Kennesaw State did just what it wanted to Friday night in its season opener against Georgia Southwestern: It forgot about Monday’s home game with Georgia Tech for 40 minutes.
The Owls beat up Division-II foe Georgia Southwestern 82-60 in its “tune-up” for their game with the Yellow Jackets. Markeith Cummings lit up the scoreboard, with 17 of his 24 points in the first half. Perhaps more encouraging was the play of Aaron Anderson, a junior college transfer who scored 19 points on a 9-for-12 shooting night -- and provided the perfect compliment to Cummings.
“He has a lot of heart and competes well against bigger guys,” KSU coach Tony Ingle said of Anderson. “He’s around the basket, goes up for rebounds like my uncle goes after pork chops, with both hands.”
With Tech on the horizon, it would have been easy for the Owls to overlook the Hurricanes.
Ingle had said earlier in the week that the two games every team should always get up for were season openers and championship games -- and the latter might be a bit lofty of a goal for a team that is picked in the middle of the Atlantic Sun pack.
“Tech is the biggest non-conference game we’ve had here ever, in our history,” Ingle said. “I know for me it’s been hard to focus on other things because people are calling me asking about Tech tickets, and wanting to talk about Tech. But I told the players, every time someone says Georgia Tech, you think Georgia Southwestern.”
That mandate has been put to bed now.
“Now, it’s Tech,” Cummings said. “Now we can start thinking Tech.”
KSU is counting on returning starter and leading scorer Cummings, and guard Spencer Dixon to anchor a team that has seven new players.
Anderson, a 6-7 transfer from Central Arizona, provided a little muscle for a team that lacks an established big man. But he plays, and runs the court, more like a small forward, capable of slashing and playing on the perimeter as well as finishing fast breaks. That additional weapon down the road should bolster the Owls as the season progresses.
“I don’t really see myself as a finisher of the breaks,” said Anderson, who indeed did finish several breaks with alley-oop dunks. “My main job is to stay underneath and fight for the ball, but being a little smaller than a lot of the bigs I guard, I can beat them down the court sometimes.”
Georgia Southwestern scored the game’s first seven points, but once KSU kicked its up-tempo offense into gear, the Owls went on a 28-9 run. Meanwhile, Georgia Southwestern went six minutes without scoring, and without playing much transition defense, and the Owls led 40-28 at the half.
“We came out flat, which wasn’t really how we’d practiced,” Ingle said. “But our defense got our offense going, and we built momentum.”
KSU built and maintained a lead of 20 or more points through most of the second half, running the floor at will.
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