MBB PREVIEW: THE LIBERTY WAY
Can Kennesaw State stop Ritchie McKay's Project 2025?
A lot’s changed since 2023, when Liberty visited the Convocation Center twice in the span of a couple weeks for decisive ASUN matchups. The first game basically settled the regular season title, and the second turned into a classic that sent the Owls to the first NCAA tourney in program history. I think about both of those games an unhealthy amount.
National TV cameras are back this week, but not a whole lot else carries over. Only three active-duty players (apologies to Chuck and EJ) return from either side of those ASUN meetings. One thing that stayed the same: The numbers still LOVE Liberty. You won’t find many people outside Kennesaw picking the Owls, nor will you find many power ratings that put the Flames anywhere but the top spot in CUSA despite a 4-3 record.
What do you need to know about this version of Liberty before Thursday night?
They’re going to run with the same small group until the wheels fall off. Ritchie McKay’s tight rotation only features six active guys who make any significant contributions. Could someone like Zander Yates have a random heat check game? Sure, I guess, but there’s almost no reason to talk about anyone on this Liberty roster other than the starting five and Taelon Peter.
The short, almost nonexistent bench has worked out to this point. Take injured Minnesota transfer Isaiah Inhen out of the conversation, and half of the CUSA top 10 in Evan Miyakawa’s BPR stat come from the Flames. Jayvon Maughmer, relatively speaking the least effective regular according to BPR, still ranks 16th in the conference’s leaderboard. Kennesaw State doesn’t make an appearance until Frankquon Sherman at #22.
Cue the Jesse Pinkman meme: McKay and the Flames can’t keep getting away with this. Or can they?
Among CUSA teams, only the Owls shoot more threes than Liberty. The main difference is a pretty big one: the Flames make them 10% more often. It’s extremely funny that McKay replaced Darius McGhee with a guy - Kaden Metheny - who shoots even better from deep and looks like Zach Bryan. Talk about a coach who understands what the Liberty fanbase wants. All three of Metheny, Colin Porter, and Taelon Peter rank in CUSA’s top five shooters from distance.
Peter might be the best all-around scorer of the trio, coming off the bench to average 16.7 points a night in CUSA action. Standing 6’4”, Liberty’s typical sixth man is the only one of the trio with any size, shoots at essentially the same % as Metheny and finishes at the basket more efficiently than anyone else on the team. Porter, Liberty’s primary ball-handler, doesn’t force the issue quite as much as the other two and only has a 14.4% usage rate this season.
All three guards will have a green light as soon as they get across that Georgia outline at half court. Some of these 3P attempts on the heat map might as well be from the Marietta campus:
Only four teams have held Liberty below 34% from deep this season. The Flames went 1-3 in those games. The math for a KSU win lines up a whole lot easier if they can keep the visitors under 10 made threes.
How do the Owls solve the Pack Line defense? Us casual fans don’t always hear as much about defensive styles past the simple man/zone conversation. We can typically name 10-15 distinct offenses before getting to any intricacies of the other side. One exception is the Pack Line system that McKay runs after his time with Tony Bennett at Virginia. An NBC Sports article from Rob Dauster broke it down in 2015:
There are two core principles to the Pack Line: The player guarding the man with the ball is to provide intense ball-pressure well beyond the three-point line while the other four help defenders are to all be within an imaginary, 16-foot arc. What this does is encourage penetration into those help-defenders, known as ‘The Pack’, forcing kick-outs to spot-up shooters who will have to take a jumper with a defender running at them.
Dauster goes on to talk about the key to beating Bennett and McKay’s system:
When push comes to shove, the Pack-Line defense is structured around the idea an opponent isn’t going to be able to hit enough threes to beat them. They want you to drive into defense, kick the ball out and shoot jumpers with a hand in your face. Teams that can do that are going to give them trouble.
That sounds like Wooley and Cottle’s music, right? Only question is whether guys like Miller and Lue can knock down those opportunities on the other end of that kickout. You don’t need to be unconscious from deep - WKU beat them shooting below 30% - but KSU’s current three-point numbers in CUSA may not get the job done. An efficient night of big-man passing from Rongie Gordon and Andre Weir out of the double teams won’t hurt either.
Over at Roll Bama Roll, Erik Evans put together a more recent Xs and Os primer on the system as the Tide prepare to face a similar defense, Mississippi State. We’re all aware of the schematic crossover between the Owls and Pettway’s former program, so Wednesday night’s Top 25 SEC battle will give us a fairly thorough preview of how he might attack Liberty’s version.
Matchup of the night: Zach Cleveland vs. Braedan Lue. Cleveland, the other remaining Flame from that ASUN final, serves as the low-key conductor of the offense. Other than the insane range of the guards, Cleveland’s passing stands out above anything else when Liberty has the ball. He’s averaging 4 assists/game against D1 competition, more than anyone else on either sides of Thursday’s matchup. Cleveland and Aquino (2.9 APG of his own) have excelled finding the perimeter scorers.
The more Cleveland hunts his own looks, the better KSU will feel. His 9.3 rim/paint attempts per game lead all Flames, but his 47.7% clip on those chances ranks lower than anyone in the rotation, including the two sub-5’11” guards. And he’s only taken 7 shots outside the paint in conference so far, and 10 threes on the entire season.
Liberty’s Net Rating is 19 points better with Cleveland off the court, even though he plays around three-fourths of their minutes with the limited depth. Opponents shoot 13% better eFG with him out there and turn the ball over a lot less frequently. The rest of the numbers:
Moral of the story: Kyle Rode’s not walking through that door.
Given his classmate’s league-wide and national recognition, Lue has somewhat quietly put himself into a Big 3 with Cottle and Wooley in terms of overall value and shot volume. Looking at Kennesaw’s own on/off numbers, only Seals in limited duty provides a bigger boost during his minutes:
Lue’s shown a willingness to put the ball on the floor, create his own shot, and hit the contested looks that will be required against Liberty’s Pack Line. Combine that with a crucial role on the other end trying to disrupt the Flames’ facilitator, and it's not a big leap to see how the battle between both stretch 4s decides the night.
Look at it in a similar way to how we felt going into the Jaron Pierre Jr. matchup in the conference opener: You’ll be able to check Lue and Cleveland’s box score, without knowing a single fact about the rest of the game, and likely figure out who won.
What’s the Kennesaw blueprint for beating Liberty? We don’t have many examples to pick this season. Looking at the four Liberty losses, the game script will need to take pieces from each one to find the right formula. WKU’s driving, Louisiana Tech’s 3P defense and foul-drawing, etc. Liberty’s normal shooting night and lack of turnovers means they’re bound to go on a run at some point. How can the Owls make sure that stretch isn’t fatal?
Force Porter/Metheny into foul trouble. Wooley stands at least half a foot taller than whichever Liberty guard draws the primary assignment. Both Wooley (5.3) and Cottle (4.7) rank in CUSA’s top 10 for fouls drawn per 40 minutes. Liberty’s guards combine to commit just 2.86 fouls/40, so something’s gotta give one way or the other.
Let’s set 5 blocks as the magic number. UTEP and LA Tech both rejected four Liberty shots, with Batcho in particular dominating inside. An Owls front-line with a newly-discovered ability to protect the rim could be the difference-maker against one of the shortest teams in America.
Same idea with breaking the Pack Line to find 36+ points in the paint. Unless Pettway’s counting on an out-of-body experience from three, the scoring will need a heavy dose of penetration and second-chance points, both recent areas of strength for the Owls. Liberty’s also lost all three games where their opponent scored 10+ fast-break points, so a track meet might not be the worst idea in the world, either.
The computers say…
KenPom: Liberty 72, KSU 68
EvanMiya: Liberty 74, KSU 69
T-Rank: Liberty 72, KSU 67
ESPN BPI: Liberty by 5.9