Kennesaw State Basketball - Updates and Humor by Keith Spillett

12/22/2025

The Kennesaw State Report Week 6:  Rampage in Rocket City

Huntsville, Alabama is an odd place.  It’s the rare American city where the military and aerospace industries employ more than half of the population.  It’s also a city where more than half of the registered voters believe the moon landing was faked.  You will regularly encounter people who are simultaneously flat-earthers and also build technology that has sent people in tin cans into outer space. Huntsville plays host to an annual basketball game known as the “Rocket City Classic”, which is a really fancy way of saying an Alabama game against an upper-tier mid-major squad.  

Even the name of the complex where the game was played in Huntsville is hard to fathom. The Von Braun Center was named after the brilliant scientist Wernher Von Braun and is the only American sports complex I can think of named after someone who was an active part of the Nazi Party during World War II.  Von Braun paid his debt to humanity after the war by helping America develop space travel and nuclear missile delivery systems, along with working on a few Disney films.  Like everything else in Huntsville, it’s complicated.  

The game, however, was as uncomplicated as a game can be.  Two of the most potent offenses in the country, both averaging 94 points per contest, played fast and furious basketball for forty minutes.   For a place known for its work with the defense industry, the matchup ironically focused on two teams that are unequivocally not known for defense.  If you are into high-octane, fast break shootouts, Huntsville was the right place to be on Sunday afternoon.  

Kennesaw entered the game reeling from a loss at Middle Tennessee State, struggling to find their scoring rhythm all night on Wednesday. They shot only 15% (3 for 20) from three-point range in that game and got dismal performances from everyone except for “Franquonstein” Sherman, who overwhelmed the Blue Raiders with 11 points and 15 rebounds. Despite owning the boards, Kennesaw fell short, losing by one point after a few questionable late game decisions and a missed buzzer-beater by Braedon Lue.

Alabama was fighting its own demons going into the game after last Saturday’s pummeling at the hands of number one Arizona.  The Wildcats seemed to have their number on defense and held them below 80 points for the first time this season.  The Tide seemed to get themselves right on Wednesday, outscoring South Florida 104-93, but the early season luster from their huge win at Madison Square Garden against St. John’s had faded.

In the game against Kennesaw, Alabama quickly established their dominance, scoring 54 points in the first half on 49% shooting. Aiden Sherrell, not usually a key component on offense, led the Tide with 15 points in the first half and finished with a game high 21 by capitalizing on his raw power around the rim.

Kennesaw struggled through the first 20 minutes, with the ever-reliable Simeon Cottle hitting just 1 of 6 shots in the first frame.  Cottle finished with 20, but most of his damage was done late when the game was out of reach.   RJ Johnson used his massive frame to force mismatches and keep the Owls competitive, finishing with 16 points due to his remarkable physicality at the guard spot.

Kennesaw showed impressive resilience late.  After being down as much as 30, they rallied thanks to some impressive inside play from Lue and Sherman. Team defense improved in the second half for the Owls and they ended up outrebounding the Tide by 5 over the course of the game.  In the end though there was simply too much offensive firepower from guys like Labaron Philon Jr., Aden Holliday and Sherrell, too many turnovers and too much ground to make up for Kennesaw.  Final:  Alabama 92 Kennesaw St. 81.

The second-half comeback provided a glimmer of hope for Kennesaw. Sherman notched his second consecutive double-double, while Lue provided a fierce presence inside once he settled in. The Owls now have time to regroup before facing Conference USA favorites Liberty on January 2nd, a matchup that could preview this year’s conference championship.

12/14/2025

Kennesaw State Report Week 5:  This Column Is Sponsored By the Letter V and Spiro Agnew

“Veni, Vidi, Vici,” vocalized victorious Trey Simpson (26 points) after vituperatively vanquishing victims Southern Wesleyan 121-66.  

Speaking of the letter V….

What three schools since 2013 whose name starts with the letter “V” have won National Championships?

Villanova, Virginia and Vacated

(That last part was for you, Mr. Pitino)

Venceremos,

Vindictive and Vile Versifier of Versus Verses

12/7/2025

The Kennesaw State Report Week 4:  Breeding Lilacs Out of a Dead Land Edition

British novelist JG Ballard once infamously began his 1975 classic tale of societal decay and dysthymia “High Rise” with the words “Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.”  As I drove onto the Kennesaw State campus for the Saturday tilt against Georgia State, I couldn’t help but think about that sentence.  The previous night, Kennesaw State’s football team had finished off an improbable run to a Conference USA championship coming off a woeful 2-10 season the previous year.  

The Friday night win had led to an all-night celebration that spiraled into complete madness.  The type of party that made the last days of the Roman Empire look like a Chuck-E-Cheese birthday party for a nine-year-old. Burnt husks of buildings littered the campus, joyfully smoldering from the acrid scent of molotov cocktails thrown by excited KSU football fans.  Rows of students, exhausted from raging to hours of echoes of Lil Baby’s “Perfect Timing” mixtape collapsed and scattered like leaves across the Green.  The Friday-night-turned-Saturday-morning bacchanal was just coming to an end, but there was basketball to be played.  A confused student wobbled over to me as I was walking purposefully through the detritus of victory towards the arena and asked me, “What’s the game?!?”

A strange question.  Under ordinary circumstances, I would have assumed he was trying to find out when the game was tipping off.  The bizarre state of the campus led me to wonder if he wasn’t questioning the very nature of the game.  Basketball.  What was it?  Why do five people run back-and-forth trying to stand in the way of five other people banging an orange ball into the ground?  What is this strange game that compels me to hang out in gyms on Saturday afternoon and yell excitedly at strangers?  I imagined Dr. Laing chewing on a Pomeranian and staring blankly at the court trying to make sense of it all.  On Saturday, Kennesaw State provided a definitive answer.

Georgia State has been an under-the-radar sleeper since the 1990s, but this team was nowhere near the “Ron Hunter on a Scooter” glory years or even the salad days of Lefty Driesell, and has become the mid-major equivalent of the Ottoman Empire around the start of The Great War.   The crowd wiped the collective sleep from its eyes and howled for blood as the Owls spent the first 12 minutes of the game with the pedal to the floor racing out to a 29-11 lead against a clearly overmatched Panther squad.

After the initial surge, it was hard to stay focused.  I spent the rest of the half trying to figure out what happened to last season's Georgia State crowd favorite Clash Peters.  Where was he?  Had he been abducted?  Was he in the Witness Protection program after turning state's evidence and testifying against a teammate for travelling?  Should I start printing up #FreeClashPeters tee-shirts?  How does a 6 foot 9 kid just evaporate?  I really believe his 3 points per game and inspirationally adequate defense could have made a huge difference early against the Owls as Braeden Lue repeatedly ran Panthers over on the way to the basket on his way to 15 points in 24 minutes.  Lue could have had a hundred if he wanted to, the Panthers weren’t stopping him or freshman reserve Amir Taylor as they jackhammered dunk after dunk down the Panthers gullet. Taylor stepped up putting together his first college double-double, leading the team with 18 points and 12 boards.

Darius Washington III, a freshman with the fluidity and savvy of a wily veteran, kept the team’s Chi flowing by elegantly moving the ball and finding shots within the rhythm of the offense.  He finished with 13 points, 6 boards and 3 assists.  He and fellow freshman Kaden Rickard closed out everything on the perimeter forcing the Panthers into a Starksian nightmare, shooting a putrid 27 percent from the field and 20 percent from 3.  

Kennesaw briefly threw the game on autopilot in the first half as they had done at points earlier in the week in a Hooty Ho-Hum win over Jackson State and Georgia State snuck back to within 10, but that was the closest they ever got as the Owls refocused and ran the lead to 28.   The really impressive part was that they did most of their damage with Simeon Cottle, the team’s catalyst and leading scorer, on the bench with foul trouble.  The depth here is real.

The second half was a blur of hasty foul calls and inelegant possessions as the game wound its way through garbage time to an inevitable 91-69 conclusion.  Kennesaw again showed that, in answer to the question the kid asked to me on the way in, the game is “we score a lot of points and you don’t”.  The win ran their record to 7-2 and showed that this team has a very real shot to hang a Conference USA Championship banner next to the football team’s in March.

11/30/2025

The Kennesaw State Report Week 3:  Showdown in Dunk City

Kennesaw State travelled to Fort Myers, Florida to compete in the most confusing early season tournament in all of college basketball, Coconut Hoops.  Formerly the more coherent and traditional Gulf Coast Showdown, Coconut Hoops the current name of this preseason "thing" where teams play other teams.  It has two divisions, one is known as the Royal Palm Division.  This is a standard four team tournament where you win and go to the finals or lose and go to the consolation game.  There is a second division called the Tarpon Division, where they play a round robin slate of three games and it becomes next to impossible to figure out how and why a team has won or lost the division without a degree in Quantum Mechanics.  The winner of both divisions don’t actually play each other, which begs the question why these are called divisions and not simply separate tournaments.  It was a fun event and basketball is certainly played for three days but I can’t help but wonder if the creator of this event also happened to design the traffic infrastructure for the city of Atlanta.  

The important part was that Kennesaw had three games in three days against three quality opponents.  They opened with a battle against Rice University.  As a sportswriter, I’ve always envied people who cover Rice University.  They don’t win all that much but the headlines seem to write themselves.  Rice Fried?  Rice Boiled?  Heck…Rice Microwaved?  The possibilities are endless.  

This year’s crop of Rice is decent.  They are a physical squad who can bang away in the paint and kick out to three for some good looks.  Rice came out steaming and led in the second half by 11. Kennesaw stormed back and sent the game to overtime in this battle of high scoring Owls.  Kennesaw has some deficiencies on defense, but nobody can accuse them of not being fun to watch.  Even down double digits, they attack the basket so well on offense that it never feels like they are out of a game.  KSU got the usual 25 point fireworks display from Simeon Cottle, but Ramone Seals stepped up and had his best game of the year, also dropping 25.  Cottle nailed a jumper with 6 seconds left to send the game to overtime.  At that point, Rice was pretty much baked and Kennesaw finished the game with an 89-84 overtime win.

Tuesday’s game featured Kennesaw against the only dental college with a Division One basketball team, Oral Roberts.  The game itself was similar to having a root canal for the Owls.  Oral Roberts seemed incapable of missing from anywhere, shooting 56 percent from the field and 62 percent from three as they outscored Kennesaw 91-83.  Braedan Lue kept Kennesaw’s hopes alive, appearing at times to be the second coming of March Madness legend Kenneth Faried.  While he’s yet to become a Manimal, it’s hard to say his contribution is minimal.  He racked up 17 points and 9 rebounds asserting his size and strength to control the paint for long stretches of the game.

Wednesday featured the marquee matchup of the tournament as Kennesaw played against hometown favorite Florida Gulf Coast.  If you happened to be in a coma in March 2013, you missed their legendary Dunk City run in the NCAA tournament where they became the first 15 seed ever to advance to the Sweet 16.  While this year’s version is not as versatile and athletic as that squad, they are certainly high flying enough to be considered a Dunk Suburb located within driving distance of Dunk City.  Both teams love to get out and run and the crowd at the Alico Arena were witness to an exciting, back-and-forth game between two teams who never seem to come close to a shot clock violation.  

Simeon Cottle gave one of the greatest performances in his storied 4 year run with the program, scoring 33 points, including 11 in the frantic extra period of basketball, sealing a wild 102-100 victory.  Kennesaw was quite literally perfect in the extra frame. 4-4 from the field, 2-2 from three point range and 12-12 from the free throw line is about as efficient as a team can be in the final five minutes.  

With this victory, they won the Tarpon Division of Coconut Hoops.  They were 2-1 in the tournament and beat the other 2-1 team in the last game, so that should permit the requisite cutting of the nets.  However, I was left puzzling over who would have won the tournament if Oral Roberts had beaten Rice.  They would have ended up 2-1 in the tournament and would have beaten KSU, but would have lost to Gulf Coast. It was the basketball version of the Paradox of Ouroboros.  Is the snake eating its tail or the tail eating the snake? These are strange times.  The Owls start their home stand on Tuesday against Jackson State, then play their annual interstate grudge match with Georgia State on Friday night.

11/16/2025

Kennesaw State Report Week 2 (Deadbeat Dad Edition)

Huge game this weekend with South Florida, but I was faced with a moral conundrum.  My son Moses is a student at Kennesaw.  He’s named after Moses Malone, but he can’t stand basketball.   This is my court appointed weekend to spend time with him, but this is a critical game and I was not planning on missing it.  Usually I take him to the zoo, but South Florida plays really exciting up tempo basketball and I’ve been looking forward to this matchup for a while. Also, we were temporarily banned from our usual place after an embarrassing episode when I snuck in the flamingo cages and tried to do a comedic impression of William Hurt’s apeman alter-ego in “Altered States”.

Moses is my son from my brief and tempestuous seventh marriage to actress Zsa Zsa Garbor. I remembered it being his birthday this week so I figured this would be a nice way to spend it.  I have 23 kids from 9 marriages, so keeping all the dates in my head is no small feat. I wasn’t sure how to make the game interesting for him, so I bet his entire college tuition for next semester on Kennesaw State.  Told him if they beat the spread, I'd split the winnings with him.  It’s a home game and they were getting 7 ½, so I felt like this was a safe way to make the game more exciting for him with very little downside.  

He was pretty angry when I told him, but I’ve never seen him more excited to watch a game.  Plus, it being his birthday and all, I got him three packs of Black and Milds and a quart of Early Times to really make him feel good.  We were set for a day of hardcore father and son bonding. 

We got there early and I tried to impress him by unsuccessfully poaching free food from the season ticket holder suite.  When we were asked to leave, I screamed back “We are the media!  Are you trying to deny our Constitutional right to beignets?!?!  We need sustenance to freely express ourselves!  Haven't you people heard of the First Amendment!?!?!”  

I used my press badge to get him on the floor and see if they’d let him participate in warmups, but again, my clout as “a member of the working media” wasn’t nearly as helpful as I had hoped.  After a little bit of shouting and some threats from the staff, we settled into press row for an exciting afternoon.

What jumps off about Kennesaw State in person is how rugged and physical they look.  “Frankquonstein” Sherman, Ramon Seals and Braeden Lue completely controlled the glass early, ripping down a flurry of offensive rebounds.  On the not-so-bright side, there were a lot of offensive rebound opportunities because KSU came out Siberian cold, missing every sort of shot you could imagine. I got the impression this was going to be your standard bloodbath of a November game, something more akin to rugby than basketball.  The officials certainly legislated it that way, calling 53 fouls, making me wonder if they were working the game on commission.  But, once South Florida started to get in an offensive rhythm, we buckled in for a fast-paced, high scoring, freewheeling ride of a game.  

South Florida is a fun team on offense.  If they shortened the shot clock to 10 seconds in the offseason, USF wouldn’t have amassed more than a handful of violations.  Brian Hodgson brought the chuck and duck ethic of the Sun Belt conference, a touch of the seven seconds or less Mike D’Antoni mentality, and some outstanding transfers with him from Arkansas State.  In spite of the breakneck pace they play at, USF is extraordinarily efficient offensively and seems capable of putting up 100 any night.  If they make it to The Dance, they could be one of those 8-9 seeds that can single-handedly destroy a bracket.  They have outstanding depth and score at will.

One of those transfers, Joseph Pinion, is perfectly suited for this sort of offense.  His first two threes came on off-balance, well-guarded inbounds plays where he seemed to be falling into the third row.  No matter.  Strings!  In spite of playing 19 minutes because of foul trouble, he finished with a team high 24, going 5-7 from the field, 3-3 from three and 11-12 from the line.  Another Arkansas State transfer Izaiyah “Baby Face” Nelson, regularly made KSU pay for losing him on high pick and rolls, finishing 6 for 10 from the field and 6-6 from the line with 18 points, in spite of the Owls' interior toughness.

As South Florida raced out to a double digit lead at the half, things seemed tense between myself and Moses.  Our fun early banter had taken on a much darker edge.  He said that the USF coach reminded him of “one of those guys who spends his time making waitresses at sports bars uncomfortable.”  This clearly was not aimed at Hodgson, but rather was a passive aggressive reference to an embarrassing episode he experienced with me when he was 8, but I let it slide.  The elephant in the arena was that Kennesaw State was down 46-31 and it looked very much like he was going to have to pick up another part time job to cover the impact of my ill-advised gambling experiment.  

Hope sprang eternal in the second half as Kennesaw State worked their way into an impressive offensive groove.  Simeon Cottle, who finished with 25, and a few other teammates started burying threes and the arena was rocking.  When they cut the lead to five, Moses even started to smile, cheer and stop threatening to leave to “go check on his laundry”.  Freshman Darius Washington showed an impressive ability to calm things down and refocus the team.  RJ Johnson usually brings the ball up the floor, but in spite of his strength and offensive prowess, he has the tendency to force things, which wreaks havoc on their ability to get into any kind of flow.  Hopefully, Washington will see more minutes doing that as the season progresses because his poise and composure are contagious.

Kennesaw seemed on the brink of taking the game over.  The fans seemed one basket away from tearing the roof off of the place.  But, KSU seemed to never be able to make that basket and USF’s relentless scoring eventually overwhelmed the Owls as the game slipped away late, 108-89. The Owls had their moments, they worked tirelessly on the offensive glass, hit some clutch shots and made a series of huge defensive stops in the second half. But, as things started to spiral, I lost focus on the game and became distracted by my son’s looming death glare.  

The Bulls ran away in the last five minutes and things turned ugly.  I tried to be comforting by saying positive things like “I was watching Green Acres the other night and your mom was really great in the episode I saw.”  He rolled his eyes, “That’s my aunt Ava.  And Eddie Albert was more of a father to me than you'll ever be!"

By the end of the game, I went into pure consolation mode. “I know you're angry about the tuition money, but I can make it back no problem.  I’m gonna go to the legbreakers and get an advance.  I got a great tip on the third race at Belmont in a couple weeks.”

He wordlessly stared at the court.  I tried again,”I was just trying to give you a good birthday.  I figured between the game, the smokes and the scotch, you’d be happy.”

He coldly responded, “My birthday is in June.”

Hopefully, KSU’s performance going forward is better than my parenting.  They will try to get back on track next weekend in the three day Coconut Hoops Holiday Basketball Extravaganza in Fort Myers with three games in three days starting with a tilt on Friday against Rice.  That battle will go a long way in determining which team will get the coveted title of “Best Team in America with an Owl Mascot”.

11/9/2025

Kennesaw State Basketball Season Preview and Week One Report

Antoine Pettway and the crew at Kennesaw State had an impressive first week to start the 2025-26 campaign.  Pettway enters his third season at the helm of a program that seems finally and mercifully headed in the right direction.  Long ago, Kennesaw State was a Division II powerhouse winning a National Championship in 2003. It looked like only a matter of time before this fast-growing Atlanta area school was going to be a midmajor force to be reckoned with.  Instead, the school spent the better part of two decades after their jump to D1 as the perennial doormat in the Atlantic Sun Conference.  

A long string of talented coaches watched their souls ripped from their bodies by teams that rarely managed double digit wins.  When Amir Abdul-Rahim took over, the school celebrated his arrival by putting together one of the most listless seasons in the history of the sport, a 1-28 monstrosity in which they went winless in the A-Sun and staved off historical ineptitude by snagging one win against Gardner-Webb.  Inexplicably, Abdur-Rahim managed one of the most impressive turnarounds in the history of the sport, building the team into a 26-win juggernaut that came out of absolutely nowhere to win the conference in 2023, nearly knocking off an outstanding Xavier team in the first round of the NCAA tournament.  The late coach Abdur-Rahim moved on to pull off another rebuilding miracle at South Florida before his tragic passing at the age of 44.  

The talent level and expectations of the program jumped substantially as they moved into Conference USA two years ago.  Enter Coach Antoine Pettway, a talented Alabama assistant who was tasked with sustaining the incredible momentum of a program that had made the college basketball world stand up and take notice.

In his third year, the Owls seem at a crossroads.  They struggled through a 15-win season in his first year but began to show genuine improvement, winning 19 games and finishing 4th in Conference USA last year.  This is very much a make or break year for the program.  With a strong core of talent and some impressive newcomers on board, they were picked to finish 2nd in the conference by sportswriters and coaches.

The key piece of the roster is returning guard Simeon Cottle, a thinking fan’s point guard who sees the floor beautifully and does an outstanding job of keeping everyone involved offensively.  Cottle is a fourth year senior who has spent his tenure at KSU giving the team a little bit of everything.  He’s a fantastic passer, a consistent scorer and a rock solid defender.  Cottle is the consensus pick as pre-season Conference USA Player of the Year going into this season.  Also returning is Breadon Lue, an explosive 6-9 forward who showed flashes of elite talent as a scorer and rebounder as a freshman last year.  Several high impact transfers and one of the top freshman classes in school history round out a roster that has the potential to overwhelm the rest of the conference and return to the NCAA tournament.  

They opened the season by making Division III opponent Paine College live up to their name by holding them to 30 points and running away with a 75-point victory.  Their first real challenge came on Saturday afternoon on the road against a modestly talented Florida A&M squad.  While FAMU is hardly a threat to win a National Championship this year, they have an intriguing roster that features the children of many football players you watched 20 years ago at Florida State.  This Nepo-team is led by forward Anquon Boldin Jr., son of the former star wide receiver, and enough kids with the name Junior as a suffix to make you think they were intentionally trying to create an homage to the 1990s comedy featuring Danny Devito and a pregnant Arnold Schwarzenegger. They are even coached by former FSU Heisman Trophy winner and Knick point guard Charlie Ward.  Had he not shuffled off the old mortal coil, it would not have been astonishing to pick up the program and find former Florida State running back Burt “The Bandit” Reynolds on the coaching staff.

Winning on the road early in the season is never an easy task, even when faced with a less talented opponent.  Also, playing in a gym with a green and orange color scheme more appropriate for a dystopian Stanley Kubrick film than a basketball game presents its own set of problems. But, the Owls rolled into Tallahassee determined to take FAMU out of the game early and keep them that way.  

They jumped on the Rattlers early and often, carving them up with laser-like passes from Cottle to RJ Johnson, who finished with a game high 16 points and Ramone “Clubbing Baby” Seals who finished with a strong 12 point, 7 rebound performance. Frankquon “Frankquonstein” Sherman started the game off with an elegant layup and a breathtaking dunk to set the tone and KSU never looked back, taking a 14-point halftime lead and turning it into a 20-point victory.  

The Owls have a tune up against Point University scheduled for Wednesday, before their first major test of the season.  A Sunday home court battle against a South Florida team coming off a 23-11 season and is expected to challenge Memphis for dominance in the American Conference.  A win against USF would go a long way in proving that this year’s Kennesaw State squad is back and here to stay.