, who will miss the first month of the season recuperating from a stress fracture in his foot, likewise thinks the biggest difference in transitioning to the AAC won’t be the program’s identity, but rather the exposure for others to see the Shockers’ hard-nosed style of play. All 18 AAC games will be shown on either the ESPN or CBS networks.

“It’s motivating,” McDuffie says. “We want to play against the best, and now we get to do that on a night-to-night basis, in nationally televised games. A lot more people get to see what Wichita State is all about. They’ll get to see that toughness.”

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