Owls Flying High: A Promotion / Relegation Dynasty

[PointGuard]

That's gotta be one of the biggest turnaround seasons ever! And a few fantastic individual performances as well.

[jksander]

That's gotta be one of the biggest turnaround seasons ever! And a few fantastic individual performances as well.

Thanks, PG, I appreciate it! I am really looking forward to next season -- we're losing a lot of great players, but Ragin's a legitimate star at this point now that he's recovered from his jitters, and I've been really happy with Chris Earl. The question will be whether Ragin will be ready to lead more as a junior and really take things over. We'll also still have Kareem Roach back as a senior captain, while Damon Christie and Nick Granberry have shown solid progress as well off the bench.

- - - - -

March 4, 2022
Conference “V” Championship
(6) Houston Baptist (19-11) @ Kennesaw State (15-14)

Houston Baptist quickly got out to a 1-6 lead on us before we settled our nerves and fought to get back in this. With 12:30 to go in the half we trailed 15-18, but Houston Baptist took control down the stretch and led 22-32 with 6:25 to play. We rallied and by halftime were within a pair of possessions but needed to find our defensive touch if we wanted to survive this. Halftime: Houston Baptist 44, Kennesaw State 38.

Larue Ragin was fouled on a jumper that went in, putting us ahead 51-49 thanks to the free-throw afterwards, with 16:20 left on the clock. But we couldn't hold it. Houston Baptist ran back out to a 64-74 lead with just 4:05 to go in the game, and we lost this one 68-77. Houston Baptist will join us and Longwood in Conference “U” where I suspect we've seen the start of a significant rivalry.

Player of the Game: Shane Ross (29 pts 7 reb 1 ast 4 stl 1 blk)
Honorable Mention: Chris Snyder (13 pts 6 reb 4 ast 1 stl)

Our RPI is not particularly good, and we're exactly at .500 so I don't expect us to get a bid to any of the lesser tournaments. Houston Baptist has an auto-bid to the NCAA tournament, and now Longwood has to wait a week and see if they can find a way to an automatic bid. Chicago State and Massachusetts-Lowell also stand good shots at making a 3rd or 4th tier tournament. So we'll see what happens.

[jksander]

[jksander]

March 12, 2022
Houston Baptist got the 15th seed in the Oklahoma City regional against 2nd seeded Purdue. Longwood made the NIT against Northern Colorado, while Chicago State made the CBI against San Jose State and Massachusetts-Lowell got into the CIT against Duquesne.

March 13, 2022
NIT: (2) Longwood 76, (7) Colorado 66
CBI: (2) Chicago State 85, (7) San Jose 78

March 14, 2022
CIT: (3) Duquesne 76, (6) Massachusetts-Lowell 50

March 15, 2022
NIT: (6) Texas A&M 89, (2) Longwood 78
CBI: (3) Southern Utah 71, Chicago State 77

March 17, 2022
NCAA: (15) Houston Baptist 66, (2) Purdue 84

March 20, 2022
CBI: (4) Milwaukee 74, Chicago State 81

March 28, 2022
CBI: (2) Chicago State 70, (8) Tulane 81

Tournament Champions
NCAA: (1) Maryland 87, (6) North Carolina 68
NIT: (1) College of Charleston 80, (6) NC State 100
CIT: (3) Duquesne 83, (1) Grambling 77
CBI: (8) Tulane 89, (2) North Carolina A&T 57

Team Leaders
Scoring: Shane Ross (15.0 ppg) Chris Snyder (14.4 ppg) Larue Ragin (13.7 ppg)
Rebounds: Larue Ragin (6.5 rpg) Kareem Roach (6.4 rpg) Shane Ross (5.8 rpg)
Assists: Brandon Manley (6.6 apg) Chris Snyder (2.4 apg) Chris Earl (2.0 apg)
Steals: Shane Ross (1.5 spg) Kareem Roach (1.1 spg) Chris Snyder (1.1 spg)
Blocks: Shane Ross (1.5 bpg) Chris Snyder (1.1 bpg) Kareem Roach (1.1 bpg)

Graduating
C – Shane Ross (2.9 GPA) 11.3 ppg 4.5 rpg 1.0 apg 1.0 spg 1.1 bpg (57 games, 29 starts)
SG – Chris Snyder (2.6 GPA) 12.5 ppg 4.1 rpg 2.4 apg 1.0 spg 1.0 bpg (57 starts)
PG – Brandon Manley (2.6 GPA) 7.7 ppg 2.9 rpg 5.5 apg 0.7 spg 0.6 bpg (57 starts)
PF – Griffin Casper (2.9 GPA) 4.2 ppg 3.4 rpg 0.9 apg 0.5 spg 0.4 bpg (54 games, 14 starts)
SG – Michael Tyler (2.8 GPA) 3.1 ppg 1.6 rpg 1.2 apg 0.4 spg 0.4 bpg (57 games)

Awards
Conference “V” Defender of the Year: Larue Ragin
1st Team, All Conference “V”: Chris Snyder
2nd Team, All Conference “V”: Shane Ross
2nd Team, All Conference “V”: Larue Ragin

[jksander]

[jksander]

April 9, 2022
I have been offered a five year, $84,000 / year contract extension here at Kennesaw State, and I have no desire to leave the school so I gladly accepted. My top assistant, Awvee Brenner, wants to see if he gets a job offer before signing an extension, so we're probably going to lose him after this season. But I've signed my second and third assistants to four year extensions, so James Daye will remain our practice coach for $36,750 a year over the next five years, while Ben Hix will remain our top scout for six years at $17,304 per year. I like consistency among my coaches so that we can build an atmosphere of consistency with our incoming players. What they'll see from our staff during recruiting will be the same thing they see when they get here and start working.

Oh, and we got our final recruit! Not a bad year, with two players in WSSN's top 1,000. No one looks quite as solid as Chris Earl did last year, but we were going for players to fit into a system, and I think these five are better by far than they look in the WSSN evaluations. So far I've had a pretty good eye for things when you get down to it, so I'm going to bet on my, and my staff's, evaluations considering how far we are off the national radar.

[jksander]

[jksander]

April 23, 2022
Our budget is fine, in my opinion, for the level we're at reaching for recruits beyond our state's borders. So I spoke to the board and requested a boost to our overall facilities spending. They denied the request, but I got the impression that if we can move up another conference or two we'll have a good shot of getting that request granted in the future.

[jksander]

June 26, 2022
Last year we spent a lot of effort on some “interested” players in neighboring states and wound up with no non-Georgia signings. So I'm starting this year focused simply on Georgia players for now, those with GPAs of 2.6 or higher so we can hopefully avoid a repeat of last year's SAT non-qualifier. We have three scholarships to fill, and I'm willing to keep adding other recruits from out of state if we wind up needing to look for signees in the spring. Beyond that I feel we should use our resources where they are most likely to bear fruit.

August 7, 2022
Larue Ragin and Damion Christie have been named Norton Candidates! They are currently listed 31st and 40th overall out of 50, so I don't think they're considered “legitimate” candidates, but damned if that doesn't put our tiny little program on the map!

[Wayne23]

Wow! Norton candidates at such a small school. I'm impressed.