PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Wichita State hounded and harassed Arizona into submission Thursday night.

"They deny and they pressure and they're very well-coached and gritty and tough," Arizona coach Sean Miller said after the 11th-seed Shockers sent his sixth-seeded Wildcats home with a suffocating 66-55 result.

"Wichita State, I think is good enough to win several more games in this tournament," Miller added.

The Wildcats came in averaging 81 points per game. They came in with a streak of 40 consecutive games in which they scored at least 60 points, tied for the longest run in the country. However, against Wichita State, a team that defeated Vanderbilt in Dayton, Ohio, two nights earlier just to get into the field of 64, the Wildcats turned the ball over 19 times and were behind by as many as 24 points in the second half.

"It was big-time," Wichita State senior guard Fred VanVleet said of the defensive effort. "Big-time effort, big-time game plan."

The Shockers, a Final Four team in 2013 with many of those players still around, will meet third-seeded Miami (Fla.) on Saturday in a South Region round-of-32 game. If they play defense the way they did Thursday -- and they usually do -- Miller may well be right with his prediction.

"They didn't just make it difficult for Arizona to score on them," Miller said. "They make it difficult for every team that plays against them to score."

Wichita State, 70-50 winners over Vanderbilt before arriving in Providence in the early hours of Wednesday morning, pestered the Wildcats (25-9) from start to finish -- but still had to hold off a late Arizona charge that chopped the 24-point deficit down to nine with 1:36 left.

The Shockers (26-8) won despite going just 3-for-20 from 3-point range. But after turning the ball over just seven times against Vanderbilt, they coughed it up only five times Thursday.

With Wichita State, it all starts with VanVleet and fellow senior guard Ron Baker, two guys who figure to be earning some money next season -- and it all went through them Thursday. Van Vleet and Baker led Wichita State with 16 and 13 points, respectively, Van Vleet adding five steals while Baker had six assists and five rebounds. Freshman Markis McDuffie scored 10 points off the bench -- with Wichita State's bench piling up a 27-8 advantage on its counterpart.

"It was our night," Shockers coach Gregg Marshall said. "Our defense carried the way."

Kadeem Allen led the Wildcats with 11 points, while Ryan Anderson and Kaleb Tarczewski grabbed 11 and 10 rebounds, respectively. Anderson, an All-Pac-12 player in his only year at Arizona, came in averaging 15.5 points, and he scored only eight.

"We really have to give credit where credit is due," said Tarczewski, who was able to attempt only three shots under the pressure. "Wichita State is a great basketball team. Their defense is unbelievable ... they did a great job, and I wouldn't be surprised if they go on to do more special things in the tournament."

NOTES: While four of the five Wichita State starters have played in the Final Four, three of the Arizona first five were making their tournament debuts. ... Wichita State came in leading the nation in defensive efficiency and held Vanderbilt to 30.3 percent from the floor in winning the play-in game in Dayton before Arizona shot 41.7 percent. The Shockers outscored the Commodores 20-2 down the stretch in that game. ... Arizona C Kaleb Tarczewski, a Claremont, N.H., native who played his high school ball about 45 minutes from Providence in Massachusetts, finishes tied with Matt Muehlebach for the school record with 110 career victories. ... Wichita State has won three straight Missouri Valley Conference regular-season titles, four in the past five years.