NMSU PREVIEW: WELCOME TO SPACE CAMP
A true Spiderman meme of a CUSA quarterfinal in Huntsville.
By the time Kennesaw State officially enters its first CUSA Royal Rumble on Thursday night, 40% of the league will already be at home. Conventional wisdom during the preseason said the Owls would be long gone by now, too. Antoine Pettway’s fellow coaches picked his team at the bottom of the preseason poll — not exactly the hottest take about a roster of mostly freshmen coming into a top-10 league in the country.
A glass-half-full look at the week: The fourth-seed Owls could be 120 minutes or so away from a second bid to March Madness in school history, as their CUSA tourney tips off against a New Mexico State team they’ve already beaten by double-digits away from home. I like that thought process a lot better than acknowledging the acute anxiety of conference tournaments in a one-bid league. Everyone, even Liberty as +115 favorites, is one off night away from the season imploding at the Von Braun Center.
Could the lack of scar tissue and expectations actually help the Owls this week? Simeon Cottle and Rongie Gordon are the only active KSU players to appear in multiple games in a single conference tourney. Everyone else has either gone one-and-done in previous appearances, or will make their postseason debut on Thursday. Pettway’s not facing the demons of any real previous tourney disappointment as a head coach, either. There’s freedom in knowing you already beat the odds and overachieved, especially if you believe there’s more left in the tank.
As fans, this week won’t have anywhere near the “if not now, when?” urgency of 2023, or last year’s attempt to outrun the shadow of the ASUN title team. AAR’s final Kennesaw squad was one of the last of its kind in mid-major basketball: A slow build where the same core stays together over multiple seasons for the full transition from lovable losers to champions. In another era, we would talk about these ‘25 Owls as next up in CUSA, no matter what happens in Huntsville. Those days of sustainability might be over, but we can still appreciate what’s on the court in front of us.
On to the actual matchup…
New Mexico State (5) vs. Kennesaw State (4)
Thursday, 6:30 PM ET | ESPN+
Talking about games as a “tale of two halves” is as hacky as it gets for basketball commentary. Put it in the sports cliche hall of fame alongside momentum, another lazy way to half-describe what happened without explaining why. Even so, that faithful saying does apply to most Kennesaw performances during the CUSA debut season. In league play, we’ve seen an insane split between how the Owls start games compared with how they finish:
1H: -7.9 net rating, 0.94 points per possession, 44.6% eFG
2H: +11.5, 1.18 PPP, 54% eFG
Counting both versions of the Owls as separate teams, CUSA’s net efficiency margin leaderboard would get a new #1 team, plus a companion for FIU in the basement:
Second Half Kennesaw (+11.5)
Liberty (+10.7)
NMSU (+5.9)
MTSU (+3.1)
Jacksonville State (+2.0)
Louisiana Tech (+0.2)
UTEP (-3.8)
Sam Houston (-3.8)
WKU (-4.2)
First Half Kennesaw (-7.9)
FIU (-11.4)
Some less-than-fun news: NMSU has an even wider split, only in reverse: An average net rating of +18.6 (!) in the first 20 minutes and a -6.2 in the second half. Let’s dig back into the cliche handbook: You can’t win tournament basketball games in the first half, but you can definitely lose ‘em then. In eight CUSA defeats, Pettway’s team goes into the locker room down by an average of 8.9 points. Step one in the quest to make noise in Huntsville: Don’t spot the Aggies a double-digit lead.
The defensive numbers don’t change much before and after the break, so what’s causing these first-half woes? One of my working theories was that Pettway and his staff spend more time on defense in pregame prep, with the Owls’ drive-and-space offense being far more about reading and reacting to how the opponent responds. That was a bad guess, but who knows.
My final answer moved toward free throws being a deciding factor: As the game progresses, frequent fouling at both ends leads to more and more chances. That could be why you see a dip in the defensive points/100 possessions, but a massive jump in offensive rating as the FTA rate goes up a full 20%. Here are the full-season splits:
You can also try pointing to youth, a three-heavy offensive approach, outlier home/away results influencing the numbers, etc. I don’t think anyone really has any idea for certain.
Unsurprisingly, KSU digging an early hole (and then climbing out) was the story of the first meeting in Las Cruces. Kennesaw shot 32% in the first half, allowing NMSU - even on an ugly offensive night of their own - to lead by as many as 14. The Owls doubled them up with 12-2 and 18-2 runs in the second half, though, and earned their first-ever CUSA road win.
The common thread from both games? Rim protection, or lack thereof, at both ends. Wooley took over in game one off the bench, the only time he’s played a substitute role in his freshman campaign, and scored 14 of his game-high 23 points in the paint. 87.5% at the rim — is that good?
Kennesaw also blocked almost as many shots (10) as NMSU made (11) inside the arc. Andre Weir sent back 5, plus 4 by Rongie Gordon 4, and another from Frankquon Sherman. All in, that amounted to a 26% block rate on the night, more than double the Owls’ usual percentage. Here’s how Aggies’ shot chart looked in that first meeting, via CBB Analytics. Pettway would sign up for this 10/10 times.
New Mexico State only scored four more points in round two at the Convocation Center. That sounds lovely, until you see the offensive numbers from Kennesaw: 37% eFG, 16 points in the paint (down 29 on average), a 21% turnover rate, and the lowest points/possession (0.77) since getting pounded by San Diego State in December 2022.
It wasn’t only misses or blocks, either. The opportunities just weren’t there: Only 18 rim/paint attempts compared to a season average of 27.8 per night. We can skip over talking about that performance from three, too. Kennesaw’s offense cannot function when neither of those elements are working.
With Weir out of the lineup for Game 2 amid his continued absence, New Mexico State found slightly more success at the basket despite a cold night elsewhere. Led by 20 points from Zawdie Jackson and 18 from Filipovity, the Aggies shot 11/15 within 5 feet, and just 21% everywhere else. There’s not much point in showing the full shot chart outside of those two guys, as the rest of the NMSU’s rotation only hit 7 FGs total.
You really need to see this, though. Winning by 11 with this shooting performance almost defies the laws of nature, even if Filipovity and Jackson forced 7 shooting fouls combined.
On the rim protection front, we still don’t have any insight on Weir’s status. The transfer center still hasn’t appeared since a midseason foot injury that was once described as “day-to-day.” I suppose we’re all day-to-day, everyday, if you want to get philosophical. Can Gordon, Sherman, and Lue get back to Game 1 levels of affecting NMSU’s shots? You don’t love 11/15 around the rim or some of the fouls, but that game in Kennesaw was the only time the Owls have lost all season with a sub-100 defensive rating (6-1 in those games).
More blocked shots would be nice, but that’d be a distant secondary concern to dealing with the Aggies’ defense, especially the guards hounding Wooley and Cottle. If the game follows a similar script, KSU shooting somewhere around 25% from three, as gross as that sounds, could probably get the job done if it’s paired with enough chances at the basket. On that end of the court, the amount of rim + paint FGAs from Wooley and Cottle will tell most of the story. Maybe Ricardo Wright has his moment, too?
Could Frankquon Sherman be the key player? Sherman’s resurgence into the rotation really started with the road win in Las Cruces, when Pettway took him off ice for his 20+ minute outing of the season. The sophomore forward turned in a double-double in return, going +14 on the night, and will play a big role again in the third matchup, both on defense and as another secondary scoring option while Wooley/Cottle draw their usual attention.
NMSU head coach Jason Hooten’s most-frequent lineups all feature Filipovity at the four, setting us up for plenty of interaction with Sherman (61% minutes share against the Aggies). That’s especially true if Hooten continues his reluctance to play both of the Tshimanga brothers (6’10” and 7’0) against the Owls after pairing them for just 10 minutes together in the first two games.
In the first meeting, Filipovity went 2-12 from the field, the graduate forward’s season-worst shooting performance. On the return game in Kennesaw, he only managed three more made FGs but reached 18 points, largely thanks to 12 attempts at the free-throw line. Sherman, Gordon, and Jamil Miller all finished with 4 fouls apiece. Probably worth a mention: NMSU went 5-1 during the regular season when Filipovity was able to hit that 18-point mark.
Once again, this might not be aesthetically pleasing. A defensive shootout, if such a game exists. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Hooten’s Aggies, also 10-8 in CUSA, basically mirror KSU in a lot of ways. They’re the bizarro Owls in that they’re more older, play a slower tempo, and perform better in the first half. Past that, you’ll see a strange amount of similarities in the underlying stats. Both teams foul a lot and haven’t forced many turnovers, yet still rank in the top 100 in defensive efficiency thanks to forcing some pretty disgusting shooting nights from opponents. They’re also the best two rebounding teams in the league, with plenty of chances to prove it in a matchup between the 274th (KSU) and 338th (NMSU) teams in the nation in eFG%.
Thursday’s quarterfinal will be like the fight between Wolverine and X-24 in Logan, or the plots of Dual, Us, and maybe Santa Clause 3. You could really pick any movies where the main characters fight a slightly different version of themselves. After a season that’s mostly been about the young Owls trying not to self-sabotage, a quarterfinal matchup against a near doppleganger is a fitting way to debut in the CUSA tourney.
The computers say…
KenPom: NMSU 69, KSU 68
EvanMiya: NMSU 68.1, KSU 67.8 (help)
T-Rank: NMSU 68, KSU 66
ESPN BPI: Aggies by 1.3
I usually just post the game projections down here, but Bart Torvik’s top-secret T-Rank system also gives us a look at simulated results for the full tournament. Seeing 5.7% odds on the Owls and 12.3% on NMSU may radicalize me against analytics going forward.
