Last weekend, Cleveland State received a transfer portal commitment from former Toledo guard Macey Fegan, a native of Bentley, MI. Fegan just completed her freshman season at UT, and has three years of eligibility remaining.
The newest Viking doesn’t have much of a collegiate track record to scrutinize, as the 5-11 rookie played just 32 minutes across 12 games during Toledo’s 2023-24 MAC regular season championship campaign (and not at all in the Rockets’ WBIT first-round victory over Cleveland State, for whatever that’s worth). But given that her coach at UT was Tricia Cullop, a good friend of CSU boss Chris Kielsmeier, there was undoubtedly plenty of additional information shared.
That reality is reminiscent of Mickayla Perdue, another former Toledo guard who participated sparingly at her initial school before finding stardom elsewhere. Though she missed playing with Fegan by a couple years, Perdue has remained close with her former teammates, leaving the door open for a healthy second-degree connection.
For the rest of the world, there’s Fegan’s resume from Standish-Sterling Central High School, which offers plenty to be excited about.
She was a Michigan Miss Basketball finalist in 2022-23 and Prep Girls Hoops’ fifth-ranked player in the state among the 2023 graduating class. That latter accolade produced numerous, repeated big statements like “Fegan is a huge star from a small school. She deserves any press that she gets, and probably even more than that.”
That’s pretty bold. There’s plenty more.
“The Toledo commit has all the tools to be extremely successful at the next level. Fegan has excellent positional size and strength, giving her the ability to match up at the next level as soon as she arrives on campus. She does an excellent job of reading matchups, posting smaller defenders and taking bigger wings on the perimeter. Fegan has underrated ball skills and should be able to handle the rock as needed at Toledo.”
In other words, any comparisons between Fegan and Perdue should be strictly limited to circumstances, as they are decidedly different players.
In fact, Fegan rarely shoots three-pointers, preferring to crash and bang down low. That tactic has worked fairly well for her, to say the least. She averaged 28.0 points and 14.7 rebounds per game as a senior (including one contest where she went off for 51 tallies), and finished her high school career as the 12th leading scorer in Michigan history with 2,276 career points. Fegan also holds Standish-Sterling’s rebounding record with a total of 1,065.
Appropriately enough, she earned the accolades to match all of that, including four all-conference selections, three all-state nods and, on the team level, four district championships.
It would be easy to write Fegan off as one of those small-school phenoms who put up huge numbers against weak competition, but such a conclusion would be hard to square with the fact that she received a scholarship offer from the University of Michigan after her freshman year, when she was second team all-state. She ultimately committed to Toledo in August of 2021 – prior to her junior season – which probably kept her offer list from being as extensive as it otherwise would have been.
Fegan is a tremendous all-around athlete, as she also lettered in volleyball, swimming and softball in high school. The latter sport provided one of Fegan’s signature moments so far, a walk-off double that clinched the 2023 state title.
On top of that, she’s also an outstanding student. Fegan posted a 4.0 grade point average in high school and in her limited time at Toledo, helping the Rockets to a program-record 3.845 team average last fall.
“We use her as an advertising tool like crazy,” Fegan’s high school coach, Denny Wendel, told MLive last year after she was selected to the first all-state team. “She should be getting paid for as much as we use her as an example. When we talk to little kids, we talk about Macey and everything she does. And you hope the next group of kids follows her lead.”
Maybe she really does deserve any press that she gets.
