Kennesaw State punches first ticket to NCAA Tournament three years removed from one-win season

Kennesaw State punched a ticket to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history on Sunday, outlasting Liberty 67-66 to win the Atlantic Sun Tournament. The finale was a thriller capped off by a critical free throw from Owls guard Terrell Burden with 0.7 seconds left to push his team over the top.

Burden appeared to intentionally miss his second of two foul shots after making the first to prompt a scramble drill and pressure Liberty into a quick heave. The attempt worked; the ball fumbled around before a Liberty player fired from full court well after time expired.

Fittingly, Burden scored a team-high 19 points on 7 of 10 shooting in the win — nearly half of which came in the final 10 minutes — after a sluggish start. 

The road to success has been a long one for Kennesaw State, which went 1-28 in coach Amir Abdur-Rahim’s first season at the helm in 2019-20. The rebuild culminated in a big way with the program’s first NCAA Tournament berth since joining the Division I ranks in 2010. The Owls won just five games in 2020-21, but a 13-18 season last year helped propel them to the A-Sun’s best regular-season record and the league’s automatic bid to this year’s Big Dance.