In KSU’s first home game since point-shaving charges, the remarkable happens

Kennesaw State basketball coach Antoine Pettway — he’s had a year.

This past summer, guard Davin Cosby Jr. was in a car wreck that caused a broken neck and fractured vertebra that required emergency surgery and left in doubt whether he would walk again.

A week before the season began, another team member, Jamil Miller, unexpectedly returned home to Washington state because of mental health challenges.

In the first week of January, another player, Ramone Seals, broke a bone in his face and now is out. The personal impact aside, Pettway was counting on Cosby and Miller to be double-digit scorers, and Seals actually is one.

It was only then that Pettway, the Owls’ third-year coach, was thrown the most wicked curveball. On Jan. 15, star and Conference USA leading scorer Simeon Cottle and former Owl Demond Robinson were indicted on federal charges as part of an FBI investigation that swept up 26 individuals involved in an alleged point-shaving ring in college basketball and a Chinese professional league.

“I would be lying if I told you it wasn’t hard,” Pettway said, “but it makes you stronger.”

So you’ll understand why, on Wednesday night at KSU’s VyStar Arena, Pettway wasn’t panic-stricken after the Owls fell behind by 10 points to Western Kentucky with 6:30 to play. During a break, Pettway said he looked at his players and asked them two questions.

“I asked them, ‘Can you fight?’ and ‘Do you believe?’” Pettway said. “And the answer was a resounding yes. And that’s what we proceeded to do.”

There’s no telling what the larger significance will be, but something special happened here. An Owls team with a shortened roster and a lot of reason to pack it in showed its grit in a come-from-behind 72-69 win over the Hilltoppers, a result that improved its record to 13-8 overall and 5-5 in Conference USA.

A team that absorbed a most uncommon jolt is trying to keep moving forward.

“It’s been tough — you’re losing a brother,” said guard RJ Johnson, the game’s leading scorer with 19 points. “But we just all lean on each other in these moments. We just keep working, keep grinding. We can’t really control outside noise and stuff, so we just lean on each other and keep fighting.”

Pettway is a former Alabama point guard who was hired at KSU in 2023 after coach Amir Abdur-Rahim left for South Florida following the Owls’ stunning run to the NCAA Tournament.

A year ago, he was guiding the team through the season in the wake of Abdur-Rahim’s unexpected death in October 2024 from complications from a medical procedure.

And then a little more than a year later, he found himself with a different sort of unforeseen gut punch, losing a beloved team member in the middle of the season to an FBI-led investigation. Pettway declined to comment on specifics of the situation but called it heartbreaking.

“That’s a family member,” he said. “We love him.”

Pettway said he met with the team immediately after learning of the charges against Cottle, who was suspended indefinitely by the school, and spoke to his players about taking on the adversity together.

“It’s all good when it’s sunny outside and 95 degrees and everything’s going good, but I need you to have each other’s back when it’s gloomy, when everybody outside the program’s coming for you, questioning what you’ve got in the locker room,” Pettway said.

Two days after the indictment, the Owls beat Western Kentucky on the road. They lost the next two, also on the road, to Sam Houston and Louisiana Tech. Wednesday night was the first home game since the indictment.

It felt like a normal small-conference basketball game. Before an announced crowd of 1,636, the Owls took the court as the pep band played the school fight song. KSU won the tip and scored on its first possession on a tip-in.

Pettway orchestrated action and worked the referees, pacing back and forth along the bench.

Behind one basket, three students in banana costumes urged the Owls to play defense and tried to distract Hilltoppers free-throw shooters.

Somewhere, gamblers monitored their wagers on KSU as 4½-point underdogs, fueling an industry that rode partially on the backs of the young men chasing their dreams on the court.

And, in the game’s final quarter, the Owls showed they’d been listening to their coach’s charge to stick together.

KSU erased the aforementioned 10-point deficit with a 14-2 run in which five players scored. It was an apt sequence for a team that has drawn closer and has had to reinvent itself on the floor after losing Cottle, who was tossing in 20.2 points per game to lead Conference USA at the time of the indictment.

Down 70-69 and holding for the last shot, Western Kentucky broke down the Owls defense and freed Grant Newell to go screaming at the basket for the potential game-winner.

At the last moment, forward Trey Simpson left his man to leap high and deflect Newell’s dunk attempt — a most vivid picture of having his teammates’ back.

Kennesaw State recovered the loose ball, and forward Frankquon Sherman made two free throws after being fouled for the final 3-point margin.