BAPTISM BY FIRE
Liberty hands Kennesaw State a rare home loss.
Antoine Pettway’s face with 1:07 left told the full story last night. Simeon Cottle, one of the best free-throw shooters in the entire nation, just missed the front end at the line. That never happens.
Was the game over already at 74-65? Maybe so, considering the Owls only led for 9 seconds total - before the first media timeout - and then spent the next 37 minutes trying to chase down Liberty’s Baptist superweapon ruthless efficiency.
Pettway shook his head after the ball circled the rim and rolled out, his reaction saying everything. It was that kind of night, where even the seemingly automatic stuff refused to go in.
LIBERTY 76, KENNESAW STATE 68
THE DECISIVE MOMENT: You wouldn’t be wrong picking any number of late Liberty buckets that stretched the lead back to the 9- or 10-point range, all of which CBS Sports Network followed with quick camera cuts to the upper GA sections clearing out. Rough scenes all around.
I’d actually go with Gabriel McKay’s first-half three that forced a Pettway timeout to halt Liberty’s early 11-1 run. Solid on-ball defense from Miller gets Peter on the floor, but the Flames’ best scorer has the presence of mind to flip it over his shoulder to Aquino, who finds McKay all alone in the corner.
That early play showed a key difference between the two teams: Liberty had a knack for finding that extra pass, and even the eighth man in a six-man rotation could come in and hit open shots. The last thing you want to do is play hypotheticals, yet from that point onward, the score was 61- 59 in favor of the good guys. Not sure the Owls end up winning either way, but you can’t get away with spotting this Liberty team a ten-point lead at any point.
PETTWAY’S QUOTES:
“When we made a mistake or got out of stance, it seemed like they hurt us every single time.
“We just gotta stay the course. It wasn’t our night tonight. I just encourage my guys to keep taking these shots, and we gotta get back to defending the three-point line.
“We didn’t play our best brand of basketball tonight, and they made us pay for it.”
“That’s something we pride ourselves on — not tip-toeing into games. We did not come out aggressive enough, we turned down shots. We were almost trying to let the game come to us, instead of going to grab it. Once you get down to a team like that, with veteran dudes, that know how to play and have a style of play that they hold the ball and make sure they get great shots…we were fighting back all night from the start.’
KEY STATS (PRETTY OBVIOUS FOLKS)
18.8% from 3P - Where else would you start? McKay’s gamble with the Pack Line defense: If you’re patient, you’ll have chances behind the arc. Kennesaw just didn’t hit them. To make matters worse, Liberty shot better from three (42%) than what the Owls managed from the full floor (39% FG overall). Liberty defends the 3P line at an elite level, #2 in the country right now - a bad combo as the Owls have only hit their season average once in the last six outings. That season-average night of 28% from three would get the Owls three more makes to cover the final margin.
FT attempt rate: 18.8% - If you’re not connecting from deep, the best path for a win was to get to the charity stripe often and put McKay in some uncomfortable personnel groupings. Only 13 attempts from the line matches the previous season-low against Santa Clara. Credit to Liberty’s on-ball defense, which made life difficult trying to get downhill. I didn’t think Porter and Metheny had it in them, honestly. Would’ve been a GREAT night for RJ Johnson to go fullback mode.
Only 5 fast break points - Ten was the magic number where every team (OK, 3) has beaten the Flames, and the Owls only got halfway there. Pettway mentioned this as a byproduct of not getting enough stops, allowing Liberty to have the defensive alignment/matchups McKay wanted on what seemed like every possession. Contrast that to the other end, where the Owls would end up with moments like Cleveland posting Cottle or Andre Weir on an island against Porter, no help in sight.
Kennesaw’s shooting performance last night was pretty bleak stuff: 45.5% true shooting including the aforementioned 3P struggles. You can get away with clanking threes if you’re creating and converting opportunities at the basket. Like Pettway said during his postgame presser: “They give you open threes if you drive and you’re a willing passer. We didn’t finish at the rim good enough, and we didn’t make our open three-point shots.”
Wooley got 14 in the paint, and Weir scored almost all of his 13 points on putbacks. Past that, the Owls faced a tough road to the basket against the pack line defense. If you’re more into showing than telling, let last night’s heat maps from CBB Analytics do the work:
At what point do the rough shooting nights stop being “cold”? Like, people in Alaska don’t say they’re cold when the temperature is below freezing. That’s just the regular weather. We’re not there yet, but the broken record take is that Kennesaw can’t rely on Cottle and Wooley to be the only 3P options. In that regard, it was somewhat comforting to see Sherman hit a couple off the bench for only the third time in his college career.
That’s the takeaway of the night to me, far more than any validation of Liberty. Maybe this is coping — can we recognize the silver lining from last night? Pettway’s group shot about as poorly as possible, again, and lost by 8 after spotting CUSA’s analytic darlings an early double-digit lead. Until they can find another capable three-point shooter, there is a hard, low ceiling on this version of the Owls. They aren’t that far away, though.
On the other end of the floor, Liberty basically played at their normal cruising altitude - with a slight bump up to a 42% clip from behind the arc. You could probably live with 11 made threes overall if it didn’t include all those second-half haymakers as KSU tried to dig out of the hole.
Kennesaw kicked out of approximately 100 finishing moves during that second half, before the fatal blow came from Metheny. Posting up Cottle, Cleveland slung a pretty nasty bounce pass back to the senior guard, who knocked down the three and pushed the lead back to nine.
As much as the Righteous Gemstones Community College fanbase wants to dunk on me today, I think the rent’s coming due for this Liberty team at some point based on roster construction and individual limitations. Based on new evidence that was made available to us last night, perhaps this particular version of the Owls won’t be the team to do it. Pettway will love getting a second shot at it, given how Thursday night played out. Either way, it’s still plenty fair to doubt the Flames long-term. Oh well. You live by the take; you die by the take.
UP NEXT: vs FIU — Saturday, 5 PM tipoff
Liberty is a good basketball team. FIU is definitely not, but that doesn’t mean the Panthers won’t make life difficult as the Owls continue the four-game homestead.
Think back to the ugliest, most chaotic moments from Kennesaw State’s season so far— early on Thursday night, UTEP’s second-half run, the entire Santa Clara/SJSU trip. That’s FIU’s ideal game state: Make things as disgusting as possible, almost anti-basketball at certain points. Does it work out? Almost never. No matter what, it’s not very fun for anyone involved. The worst version of Saturday night has potential to be the least watchable game of the season.
Those turnover rates from both Kennesaw’s offense and FIU’s defense do scare you a little bit, especially what UTEP did last weekend in El Paso. Some of last night’s miscues aside, Pettway’s defense has performed far better than the group FIU took advantage of during last season’s non-conference slate. I don’t think the Panthers will be able to score enough for it to matter.
Plus, say hello to Kennesaw’s remedy for whatever scoring woes they may or may not have at the rim:
CUSA has gotten into a hilarious position about as we approach the halfway point, where only two games separate the top spot and the 8th seed. Every team is capable of beating the rest of the league on a nightly basis, and also gross enough performances in their bag to set back the entire sport of basketball by decades. Handle business on Saturday against what should be an inferior opponent, and the Owls finish the weekend no worse than a game out of the 2 seed. Lotta game(s) left, as your dad would say.
The computers say…
KenPom: KSU 76, FIU 68
EvanMiya: KSU 77, FIU 71
T-Rank: KSU 76, FIU 69
Massey: KSU 77, FIU 72
BPI: Owls by 8