By: by Scott Lipsky
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LARAMIE, Wyo. – The Kennesaw State Owls wrap up their nearly six-weeks on the road on Tuesday when they take on the Wyoming Cowboys at the Arena-Auditorium at 7:00 p.m. MST.
Aside from playing their seventh consecutive game away from the KSU Convocation Center, the Owls (2-9) will also be playing their final game of the season against a non-conference opponent, as every contest for the remainder of the regular season will be against Atlantic Sun Conference competition.
Despite having dropped their ninth straight game with an 80-63 decision at Fordham, the Owls had several promising numbers to support the notion that they are on their way back to the winner’s circle. In the contest on Dec. 22, the Black and Gold set a season-high with 19 assists, and had a season-low eight turnovers. In addition, they had seven three-point baskets on Wednesday evening, their third straight game in which they made seven or more from downtown after making just 12 in the three games prior to that.
"Our big men have started to assert themselves in the post more, and that's opened up some more shots from the outside," Owls head coach Tony Ingle said. "What i'm mostly concerned with right now is finding not necessarily a consistent starting lineup, but a rotation of eight guys that I can have out there on the court. Some of our younger players have really stepped up lately, and that's been big for us, and it's created more opportunities for them to earn playing time."
Additionally, the re-emergence of Markeith Cummings has been a bright spot for Ingle’s squad as of late. The 6-foot-7 sophomore guard, who led the Owls in scoring on his way to earning All A-Sun Second Team honors last season, has scored 23 and 22 points in his last two games, respectively, after a disappointing six point performance at Belmont on Dec. 16 that snapped a streak of 17 straight games of double digit scoring dating back to last season.
"I'm really starting to get back to where I need to be physically, and that's been a big help," Cummings said of his recent surge. "It has also really helped that we're playing well as a team, which has given me more opportunities to contribute offensively."
In Wyoming (6-7), the Owls find a squad that saw a three-game winning streak snapped on Dec. 22 with a 68-62 home defeat against Wisconsin Green-Bay. Unlike the Owls, who played two games of their conference slate in December, the Cowboys have yet to begin their Mountain West Conference schedule, a league in which they were picked in the preseason to finish eighth by the media. The club, coached by fourth-year boss Heath Schroyer, returns all five starters from last season’s campaign, which saw them finish 10-21 with a 3-13 conference mark.
The Cowboys thus far this season have been anchored by a pair of veterans; sophomore guard Desmar Jackson, their youngest starter, who is averaging 15.0 points per game so far this season to rank seventh in the Mountain West, and senior forward Djibril Thiam, who is currently sixth in the conference with 5.8 rebounds per game and fifth with 1.5 blocks per game.
As a team, the Cowboys rank first in the MWC in free throw shooting percentage, having made 71.3 percent of their shots from the charity stripe, which makes it imperative for the Black and Gold to continue their trend of fouling at a relatively low rate, being whistled for an average of just 16.8 per contest thus far this season.
While this is the first time that these two teams have squared off, both coaches have ties to their opponents linking back to their basketball pasts. While Ingle was an assistant coach at Brigham Young from 1989 to 1997, he faced off against the Cowboys 16 times, compiling a 10-6 record with the Cougars in his meetings with the only four-year institution in the state of Wyoming. Schroyer, for his part, played his college basketball at Savannah’s Armstrong Atlantic, where he was the captain of the 1995 team that took down Kennesaw State in the quarterfinals of the Peach Belt Conference Tournament during the Owls first year of NCAA Division II competition.
Tuesday night’s game will wrap-up a stretch in the schedule of seven straight games on their opponent’s home floors, the most consecutive game of such a nature in the program’s history. When they return home to face USC Upstate on Jan. 3, it will be the first time since Nov. 22 that they will play at home, a 41-day gap in time that is also the longest in program history. In the interim, they will have traveled approximately 7.873 miles.
Fans can hear all of the action on Tuesday night on Talk 920 AM with the voice of the Owls, Craig Corbin, providing the play-by-play and Owls great Scott Webb providing the color analysis. The game will also be streamed on www.talk920.com, and live stats will be available as well, via www.wyomingathletics.com.
