How FAU made Kenyon Giles disappear and exposed Wichita State’s offense
Kenyon Giles has carried Wichita State’s offense all season, which made Thursday’s box score feel almost impossible to believe.
The 5-foot-10 dynamo had been arguably the American Conference’s most difficult guard to contain through the first two weeks of league play, but Giles was held to a season-low two points on a season-low five attempts in an 85-67 loss to Florida Atlantic at Baldwin Arena.
He attempted only one shot after halftime and finished with by far his lowest usage rate of the season in a game that never allowed him to find rhythm, comfort or control.
That was not by accident, either.
How FAU took Kenyon Giles out of the game
The primary credit goes to FAU junior Kanaan Carlyle, who was exceptional in turning Giles into a non-factor.
Off the ball, Carlyly consistently “top locked” Giles — positioning himself above screens to deny Giles the ability to curl or receive the ball where he wanted. On several possessions, Giles tried to dart away or loop back toward the ball, only to find Carlylye sitting squarely in the passing lane. Many times, that alone was enough to deny Giles a touch entirely.
When Giles did catch the ball on the wing, Carlyle made sure nothing came easy, forcing him to work just to initiate offense. And when Giles handled the ball in pick-and-roll situations, FAU adjusted its coverage by sending the big man high, effectively turning the action into a soft double-team designed to force the ball out of Giles’ hands.
“We changed our ball screen covers specifically for him,” FAU coach John Jakus said. “Then there’s some ways we guarded him off the ball. And then I just want to say Kanaan Carlyle, to give us 18 and legs that chased him around first half, was really special.”
Too often, Giles became a bystander, parked in the corner while WSU repeatedly tried to attack the rim without much success. Whether that was by design or a lack of off-ball movement, the result was the same: Giles was neutralized, not even functioning as a threat away from the ball.
How the Shockers tried to counter with Giles
The Shockers’ most effective method of getting Giles involved came by initiating offense through 7-foot-2 center Will Berg at the top of the floor, then sending Giles straight up the middle to receive a handoff. That action produced almost all of Giles’ shot attempts, but he missed all three of his jumpers from it.
Even on those possessions, FAU was prepared. Help defenders lunged aggressively at Giles as soon as he put the ball on the floor, trying to prevent him from reaching his preferred mid-range spots. The Owls showed no fear leaving other WSU players unattended on the perimeter to send a second body at Giles.
One sequence illustrated the strategy perfectly. Giles had the ball on the wing, as point guard Dre Kindell stood well beyond the arc at the top. FAU’s help defender completely abandoned Kindell to clog Giles’ driving lane. When Giles had no choice to swing the ball, Kindell tried to attack the close-out and floated up a hurried miss around the rim — another entry in WSU’s growing ledger of struggles finishing close to the basket.
WSU tried to counter by using Giles as a screener. With Carlyle glued to him, Giles attempted to create confusion by setting perimeter screens, including one that sprung Dillon Battie for a layup in the first half. But most of the time, Giles never made contact, acting more as a decoy than a true obstacle.
“There were opportunities there where we utilized him as a screener,” WSU coach Paul Mills said. “We just have to have guys be able to convert. There’s a little bit of look-in-the-mirror on both sides, but some of that we need to make sure that we’re finishing those opportunities.”
That’s why clearing out the floor for Giles, as WSU did against North Texas when he exploded for a career-high 33 points, likely came with far less appeal against FAU. Where the Mean Green largely left Giles on an island and trusted its on-ball defender to survive, FAU consistently loaded the ball side once Giles put the ball on the deck and sinking wing defenders into driving gaps. That approach shrank the floor and eliminated the clean isolation reads Giles enjoyed last weekend.
The cat-and-mouse game was a simple one: deny Giles first, then trust WSU could not punish the help.
The strategy may have discouraged WSU from leaning fully into isolation, but the absence of a counter only reinforced how FAU controlled where and how Giles could operate. Finding a better response now becomes essential.
The ripple effect of Giles’ absence on WSU’s offense
Usage rate, a statistic that estimates the percentage of a team’s possessions that end with a specific player shooting, drawing a foul or committing a turnover, is designed to measure offense involvement, not just scoring. Giles entered Thursday hovering around a 25% usage rate, reflective of his role as WSU’s primary offensive initiator.
Against FAU, that figure cratered to 8.3%, a season low by a wide margin.
He also entered the night attempting 8.3 3s per game on average. Against FAU, he attempted just one — a miss.
With Giles neutralized, the Shockers leaned heavily into attacking the rim through drives and pushdowns. Once again, the volume was there, but the efficiency was not.
WSU shot 21-for-48 on 2-point attempts with the 27 misses marking a season high from inside the arc. For the fourth time this year, WSU took more than half of its shots at the rim and finished fewer than half of them, going 17-for-35 within 4.5 feet of the basket.
For the season, WSU ranks in the 97th percentile nationally in generating shots at the rim, according to CBB Analytics, but sits in the fourth percentile in finishing them.
By taking Giles out of the game, FAU stripped Wichita State of its three-dimensional offensive threat. Without having to worry about Giles’ pull-up game or his 3s, the Shockers quickly became one-dimensional — a dangerous place to be against an FAU defense built on length, size and elite shot-blocking that turned repeated forays to the rim into empty possessions.
What Wichita State can learn from the FAU loss
The solution lies on both sides of the equation.
When asked if Giles could work harder to be more involved or if WSU needed to do a better job of getting him involved, Mills acknowledged that both have to improve going forward.
“It’s a little of both,” Mills said. “Good players can get the ball, so he’s probably going to have to be more assertive. And then at the same time, we need to be better from a schematic standpoint in order to help him.”
That likely means more intentional design to put the ball in Giles’ hands early, even if it draws aggressive help, and a clearer plan for punishing defenses that sell out to stop him.
Mills has warned all season that opponents will increasingly devote resources to taking Giles away. Boise State did it. Colorado State used a box-and-one in the Bahamas. But after Giles had piled up 99 points in his first four league games, FAU was the first team in the American to fully execute a plan that worked against him.
“We just have to be able to use his gravity on the court,” teammate Mike Gray Jr. said. “We know they’re trying to deny him, so using him as a screener and letting guys attack off of that or on a pushdown.”
There is little time to dwell.
WSU is onto the second leg of its Florida road trip in Tampa, where the Shockers (10-8, 2-3 American) will face South Florida (11-6, 3-1 American) on Sunday in a 1 p.m. game at the Yuengling Center, televised on ESPNU. The Bulls are not as defensively elite as FAU, but they excel at limiting 3-point attempts and defending inside the arc.
It should be another stiff test against one of the conference’s best teams on the road, one that will demand better answers from WSU.
This story was originally published January 17, 2026 at 10:33 AM.
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