BRIAN O'CONNER SAID FORGET ABOUT IT
The Owls can't quite catch up to FIU on a cold night in Miami.
Sunday night’s game was the sort of loss where Owls fans would smash the panic button if it happened in late February.
Good thing it’s only November.
Fresh off a 2-1 performance at ECU’s Holiday Classic, Kennesaw State matched up against FIU in a CUSA prequel that was decidedly less fun than the highlights from earlier in the week. The Owls never led in the game, trailing by as many as 17 points despite going into halftime down 4.
RJ Johnson’s late jumper closed the gap to six points with 1:17 to play, but that’s as close as the potential KSU comeback would get down the stretch in the eventual 91-84 loss at the Ocean Bank Convocation Center.
FIU’s win probability never dipped below 65.7%. And that was at the opening tip.
Outside of 20 points and 4 threes from Simeon Cottle, who appears to really enjoy the green light from Pettway, the free-shooting Owls struggled to find their shot from distance. Demond Robinson (15 points, 12 boards) and Terrell Burden (13 points, 10 assists) posted double-doubles of their own.
FIU guard Javaunte Hawkins (22 points, 4-8 from three) topped the box score for the Panthers, who had answers for every run the cold-shooting Owls tried to string together. If the showing at ECU added fuel to the fire for KSU fans’ optimism, the one-game road trip reminded us of the roadblocks Antoine Pettway’s team needs to navigate between here and ASUN play.
Should we fire up the Excuse Machine? FIU always seemed like a recipe for some sort of hangover after spending 4 days at the ECU multi-team event just before Thanksgiving, then heading to Miami. Never mind that the Panthers just played 3 games at a high school gym in the Cayman Islands.
Nobody enjoys a result like that, especially not against the benchmark of a future CUSA opponent, but luckily we’re at the stage in the season where a loss like this can make more of a positive impact for the team’s development than a close win with the same underlying numbers.
What, if anything, can we take away from FIU with an in-state fight with Georgia State up next?
When running and gunning misfires
You can get away with a cold night from deep or struggling around the basket as long as you’re shooting well elsewhere. You’re welcome for this astute basketball analysis: It’s difficult to win if you’re not consistently scoring from either level. On Sunday night, the Owls finished 28/71 from the field, including 28% (10-35) on threes in the loss.
Shooting issues play out in fast forward when the Owls run at KenPom’s #1 adjusted pace and average 13.7 seconds per possession. The learning curve with the new coaching staff is magnified as they figure out Pettway’s ultra fast-paced system at the same time as the first-year head coach develops it. It’s like the Owls are taking drivers ed. in a Formula 1 car right now. Give them some time and they’ll figure out the engine modes.
Over the course of the young season, here’s how the KSU shot chart looks in D1 games:
Strictly looking at dispersion, Pettway will love that map as he builds an offense designed to maximize three-point looks, run by a PG in Burden who can drive whenever he wants. That’s a whole lot of blue spots, though - both on the perimeter and in the paint. A few of the cold zones will work themselves out, mainly around the rim where you should see a lot of positive regression based on Robinson and Burden’s career numbers around the basket. Opponents are also blocking 6.8 shots per game, which tanks those 2P FG numbers even further.
From three? Concern may not be the right word here, as this is the point in the season explicitly designed for working out these issues. Sure, it’s obvious that shooting 29.3% from three (294th in D1) with the second-most attempts in the nation won’t be sustainable into conference play. Right now, the Owls can afford launching a few extra threes if it helps guys find their level and allows Pettway a chance to figure out his ideal rotation.
We know what Burden, Cottle, and Robinson bring to the table offensively at this point. Their places in the lineup will be written in Sharpie for the foreseeable future. We also know that the other five players in Pettway’s trusted rotation are all between 6’4 and 6’8 and capable of guarding at least a couple spots on the court. Finding some consistency from long-range will be a major factor in separating themselves from the pack.
Maybe it’s Quincy Ademokoya, who we saw hit at a 37.5% clip off the bench last season, getting back to normal after a slower start in his increased role. Could it be RJ? The freshman guard is at his best attacking, almost like a Super Soldier Serum version of Burden, and I’m not sure we should completely ignore his start on Sunday as a potential audition (with mixed results). If he can build on his 35% rate from three in a small sample size early, that would put him right in line with how guys like Spencer Rodgers and Brandon Stroud shot last year.
Usual starters Jamel King and Frankquon Sherman are a couple wings with breakout potential, too. That’s why I’m not worried about the early shooting numbers. Even though the eight-man rotation is somewhat short right now, all it really takes is one guy turning it around for the efficiency numbers to look wildly different. That’s the upside on Pettway’s free-flowing offensive mindset: We’re never going to see the Owls completely rely on one player’s scoring to win games.
But the extra buckets have to come from someone.
Defense is the forgotten aspect of a coaching change.
At the granular level, basketball seems straightforward enough - your job is to score and stop the other guy from scoring. Most fans, myself included, recognize offensive changes far more than what happens on the other end of the court. That perceived simplicity on defense, of course, ignores all the aspects of game-planning, communication, and fundamentals that change when a new coaching staff arrives with a handful of new players.
The Owls haven’t quite found their footing on defense yet, either, where the athletic, versatile squad hasn’t quite reached the sum of all its parts. Through 5 games against D1 competition in the Pettway era, KSU ranks 283rd in the country in defensive rating and allows 82 points per game.
“We have to do a better job on the defensive end,” Pettway said after the FIU game. “[The players] know that, I know that, and we’re going to do that.”
Here’s how the defensive heat map looks so far:
Not captured in that chart: the Owls are also giving up more than 22 personal fouls per game, translating to almost 50% their opponents’ shots coming from the FT line. The chaotic pace and aggressive style does have some benefits for the Owls on defense, as they force 17 turnovers per game and converting those into 18 ppg of their own.
You expect to see miscommunication at this point, just 280 total minutes into a new, demanding system. FIU’s two early wide-open layups from Petar Krivokapic were a perfect example of what can happen if everyone’s not on the same page. Still, it’s not like we’re looking at a lazy team or a squad that isn’t on par athletically. When you look at the individual capability of every player out there, it’s easy to see how the team’s defensive performance improves with more non-conference reps as a group.
Pettway agrees: “We can correct mistakes. I can’t correct effort.”
Speaking of effort…
Transfer forward Rongie Gordon posted his first double-figure night of the season, scoring 11 points to go along with 7 rebounds in a season-high 28 minutes. If the Owls can get that kind of output from Gordon on a regular basis, you’d usually feel pretty good about the game. One thing the box score won’t list - he’s out there flying around and diving for loose balls like it’s the conference semis.
The natural thought process when Gordon announced his transfer from UAB was that he’d slot into the Alex Peterson role giving Robinson a rest. That assumption has been partially true: Gordon has been coming off the bench, but serving a much different role than simply taking over as the backup. He’s playing the fourth-most minutes on the team, and most of them have been beside Robinson. Compare it to last season: Peterson and Robinson played together for just 3 minutes. We’ve already watched 90 minutes of Robinson and Gordon manning the front court together in D1 games.
Those stretches with both guys on the court have a +19.2 net rating, considerably higher than when either player is out there solo.
Should we read too far into these numbers so early in the season? Definitely not. To me, the early returns are interesting on how adding Gordon as an extra high-effort forward can open up the game for everyone else. It’s worth watching how the rotation develops, though, especially without much depth behind them in the post.
UP NEXT - GEORGIA STATE. (3-3)
Saturday, December 2 | 1 PM | ESPN+
For the first time in more than 30 years, Georgia State and Kennesaw face off in men’s basketball. You have to applaud the scheduling from the Owls to see State and Southern in the same season, particularly with our ambitions of climbing the mid-major ladder and jumping up to a similar tier as our in-state peers from the Sun Belt.
More to come previewing this one, but here’s what the spreadsheets say:
KenPom: KSU 82, Georgia State 81
Massey: KSU 75, Georgia State 71
ESPN: 64.9% chance of an Owls win