Short-handed Owls rout Tops 81-65
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, January 17, 2026
Kennesaw State’s men’s basketball team walked into E.A. Diddle Arena on Saturday morning as a wounded program.
Missing two starters – one with injury, the other due to an indefinite suspension after Friday’s bombshell news that leading scorer Simeon Cottell was among 20-some people facing federal charges in an alleged points-shaving scandal – the Owls had plenty of reason to show up less than sharp against Western Kentucky.
That didn’t happen. Led by a dominant 31-point effort from guard RJ Johnson, Kennesaw State bullied the Hilltoppers throughout for an 81-65 victory.
The dominant win for the Owls came even without Cottle, Conference USA’s leading scorer this season (20.2 points per game) and the CUSA Preseason Player of the Year, and injured forward Ramone Seals – the duo has accounted for more than 30 points per game this season.
“Hats off to them,” WKU coach Hank Plona said. “Obviously, they came in here, as we expected them to do, playing with a ton of energy, purpose and fire. You can say it to our team or to you guys a million times, but if you take 20 shots out of the lineup, it makes everybody else have a little more pop to them. They played very well.
“There’s not much that we did to slow them down, and they played with some toughness and some energy that certainly outclassed us and obviously resulted in a lopsided finish.”
WKU (11-7 overall, 4-3 CUSA) briefly regrouped after a ragged first half that saw the Tops trailing 43-34 at the break – LJ Hackman’s 3-pointer from the corner with 10 seconds left before half prevented it from being even worse than a nine-point deficit.
The Hilltoppers got rolling to start the second half, putting together an 11-0 run sparked by a pair of 3-pointers by Ryan Myers to grab a 44-43 lead with 16:26 left in the game.
Kennesaw State (12-6, 4-3 CUSA) answered with five straight points — all from Johnson – but the Tops continued to hang around and trailed just 50-48 with 11:22 to go.
Then the offense dried up as the Tops went more than seven minutes without a field goal. The Owls had no such trouble hitting shots, pushing their lead back out to 61-49 before Myers finally answered with a 3-pointer.
Kennesaw’s Frankquon Sherman scored the next five points to give his team a 15-point lead. The Tops found a little life on 3-pointers from Kade Unseld and Cam Haffner – his trey got WKU back within 71-60 with 2:20 to go – but the Owls outscored the Hilltoppers 10-5 the rest of the way to earn the road win.
“I just feel like for today we had like a rough time getting a stretch of stops,” said Myers, who finished with a team-high 16 points. “So, I feel like every time we’d go on a run, they’d score again, they’d get an and-one or we’d foul and it kind of would deflate us. I just feel like we just got to keep picking each other up through it all and just knowing that it’s not going to be perfect. But we still got to go to win. Unfortunately, we didn’t win today.”
Hackman added 13 points off the bench, Grant Newell tallied 11 points and Teagan Moore just missed a double-double with nine points and eight rebounds for the Tops.
WKU was 20-of-68 shooting (29.4%) and 10-of-33 from 3-point range (30.3%). Kennesaw State blocked nine shots and out rebounded WKU 48-41.
“Obviously a very inefficient night,” Plona said. “We’re 10-for-35 from 2-point range. That is not going to get it done. We need to show a lot more toughness, purpose – obviously you need to coach them better to get the ball to better spots, but that is very, very inefficient basketball on the offensive end. And they did a good job when they were on offense and rebounding that ball and giving us problems.”
The Hilltoppers wrap up a three-game homestand Wednesday against CUSA preseason favorite Liberty. The Flames are 15-3 overall and 7-0 in conference play. Game time is 6:30 p.m. ESPN+ will have the live stream.
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