The Kent State men’s basketball team heads to Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada to participate in the Western Slam this Thursday-Saturday. The Flashes will spend Thanksgiving together while participating in what shapes up to be a telling week of basketball with great, mid-major competition.
Towson, UC Irvine and Kennessaw State come in at a combined 14-3 on the season with Ken Pom ratings of 62, 135 and 160 respectively. Kennesaw State upset Rutgers on Sunday.
The Flashes come in playing good basketball as well, fresh off two victories last week with wins over Niagara and Cleveland State. With a MAC best Ken Pom rating of 130, the Flashes look to build off the momentum from last week.
Kent State Head Coach Rob Senderoff was very pleased with his team’s response to the one-day turnaround between games.
“With a one day in between to get ready for Cleveland State, who’s a really tough, hard-nosed team, I was incredibly, incredibly proud of how we responded,” Senderoff said. “Our defensive mindset against Cleveland State was off the charts. We held them to 30% field goal percentage. Outside of turning the ball over a little bit too much, we played a great, great game. Defensively we were fantastic. Guys like Anthony Morales came off the bench, Marquis Barnett both had really big impacts in the game. I thought Cli’Ron Hornbeak had his best game of the season, a double double and in the second half in particular he was fantastic.”
Kent State continues to get contributions up and down the lineup. That depth and balance will be put to the test this week with three games in three days, in what should help simulate the MAC tournament.
“We head into this trip 4-1,” Senderoff said. “I thought we played our best game of the year against Cleveland State to date, which was good. We’re getting a lot of contributions from a lot of guys and I’m excited to see what we have in store this week coming up.”
“The three games we play are against three teams that are all NCAA tournament type teams. Towson picked to win their league, Irvine picked to win their league and Kennesaw State who’s had a great start to their season. It should be a really good test for us and I’m excited and looking forward to seeing us play out there and seeing how we develop and grow as a group over this next week.”
Kent State opens with Towson Thursday, in a game that should tip around 10pm eastern time. The Flashes take on UC Irvine Friday evening around 10pm and will play Kennesaw State Saturday at 7:30pm.
ESPN+ is projected to stream all games at the event.
FLEMING TALKS WESTERN SLAM: KSU assistant Jon Fleming was a guest on the radio network postgame show following the win Saturday at CSU and talked about the upcoming stretch of games.
“Towson’s similar to us in the sense that they’ll play eight or nine, physical,” Fleming said. “A lot of guys that can contribute offensively. Their point guard Williamson (Dylan) is really talented off ball screens and scoring off ball screens and everything like that. They’re physical, got some big wings like us. I think generally speaking, two teams that are trying to play similarly matching up so it should be a good one. UC Irvine, I watched them for the first time last night against Weber State. They were really talented so it’s gonna be quite the MTE. We gotta bring our A game and be ready to compete.”
As mentioned, with the depth that KSU has displayed, it should help them in a three game in three day stretch that tries and simulates postseason play in March in downtown Cleveland.
“I mean theoretically it helps in any game,” Fleming said of the team’s deep bench. “But especially when you got to run three straight nights, getting some guys that can help and maybe keeping some guys fresh early. We do this, Coach does this I just say because it emulates the MAC tournament, three games in three days. So, it gives us a look of how we want to approach things, and the guys a look of how we’ll approach things down in March which as we all know, most important three days of everyone’s year in the entire program so it’s great. I love these MTE’s, excited to be playing in one with some big competition so it will be a good challenge.”