Commentary by Mike Foster (Sports Editor)
When head football coach Brian Bohannon took the job last spring he quickly developed the talking point that KSU is the “best kept secret in the south.” Bohannon also made it clear that the location of the campus would be key considering the talent that comes from Cobb and neighboring counties.
That pitch seemed to work. Even though KSU will not play until 2015, Bohannon and his staff were able to reel in 29 players in their first-ever recruiting class—26 being from the state of Georgia, including the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s player of the year in Jaquez Parks.
KSU has made short tradition of getting good at things fast, and Bohannon definitely kept that tradition alive by exceeding expectations on his first signing day.
The positivity even continues into the other programs here at KSU. Track and field just won its third-straight Atlantic Sun Conference title and earned a top-25 national ranking. Baseball, which has a roster chalk full of local kids year in and year out, played in the A-Sun title game two years in a row and beat Georgia and Georgia Tech in the last two weeks alone. Softball, soccer and the golf teams have been championship contenders since KSU went Division I in 2005.
When examining the men’s basketball program, it’s hard to make an excuse for why it’s lagged behind the curve.
On Saturday, the Owls fell to North Florida by 10, ending their season at 6-25 and just 3-15 in the A-Sun. KSU had two wins against teams outside of the NCAA, and two of its three conference wins were by two and four points, respectively.
Interim coach Jimmy Lallathin seemed to have lit somewhat of a fire under his team’s feet when he took over on Jan. 4—just two days after Lewis Preston, who has a 9-67 record with the program and just two conference wins in 38 tries, took a leave of absence for undisclosed “personal and medical” reasons. On Jan. 28 the department issued a press release saying that it was “in the best interest of Kennesaw State men’s basketball” that Preston returned.
On Jan. 1, KSU fell 86-66 to Jacksonville. Two days before it fell 85-60 to North Florida. It sure seemed that Preston had caved, but director of athletics Vaughn Williams assured the Marietta Daily Journal on Jan. 5 that he had full confidence that Preston was the right man for the job, even though the MDJ reported numerous sources said Preston had lost control of the team.
Personally, I’ve admired coach Preston in the awkward press conferences—which were more than one too many. I also had a lot of respect for the job Lallathin did. In fact, I was prepared to write a feature on Lallathin’s apparent into-the-fire situation on Feb. 5 when he denied The Sentinel an interview, and all interviews outside of pressers for the near future, after disagreeing with my last commentary on the program’s struggles.
I want to make it clear that, despite this, my respect for Preston and Lallathin for their jobs is ripe. I am no basketball coach, nor do I get up in the mornings to practice or have to deal with locker room situations after countless tough losses, and for that I admire the athletes as well.
But I’m also a die-hard fan, and after three years of unbiasedly having to find different ways to say “Owls lose,” I figured I’d take my last commentary of basketball season as The Sentinel sports editor to offer my humble opinions.
Considering the pitch that Bohannon had at his disposal, as well as the successes of the athletic department here, as a whole, I’m confused with the stagnation of a basketball program that is just a decade removed from an NCAA national championship.
Preston struggled with depth in his first two seasons at the helm, but certainly a roster bolstered by talent like Willy Kouassi, Nate Rucker, Bernard Morena and Orlando Coleman could have pulled the team close to a .500 record. With seven transfers on this year’s team, depth was no longer an out.
You also have to wonder about recruiting. Yonel Brown, Jordan Jones and one commit are the only Georgia-grown athletes slated to play with the team next year. Preston and Lallathin’s recruiting scope has stayed in the midwest and Ohio valley. But why?
KSU is seated in Cobb Co., which offers a huge supplement considering it has 20 high schools. North Cobb Christian and Whitefield Academy played on Feb. 26 for a chance to play in the Convocation Center for the GHSA A final four, and powerhouse Wheeler and Pebblebrook squared off Saturday night in the class AAAAAA semifinals.
Despite the county being a hotbed, the program is extending its roots to Illinois, Ohio and Indiana?
Just this past weekend, Jacksonville and North Florida came into the Convocation Center and beat KSU, and both teams had Cobb Co. players on roster in Vincent Martin (Harrison HS) for the Dolphins and Travis Wallace (Campbell HS) for the Ospreys, who dominated the Owls for a 20-point double-double.
You also have to continue to worry about attendance. No prospective recruit is going to come into the Convocation Center when only 700 fans are present and think, “Yeah, that’s an environment I want to play in.” As a 25,000 student school, we can do better than just showing up for the Mercer game—and I’ve written many columns about that in the past. Florida Gulf Coast was here on Jan. 25, on a Saturday, and the gym wasn’t even half full.
I’ve often sat in the student section by myself on games where I wasn’t reporting and yelled until I was hoarse with each Willy Kouassi block, Nate Rucker steal, Orlando Coleman alley-oop and classic basket-while-falling from Delbert Love. I’ve appreciated every single performance they’ve given and sat through each of them for the last three seasons.
But I know this program can do better.
If KSU really is the best kept secret in the south, the problem might be that the more we show, the more detrimental it becomes to recruiting. Yes, the facilities, resources and budding atmosphere is great, but right now showing off the men’s basketball program is quite like trying to swim out of quicksand.
A refresh of the basketball brand at KSU could start with a local name with local interest—someone who can build a footing in the metro-Atlanta area.
We’re not Kent State University. We’re Kennesaw State University, and it seems the rest of the athletic teams at this campus have embraced and benefited from that brand.
I certainly hope, as someone who loves KSU hoops, that Preston and/or Lallathin can prove me in the near future to be an uninformed, disconnected hack, but there’s no arguing that being a committed fan of KSU basketball in the past few years has been more than miserable.
