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MURRAY, Ky. – The Kennesaw State men's basketball team could not seem to find its groove Monday night, falling to Murray State 74-38 at the CFSB Center.
 
How it Happened: Murray State (6-4) raced out of the gates with back-to-back three-pointers for an 8-0 lead two minutes into the game. MSU extended its lead as KSU (1-9) could not seem to get anything to fall with C.J. Washington netting the Owls' only bucket in the first 11 minutes of the half.
 
Tyler Hooker finally broke the drought for KSU, netting his first bucket of the night at the 6:57 mark to make it 35-10. Hooker scored 10 points down the stretch as KSU held the Racers scoreless for the final four minutes before a last second layup by MSU.
 
Murray State shot 50 percent in the first half, going 7-of-14 from three-point range to lead KSU 45-20 at halftime.
 
Hooker kept it going with a bucket right out of the locker room, but Murray State responded with a 6-0 run to quell the Owls' momentum. KSU then fell into another cold snap as a jumper from Ugo Obineke with 16:08 to go marked the Owls' only other bucket until the 8:35 mark.
 
Obineke attempted to get KSU back in it with two straight three-pointers as the sophomore netted nine points in the second half alone, but the Racers managed to answer with back-to-back jumpers to extend their lead to 70-35. MSU outscored the Owls 29-18 in a defensive second half to earn the final score of 74-38.
 
Notes: Ugo Obineke led the team with 13 points, his second straight game in double-figures … Tyler Hooker netted 12 points before being forced to miss most of the second half … Pietro Agostini ran the boards with a career-high eight rebounds … the Owls shot 24.4 percent from the floor, marking only the second time this year they have shot below 30.0 percent.
 
Quotes: Head Coach Amir Abdur-Rahim
On the come down after the GWU win…
"More than anything it's humbling. It's a teaching game more than anything. I thought last week leading up to the Gardner-Webb game we had maybe our best 3-4 days of practice that we've had all year. And anytime you're turning around and playing two games in basically four days you're trying to help your kids understand that there is going to be a certain level of purpose, a certain level of competitiveness that's going to come with it because no one is going to feel sorry for you. Especially after you beat a 28-win Gardner-Webb team that went to the tournament last year, now you have people's attention. So the thing that we talked about is how are we going to handle success and the truth of the matter is, I'm trying to be as transparent as possible, on our prep, we didn't prepare mentally the way that I felt we had been and it showed up tonight. To be honest, that's on me. I have to find different ways to trigger some more competitiveness out of them. We'll go back to the drawing board and see how we can get prepared for a good Belmont team."
 
On the loss…
"That's a heck of a program, and I think it's a program that anyone in the country would want to emulate from a standpoint of how hard they play and the purpose that they play with. On our side of it, the thing I want to take away is that when we trust our offense we get what we want, and we didn't do that early on. We just kind of jogged around, we didn't cut very hard, we didn't make passes and that's part of being competitive as well is just doing the little things the right way. We'll take the good from it, but we didn't compete at the level that we are expecting to compete at and it showed. We've got to get back to the drawing board and get better."
 
Up Next: It's a quick turnaround for the Owls as they head to Nashville to take on their second OVC team in three days, squaring off against Belmont Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. ET.