The Conference USA Tournament was chaos. Pure chaos. The top-seeded Liberty was beaten early in the tournament by Missouri State. The loss of the Flames opened the door for everyone remaining, and the Kennesaw State Owls seized their Opportunity and won the Conference USA Tournament as a 6 seed. Â
Head coach Antoine Pettway is the second coach to take the Owls to the NCAA Tournament. Pettway took over after former coach Amir Abdur-Rahim left to take the South Florida job. Coach Pettway has done a fantastic job keeping the program at the level he found it and now has an NCAA Tournament appearance on his resume. It is the first tournament appearance for the Owls since 2023 and the second appearance in the NCAA Tournament. Kennesaw State is a 14-seed with some good storylines to follow.
Simeon Cottle
Cottle averages over 20 points per game and is one of the most efficient guards in the entire country. He can get to the rim and is a very good three-point shooter now that I have your attention. It is too bad that the star guard for the Owls will not be joining them on their journey to the NCAA Tournament.Â
Don’t worry, he isn’t hurt, but suspended. The guard is the main focus of a point shaving scandal and has been suspended and away from the team since Mid January. The Owls are no longer focusing on Cottle because they have to win with the guys that got them there. I'm sure coach Pettway would love to have Cottle, who wouldn’t, but you have to win with the guys you have.
Free Throw Line
The Free Throw Line has won and lost so many games in college basketball this year that it is hard to articulate its importance properly. A team like Kennesaw State is a perfect case study on the free-throw line and why it is important. Â
The Owls take about 46% of their shots from the three-point line. Normally, with that volume of three-point shooting, you don’t expect to get to the free-throw line much. Kennesaw State throws those norms out because the Owls take one of the highest volumes of free throws as well. They draw a ton of fouls and know how to draw contact on their drives. The 27 free throw attempts per game is the second-highest average in the country. The only problem is the Owls don’t make very many of them.
Yes, the 19 makes at the free throw line are a top-20 number on a per-game basis in the country, but simple math would tell you that only 69% of them go through the basket. That is one of the worst percentages in the country. The variance of getting to the free-throw line and making the free throws for the Owls is something to watch. Â
The other thing to note here is whether the whistle changed in the NCAA Tournament. Will Kennesaw be able to get a favorable whistle still and get fouled? That may be the most important thing to watch for in this game. If Kennesaw State gets its opponents in foul trouble, it could get interesting.
Potential Upset?
I have learned over the years never to take anything at face value when it comes to the NCAA Tournament and whether or not a team can win or lose a game. Kennesaw State is a 14 seed, which means they are going to get one of the best teams in the country on the other side, but they are a very interesting team to play and can put a lot of pressure on a team's depth with the way they draw fouls.
If the Owls can get to the free-throw line at their normal clip and make enough of them (18-20), that would do two things: put the other team in likely foul trouble and allow Kennesaw State to score points while the clock is stopped. Â
Kennesaw State takes a large volume of threes, and they make them at a 35% rate. The percentage will have to be higher to pull off the upset, but in environments like this one, crazier things have happened. I don’t think the Owls will pull off the upset, and I am not going to pick it, but this game could be one of the closer ones on the 14 line just because of the matchup problems the Owls can pose.