Leo selected Player of the Year for second straight season
Despite an ACL tear that prevented Cleveland State superstar Destiny Leo from defending her 2022-23 Horizon League Player of the Year award last season, the HoriZone Roundtable staff has picked her as its 2024-25 HL Preseason Player of the Year, projecting a return to form for the graduate student.
Expected championship frontrunners Cleveland State and Green Bay were, appropriately, heavily represented in the polling, with the Vikings’ four players – including three on the first team – leading the way. Of course, all three CSU first-teamers have previously been picked to the HL’s postseason all-conference first team, so there’s plenty of support for the unusual poll results. The Phoenix were headlined by Natalie McNeal (the only individual to receive a Player of the Year vote outside of Leo) on the top quintet, and GB teammates Maddy Schreiber and Bailey Butler made the second team.
Though most of the 15 selections were very familiar names to those who follow the Horizon League, the third team includes several players who haven’t received conference recognition before, like underrated Northern Kentucky wing Macey Blevins, senior Purdue Fort Wayne post Jazzlyn Linbo, and Wright State transfer addition Lexi Bugajski.
First Team
| Player | Pos. | School |
| Destiny Leo* | G | Cleveland State |
| Natalie McNeal | G | Green Bay |
| Amellia Bromenschenkel | G | Purdue Fort Wayne |
| Colbi Maples | G | Cleveland State |
| Mickayla Perdue | G | Cleveland State |
When Chris Kielsmeier talks about Destiny Leo’s recovery from last November’s injury, he tends to choose his words carefully, saying that the 2022-23 Horizon League Player of the Year is “progressing well,” or something equally cautious, as a way of tempering expectations. Then Leo will invariably follow that up by posting an Instagram video where she hits eight consecutive threes. So, as far as anyone outside of the Wolstein Center can tell, it seems that she’s ready to re-take her place among the nation’s best mid-major players. Before the injury, Leo was off to the best start of her career, including 20.7 points per game on a field goal percentage north of 50, as well as a spotless 40-for-40 from the free throw line.
Green Bay found an absolute gem when they were able to pull Natalie McNeal back to her home state from Saint Louis in 2022. The player nicknamed “Middie McNeal” exploited the often-neglected middle of the floor to a team-best 13.4 points per game last year – though she saved her best for big games and against Cleveland State, including a 32-point outburst in the Horizon League championship game against the Vikings that was a significant reason why she won the tournament’s MVP award.
Purdue Fort Wayne now has what Maria Marchesano considers her most talented roster yet as she enters year four with the Mastodons, which might suggest that Amellia Bromenschenkel will see her stats take a little bit of a hit in 2024-25. But regardless of whether she repeats last season’s 13.7 points and 6.4 rebounds per game, Bromo remains one of the veteran leaders of an ascendant program and one of those players who can do just about anything needed to win on a basketball court.
It’s not terribly uncommon to have two eventual HL Players of the Year on a team at the same time, Wright State boasted both Kim Demmings and Tay’Ler Mingo less than a decade ago, but it is incredibly rare to roster a pair of players who have already won the award. However, that’s exactly what Cleveland State has in Leo and Colbi Maples, who enjoyed a spectacular 2023-24 that included placement among the conference top ten in points, assists and steals. She and Leo worked well together prior to the injury, and there’s no reason to expect that it won’t continue this year.
Maples’ backcourt partner for most of last season was Mickayla Perdue, who took the opportunity presented by Leo’s injury and did much more than run with it, firing home 17.3 points per game while creating havoc at the top of Cleveland State’s 2-3 zone defense and stretching the floor with the deep ball. She went a staggering 7-for-8 from three-point range in the Vikings’ biggest win of last season, on February 3rd against Green Bay, and hit her former Toledo team for a career-high 31 points in the opening round of the WBIT.
Second Team
| Player | Pos. | School |
| Katie Davidson | G/F | IU Indianapolis |
| Maddy Schreiber | G/F | Green Bay |
| Bailey Butler | G | Green Bay |
| Kamy Peppler | G | Milwaukee |
| Kacee Baumhower | G | Milwaukee |
Undoubtedly, one of the Horizon League’s best stories last season was Katie Davidson, who played at Miami (OH) from 2020-22, but then took a year off to address her mental health. She returned to basketball last year with the school now known as IU Indianapolis, and immediately became one of the HL’s best pure scorers, beginning with 32 points in the Jaguars’ season opener against Eastern Illinois. Her blend of elite off-ball movement and shooting ability makes her incredibly hard to contain.
There might not be a player in the HL – and there are very few anywhere in the country – as efficient as Maddy Schreiber. Her 12.0 points per game last year came on a 55.1 percent field goal percentage and a 61.9 percent effective field goal percentage, barely-believable numbers for someone who doesn’t live two feet from the basket. The fourth-year player has always executed the Phoenix offense to perfection, and when that doesn’t work, Schreiber is also a very good offensive rebounder.
Bailey Butler probably doesn’t get enough credit for her role in keeping the Green Bay machine running. She’s a picture-perfect definition of a classic point guard – her 5.5 assists per game not only led the Horizon League, but were 29th in the entire country, and she’s an elite defender who made the HL’s all-defensive team last season (to that latter point, Butler’s 2.2 steals per game were also among the top 100 nationally). Though she isn’t counted on for a ton of scoring, her 7.9 points per game are plenty, given everything else that she offers.
Last season, Kamy Peppler graduated from one of the best young point guards in the conference to simply one of the best players. Her 4.7 assists per game were second only to Butler in the circuit, and she’s the Panthers’ leading returning scorer as well with 11.3 points per game, thanks largely to an underrated three-point shot on a team that had and has several options. Peppler is also a solid defender who will be counted on to help lead Milwaukee up the standings as an upperclassman.
Undoubtedly, more than a few of Peppler’s assists in the coming season will end up in the hands of Kacee Baumhower, who was one of the Horizon League’s most significant transfers of the offseason after joining the Panthers from Wright State. Last year, the Toledo-area native was one of the conference’s most prolific three-point shooters and a driver of the Raiders’ run to Indianapolis. At 5-9, Baumhower also has the size to operate through the middle of the floor, which should make her a great fit as a wing in Milwaukee’s offense.
Third Team
| Player | Pos. | School |
| Jordana Reisma | F | Cleveland State |
| Lexi Bugajski | F | Wright State |
| Macey Blevins | G | Northern Kentucky |
| Lauren Scott | G | Wright State |
| Jazzlyn Linbo | F | Purdue Fort Wayne |
Playing as essentially a center (though she’s listed as a forward) in Cleveland State’s system isn’t for everyone, but Jordana Reisma manages to run the floor extremely well, and finishes enough runouts and putbacks to throw nearly ten points per game on the scoreboard. She also happens to be 6-3 with length seemingly a couple inches beyond that, which helps her status as one of the conference’s best rim protectors. Reisma is also CSU’s leading returning rebounder with 6.0 boards per game.
Wright State’s biggest portal strike over the summer was Lexi Bugajski, who didn’t get much of an opportunity at Appalachian State last year, but prior to that, the power forward with the versatility to also play on the wing was one of the top-rated prospects in basketball-mad Wisconsin. She was a two-time all-state selection and was the fifth-leading rebounder in the history of her high school, powerhouse New Berlin Eisenhower, and held offers from the likes of Northern Iowa, Cleveland State and Northern Illinois the first time around.
Given Northern Kentucky’s disappointing season (and the tumult that followed), along with the attention given to HL Freshman of the Year Carter McCray, it’s easy to overlook what, in many ways, was a breakout performance from Macey Blevins. The Western Kentucky transfer emerged as an explosive three-level scorer who logged a pair of 30-point performances, along with an impressive 24 points at Illinois last December. She distributes the ball too; her 2.6 assists per game in 2023-24 are second among returning Norse players.
Lauren Scott became an every-game starter for Wright State down the stretch last season, and with the likes of Baumhower, Alexis Hutchison, Rachel Loobie and Layne Ferrell now gone, the time seems right for one of the core members of Kari Hoffman’s first full recruiting class to become one of the Raiders’ frontline players. Scott is an excellent three-point shooter, as she hit 35.9 percent of her attempts last season, but she’s also an incredibly disciplined player who takes care of the ball and doesn’t foul a ton.
Much like with Reisma, Jazzlyn Linbo plays for a team with an outstanding veteran backcourt and probably gets overlooked as one of the Horizon League’s best frontcourt players. Her signature game last season was a 20-point, 12-rebound effort at Cleveland State in January, though Linbo’s true calling card is how effectively she distributes the ball out of the high post to the Mastodons’ bevy of talented scorers. If Purdue Fort Wayne makes a title run this year, her ability to neutralize many of the conference’s talented bigs will probably have a lot to do with it.
