By: Kenneth Harrison

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

The Kennesaw State Owls men’s basketball team punched their ticket to the NCAA Tournament.

They won the Conference USA championship on Saturday, March 14^th. KSU (21-13) was the No. 6 seed and they beat No. 4 Louisiana Tech (20-14), 71-60 to claim their first-ever Conference USA title.

The Owls beat No. 3 Western Kentucky and No. 2 Sam Houston to advance to the championship game. They were 10-10 in conference play during the regular season, so this was very surprising.

KSU played their best defensive game of the season against LA Tech, holding them to under 27% from the floor.

The Bulldogs were held to 22-of-72 (26.3%) for the night from the field, and 9-of-37 in the second half for 24.3%. KSU’s defense was even better on the outside, as the Bulldogs made just 2-of-28 (7.1%) from three-point range.

Senior guard Jaden Harris finished with a game-high 18 points on 5-of-9 shooting, including 4-of-6 from three-point range, double the number of made threes that LA Tech had as an entire team.

Freshman forward Amir Taylor had 17 points, 6 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 steals and 1 block. Sophomore guard RJ Johnson scored 13 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals. Johnson was named the Tournament MVP after his third-straight double-figure scoring game in the tournament

“We played a tough, gritty competitive team in LA Tech. Talvin Hester is one of the best coaches in this league. He does a tremendous job, and we talked before the tournament and said, hey, we hope we meet each other in the championship, and we knew if we met each other, it was going to be a battle, and today was it. I thought we guarded these dudes really well. Defense and rebounding is what carries you in March. We were able to hold their two guards, [DJ] Dudley and [AJ] Bates, to, I think, 0-15 from three. And we knew that was going to be a tremendous challenge, because they are really, really dynamic players, and they go as they go. Our guys stood up to the challenge, and we were able to win the game. A great, great victory for our university, for our community, for our students. And how about our fans? I mean, we painted this place black and gold, man. Kennesaw showed up in a major way,” KSU head coach Antoine Pettway said after the game.

“Truly blessed and truly thankful I get to live out a dream and coach young men like these two sitting up here every single day. We going to keep going, man. We got practice at home on Monday, and we’re getting ready to go play in the NCAA tournament. God is so good. God is so good. This is what we prayed for, this is what we dreamed about.”

This was Kennesaw State’s second-ever trip to March Madness in the school’s Division I era, and first since the 2023-24 season.

They were selected as the No. 14 seed in the West Region. They played the No. 3 Gonzaga Bulldogs (30-3) at the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon, about 350 miles away from Gonzaga’s campus in Spokane, Washington. This is Gonzaga’s 27th consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance and 28th overall.

Kennesaw State built an early lead on the Bulldogs but Gonzaga ended the first half on a 10-0 run to head into the locker room with a six point advantage.

Gonzaga would build a double digit lead in the second half and stage off a late comeback attempt by the Owls to eliminate KSU in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, 73-64.