MORNING HOOTAROUND: FAMU

1 PM ET | SWAC TV | Tallahassee, FL

Welcome to the Morning Hootaround, a gameday newsletter about Owls basketball. For the literal first time in history, KSU fans can say that the football and men’s basketball teams are both in-season and worth watching. Just as Amir Abdur-Rahim’s steady ascent passed into Good Program territory, football went stale. Ships passing in the night, in terms of quality.

That’s since been corrected, and we’re now in uncharted territory with the football team bowl-eligible and men’s basketball in the early days of a promising season. I will puke and quit watching football if I look at any more stats about New Mexico State’s offense. Instead, let’s talk about this FAMU game, first up in our Owls marathon today.

Six hours of commercial-filled hooting starts now. Or later this afternoon, I guess.

KenPom: KSU 85, FAMU 74
EvanMiya: KSU 81, FAMU 73.9
Bart Torvik: KSU 86, FAMU 79
BPI: Owls by 10.3
Vegas: Owls -9.5

In the first of three Pizza Party non-DI buy games this season, the Owls demolished a helpless Paine College from the NCCAA — “The only intercollegiate athletic association where #RingChasing and #KingChasing converge.” Must tip my cap on that one. Take your pick of absurd scoreboard benchmarks to point out: KSU led 37-2 at one point, took a 60-10 lead into halftime, and eventually won by 76. At one point, our ESPN+ commentator suggested that Paine should push the pace and dive for more loose balls. Excellent idea.

An 80.2% eFG outing ranked #2 all-time in KSU’s DI history, a 25% bump from the average against non-NCAA teams during Pettway’s tenure. What does it mean? Nothing, really. Was it a total farce? Probably. Anytime the Owls’ shot chart looks like this, let’s just accept the morale boost and move on.

Kennesaw’s home opener lost a little juice coming a week or so after an exhibition against West Georgia, the team that backfilled KSU in the ASUN. Focus for the Owls shifts back to the N-singular C-AA Division I level this weekend, against a Florida A&M squad picked 8th in the preseason SWAC poll. Mr. Pomeroy currently projects the Rattlers as 3 points worse and 25 spots lower than the Wolves, if you’re looking for a comparison.

For an on-court data point, next Sunday’s opponents in the AAR tribute game set a pole lap against the Rattlers in an uptempo season opener. New USF coach Bryan Hodgson was a Nate Oats disciple for even longer than Pettway. Could FAMU get a slight boost from facing a similar system twice in one week?

USF’s 64.5% free throw attempt rate and 23 fast break points jump off the stat sheet here, as do 1.31 points per possession for the Bulls. Little turnover happy on both sides, too. If FAMU is as willing to run as these numbers indicate, that’s a good way to get some reps at Pettway’s preferred tempo.

This FAMU matchup won’t teach us a ton about KSU’s upside. It’s just a quick level-setting game that gives us an early progress report on a young team with expectations. Depending on how much stock you want to put in the good ol’ fashioned transitive property, Saturday’s matinee could still set the mood of Owls fans leading into the Love Wins Classic. Plus, compared to some of last year’s road trips, Tallahassee seems like it’s next door.

Given the alma mater, status as a two-sport icon, and SWAC landing spot, the Deion comparison comes easy. Ward hasn’t leaned into the pro wrasslin’ tactics, though, and his high school resume (a decade-plus, no fraud allegations) boasts much more legitimacy. I’m intrigued by FAMU welding two coaching archetypes together: A celebrity coach who’s also a respected figure in grassroots hoops. That’s an interesting model for a low-major program in the portal/revenue sharing era.

FAMU’s three public results so far: 1) A 46-point Pizza Party victory over Edward Waters, 2) An 88-54 exhibition loss to the hometown Seminoles, which saw Ward’s #12 basketball jersey retired, and 3) the aforementioned track meet against USF.

A couple recommended stories to get a feel for the Rattlers during the early days of Ward’s tenure: First, over at Andscape, Mia Berry examines Ward’s journey to his first college coaching job. He’s on Tallahassee’s Mount Rushmore, put in the work at the high school level, and was already a FAMU lifer before taking over. How many college basketball coaches were born on the campus where they work? Guessing it’s the same amount who can also say they won a Heisman trophy.

Basket Under Review’s SWAC preview broke down the state of play for FAMU’s rebuilt roster. Two leading scorers are out the door, with a mix of D1 transfers, JUCO guys, and a trio of freshman rounding out the expected rotation. “However the question marks around shot creation and shooting could loom large, especially if Ward is dead set on keeping the pace pedal to the metal and shooting a high volume of threes.” That particular passage foreshadowed the season opener, when the Rattlers clanked their way to 21.7% from deep.

Buffalo transfer Anquan Boldin Jr. provides the most name recognition, but second-team preseason All-SWAC selection Jordan Chatman got the most shots up against USF. In 18 minutes of action, forward Kaleb Washington blocked 3 shots, picked ups couple assists, and turned it over 6 times. Your guess is as good as mine what to expect from Ward’s army of 6’4” - 6’5” combo guards.

News broke during the Paine pregame that the sophomore wing was leaving the team, effective immediately. Pettway addressed it from the jump during his press conference: “[Miller] and his mom met with me 48 hours before our first game and told me that he needed to go back home for personal reasons, so he’s not going to be with our team going forward…He helped build the culture and standard that we play with. He’s always going to have a home here at Kennesaw State.”

No interest in speculating — hope everything is all good with Miller and his family. As for the basketball ramifications, Miller’s size and skillset pigeonholed him into a role where he could only exist in this system as the smaller of two wings. You wouldn’t want him guarding an opposing team’s 4, and you wouldn’t get much on the offense end trying to line him up as a scoring guard in the Houston spot. I think the evolution of his minutes share as a freshman, visualized by CBB Analytics, tells a story that would’ve likely continued into this season.

Setting aside his hypothetical role in the rotation, Miller’s still a loss and someone that would’ve contributed at moments throughout the season. Just revisit the Rutgers game as an example of the upside, especially on the defensive end against a pure scorer like future first rounder Ace Bailey.

Accidental journalism: I talked with some dudes recently who played HS ball against RJ Johnson. The conversation sounded like I was interviewing the citizens of Tokyo after Godzilla stomped through, even two years later. I’m intrigued to see what the offense offense looks like in an actual basketball game — apologies to the Paine Lions — as the point guard returns to action after missing last season with a torn labrum.

Johnson showed flashes of looking like Terrell Burden on Super Soldier Serum prior to the injury, and appears to in better shape than ever. His 2024 on/off numbers don’t paint a pretty picture, though most of his 15-ish minutes/game were running a limited second unit or with a downhill PG (him or Burden) forced into an off-ball role. We don’t need to spend a ton of time revisiting that season, anyway.

If you’re looking for one temperature-check stat over the first month, Johnson’s Rim+3 FG% would probably tell the story. During his freshman season, Johnson finished around the rim at a 65.9% clip, behind only Demond Robinson, Cole Larue, and Rongie Gordon that year. Adding some semblance of a threat from beyond the arc (just 27.7% in his first season) would go a long way as Pettway figures out how the Owls will replace Adrian Wooley in the aggregate. Wooley leaves behind 9.4 rim+three attempts per game for the Owls to split up.

With all due respect to our #KingChasing friends in the NCCAA, Monday’s noncompetitive matchup didn’t really tell us the full story about the latest batch of promising freshmen. It’s still Syllabus Week, but we’ll have a much better sample size on Saturday against a DI opponent.

Pettway’s core roster-building philosophy relies on guys during their proverbial rookie contracts. That’s why there’s a ton of variance in potential outcomes and why certain advanced metrics, like Evan Miyakawa’s system, might be a little lower on the Owls early on. Freshmen are impossible to project with an algorithm. For example, according to his preseason BPR, Chuck Stone currently projects as a more valuable player than both Trey Simpson and Kaden Rickard.

All the space between KSU’s median (168) and ceiling (81) outcomes likely comes down to how much impact Pettway gets from his freshmen.

How would you currently gauge the importance of the freshmen toward hitting those upper percentile outcomes? Not that I’m going out on a limb here, but the tiers line up like this:

Must play a major role: Trey Simpson
Need one: Darius Washington and Kaden Rickard
Any contribution is a plus: Amir Taylor
Redshirting or currently hurt: Brendan Tousignaut and Nigel Thomas (via Owl Chat Podcast, since nobody else covers this team)

Getting a contribution from Simpson feels like a necessity at this point, especially after the Miller news further limits Pettway’s options. Like Johnson’s Rim+3 shooting numbers, Simpson’s usage rate over the first month will give a good barometer as to how the Owls are progressing. Only Braedan Lue has gone over the 20% usage mark from the wing during Pettway’s tenure. Simpson’s 11 FGA in the West GA exhibition is a mark that Lue only exceeded once as the #3 option last season.

If Simpson provides a scoring (or secondary playmaking) threat, that also allows Pettway much more room to experiment with Lue’s positioning at the 5. Given the non-Lue options on the wing, finding someone willing to shoot from three adds another option. I love Frankquon Sherman, an elite positional rebounder and + defender who projects as the most efficient Owl in BPR, and I’m looking forward to what sophomore jump we see from Ramone Seals.

Simpson brings a different dimension, though, just by virtue of being willing to pull the trigger from long-range. Pettway’s initial takeaway on the 6’8” freshman out of DME Academy: “He ain’t seen a shot he don’t like yet, and I love it.” Simpson went 2-5 from deep against West Georgia and was unconscious against Paine, hitting 5 of 9. Nobody’s writing NBA Draft scouting reports from a two-game sample size, sure. I think the intent is what matters in terms of what Simpson brings to the table during his freshman season.

Both Washington and Rickard saw plenty of time at guard during the West Georgia exhibition and the Paine “game.” DW3 appears to be the second point guard at this exact moment in history, based on the limited evidence so far. He and Rickard will both get plenty of opportunities to figure it out against an early non-conference slate that only includes two teams in KenPom’s top 200 (USF and Rice) prior to the CUSA one-off against MTSU in mid December. KSU won’t need both of these guys to hit during this freshman season, but you have to avoid a drop-off at PG like last year, when KSU’s net rating dipped 16 points without Wooley on the court. Without one of them being capable of running the offense — or pushing Johnson for a starting role — that ceiling outcome becomes much more difficult to reach.

Taylor’s role in the rotation is a little more speculative and depends on the plan at the 5 spot. That’s where Lue started against Paine, with Perry Smith as his backup, and you even saw some possessions for Sherman at center. Probably the most interesting position for the Owls during the non-con, all things considered. If Lue’s on the wing more often, that shuffles the depth chart and opens up a lot more potential minutes for Taylor. Unlike Simpson and whichever guard steps in right away, you don’t need immediate impact from the three-star Grayson product. Pettway can bring the big man on at a little different pace than his backcourt/wing classmates.

There’s not much to directly learn from the Paine game as far as long-term projections, but we did see one interesting lineup combo: Cottle shared the court with Washington, Rickard, Simpson, and Taylor for about 5 consecutive minutes of game action. during an 18-0 run-within-a-run that was packed with plenty of highlights and a few freshmen mistakes as a reminder.

If you’re looking for symbolism during an otherwise pointless evening, Cottle chaperoning KSU’s freshman class certainly felt like a moment that we’ll look back on later this season.