Wichita State Shocker guard Ron Baker talks to the media in the Shockers' locker-room Saturday, March 21, 2015 at the CenturyLink Center, Omaha, Neb.

Omaha, Neb. ? During the past three seasons, Wichita State guard Ron Baker has demonstrated on dozens of occasions the unflappable demeanor that has made him one of the toughest players in college basketball.

Hustle play after hustle play. Tough rebounds in traffic. Deep three-pointers and clutch free throws to ice games. All are a part of Baker’s bag of tricks, and each served the Shockers well during a run to the Final Four in 2013, an undefeated regular season and No. 1 seed in 2014 and along the collision course toward a matchup with mighty Kansas University at 4:15 p.m. today in the third round of the NCAA Tournament.

However, on Saturday afternoon, just after 3 p.m. inside CenturyLink Center, Baker’s poise was put to the ultimate test when WSU teammate Tekele Cotton grabbed a microphone from a television reporter and proceeded to interview his teammate.

With a straight face and deep stare, Cotton uncorked a line of questions that clearly involved some kind of inside joke between the two. With other Shockers rolling in laughter in the background, Baker didn’t blink. He answered the questions just as he had when talking about the Jayhawks’ guards, KU coach Bill Self or today’s match-up.

It’s that kind of focus that has allowed Baker to remain calm in the face of such an extremely hyped matchup, even as the anticipation of those around him spins out of control.

“Every contact in my phone is letting me know that this is the biggest game in their lives,” Baker said. “And I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m the one playing in the game, how do you think I feel?'”

With a horde of media members surrounding him for the entire 40 minutes the Wichita State players were available to the media Saturday, Baker answered question after question about Kansas, his missed opportunity to try out for the Jayhawks, what the game means for the Sunflower State and how big of a KU fan he was as a child.

Each time, even as the questions inevitably began to be repeated, Baker answered as if he were being asked for the first time.

“My dad had set up for me to go down there (to KU) and play pick-up one weekend,” recalled Baker of his brief interaction with Kansas during his recruitment. “It was the same time WSU was recruiting me, and after we went down to Wichita State for a visit the whole KU idea was not even brought up on the way home.”

By now, Baker’s story is well known throughout Kansas and even across college basketball. Terrific multi-sport athlete from small-town Kansas who grew up a die-hard Jayhawks fan because of guys like Kirk Hinrich, Aaron Miles, Nick Collison and Keith Langford, stays in-state and attends the only local college that offered him a scholarship. Hard work, small-town values and tremendous amounts of pride and respect help him become one of those players dozens of college coaches leading bigger programs look back on as a guy they missed.

KU’s Bill Self is one of them.

“I would say that there’s a lot of people that made a mistake on Ron,” Self said. “And we would certainly be one of them because we were not aware of him in the way in which I wish we would have been. Obviously anybody would love to have him in their uniform.”

Even WSU coach Gregg Marshall deflected the credit for the Shockers’ good fortune in landing Baker.

“We had him in an elite camp the summer before his senior year, and there was something that intrigued us about him,” Marshall said. “(Former WSU assistant) Chris (Jans) saw him in a state tournament at Hutch and said, ‘Coach, you’ve got to go see him tomorrow in the championship game. He’s gotten a lot better.’ So I went and saw him, and five minutes into the game, told my father-in-law, who was with me at the time, that we were going to have to try to find a way to get him in our program. And we were going to place him in prep school or junior college because we didn’t have a scholarship for a 2 guard at the time, and they came up with the idea of paying their way and walking on and doing a 5-for-4, which (is) yet to be determined whether we will have him for five years.”

More than 20 members of Baker’s actual family and hundreds more from his Wichita State family made the trek to Omaha this weekend for the chance to see what many are calling the biggest matchup of the first three rounds in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

Kansas kid takes on marquee Kansas program with the weight of an entire season hanging for both teams.

It’s enough to overwhelm even the strongest-minded individuals. But for Baker, it truly is just another game.

“Obviously, everyone’s very excited, as am I,” Baker said. “Just box in the court and just play. (Try not to) think about the outside part of it a whole lot. When I came here, I didn’t really expect to play KU or K-State, but now the opportunity’s upon me and my teammates, and we’re gonna make the most out of it.”