Loaded Vikings aim for another conference championship
It’s still a bit difficult to process the events that took place on and following November 25, 2023, when Cleveland State superstar Destiny Leo suffered a season-ending ACL tear during what looked like a harmless change of direction on the way to the basket.
In that moment, undoubtedly, more than a couple people wrote off the Vikings’ chances. It was a completely reasonable position, even without believing that Leo had an outsized influence on her team’s fortunes, since the injury left CSU with zero returning starters from their 2022-23 Horizon League tournament championship team.
Instead, the team was barely affected. Though head coach Chris Kielsmeier was never entirely satisfied with the (lack of) continuity on his roster, the post-injury starting guard tandem of Colbi Maples and Mickayla Perdue ended up starting alongside each other on the all-conference first team as well. Players like Sara Guerreiro and Jordana Reisma took noticeable developmental steps, and the cumulative result was a 29-6 overall record and the first Horizon League regular season title in program history.
“We had to learn a lot about ourselves, sometimes hourly,” Kielsmeier said. “You shape your identity and kind of set things one way, and overnight they change. But that just really shows a testament of our culture, and what our players come to Cleveland State women’s basketball and expect to do. We can overcome anything and everything.”
The present feels like the opposite of that fateful afternoon last fall. Other than graduated defensive stalwart Carmen Villalobos, everyone who played at least 15 minutes per game last season is back – including Leo – while transfer additions Mya Moore and Macey Fegan have star potential.
The only significant turnover Kielsmeier needed to manage was on his coaching staff, with Melissa Jackson taking the head coaching job at rival Youngstown State and Frozena Jerro departing for the Wisconsin staff. However, their replacements were rising talent Emily Taylor and Bob Dunn, who returns for his second tour at CSU, so that transition should be seamless.
“It’s amazing, just the energy in the gym,” Maples said. “We’re loud, we’re having fun, everyone’s smiling, jumping around, just enjoying everyone’s company.”
Lineup
Colbi Maples – The reigning Horizon League Player of the Year has a tough act to follow, after the energetic ballhandler, finisher and defender arrived from Grambling last summer and became the centerpiece of a history-making campaign. There’s little that the 5-8 Arkansas native doesn’t do extremely well on a basketball court, but she’s perhaps best known for her fearless drives to the basket from the point guard position, and her ability to take heavy contact on the way to her 16.6 points per game.
“When I was little, I played with boys a lot, so I kind of grew up with everyone kind of bumping me around anyways, because the boys were always a little more athletic than me,” Maples explained. “So I just had to learn how to maneuver my body a little bit to sometimes shoot over them, do layups over them, they kind of built me for that.”
“When I see a lane, my eyes kind of light up a little bit. I just kind of get a little bit excited. But I think with the help of my coaches, they allow me to look for those types of angles and be able to maneuver my body certain ways to get those types of finishes.”
Destiny Leo – All available indications are that Leo, the 2022-23 Horizon League Player of the Year, is recovered and ready to go after the injury that wiped out most of her senior season.
“She’s in a good spot, she’s doing well, and she’s progressing,” Kielsmeier said.
Beyond that, there’s little that needs to be said about someone who was the conference’s consensus best player prior to the injury, as she resumes her assault on the Vikings’ record books (Leo will begin the season with 1,557 career points, within striking distance of Kailey Klein’s program-high 2,140). She’s one of the best shooters in the nation, and she has the basketball IQ and athleticism to play almost anywhere. That latter point might become relevant as Kielsmeier looks for creative ways to get his three superstars on the floor, though it’s worth mentioning that Leo and Maples were dynamic together during the opening stages of last season, when they were the starting backcourt.
Mickayla Perdue – Perhaps no player was as individually responsible for Cleveland State continuing at a high level after Leo’s injury than Perdue. She immediately took over the vacated spot in the lineup and did no less than secure the Horizon League’s Newcomer of the Year award along with placement on the HL’s all-conference first team, thanks to 17.3 points per game (second in the league) and great perimeter defense. Perdue was most visible behind the three-point arc, as she buried at least five deep balls in a game seven times last year, highlighted by a 7-for-8 effort (most of a career-high-equaling 30 points) in a crucial win over Green Bay on February 3rd. She’s far more than a three-point specialist though; Perdue has internalized the Vikings’ systems like few others and plays them with their necessary intensity.
Jordana Reisma – Cleveland State asks a lot of its post players, and they don’t typically draw a ton of attention, particularly relative to the backcourt, but Reisma grew into the starting role well as a sophomore. With 9.8 points, 6.0 rebounds and 1.0 blocks in 24.6 minutes per game, the Brown Deer, WI product does a little bit of everything well, though her defensive length and ability to finish around the rim are the two truly elite pieces of her game.
Sara Guerreiro – Few would guess that the most accurate three-point shooting season by a Viking in recent years by a player who tried at least one deep ball per game doesn’t belong to Leo, Perdue, Khayla Livingston or Cori Coleman, but to Guerreiro, who buried exactly half of her attempts last season. She wasn’t called on nearly as often as those others, but it’s nevertheless yet another tool available to CSU’s Swiss Army knife, who has always been an outstanding defender and rebounder and became an every-game starter last season. For a team that has no shortage of big scorers, Guerreiro offers an essential steadiness to the lineup.
Mya Moore – Kielsmeier is extremely high on Moore, a Seattle University transfer who should immediately draw significant minutes in the Vikings’ frontcourt – possibly in a rotation with Reisma, a former AAU teammate of hers with the Wisconsin Lady Shooters. She led the Redhawks in scoring (12.7), rebounds (7.6), blocks (1.4), steals (1.6) and field goal percentage (.477) last year, and is tremendously strong, which should offer a nice style contrast with CSU’s other, more finesse-oriented posts.
Macey Fegan – Another portal addition, Fegan spent her freshman season at Toledo (something she coincidentally has in common with Perdue), but didn’t play a ton and elected to move on. The Rockets’ loss is the Vikings’ gain though, as Fegan was one of Michigan’s top five players and a finalist for the state’s Ms. Basketball award when she graduated from Standish-Sterling High School two years ago. Though she’s unlikely to play a headlining role this season, Fegan has the potential to be a centerpiece player.
Filippa Goula – Beyond Maples and Leo (if Kielsmeier ends up using her that way), Cleveland State doesn’t really have anyone else to run the point, so Goula could be in line for an expanded role, after the one-time Saint Francis transfer didn’t play a ton in 2023-24. With the Red Flash, the occasional Greek national teamer showed herself as a good facilitator with 2.8 assists per game two years ago, and she also connected on 89.8 percent of her free throws that year.
Paulina Hernandez – Seeing how Hernandez, former star recruit from Oak Creek High School in suburban Milwaukee, fits into the Vikings’ post rotation might be one of Cleveland State’s most interesting lineup questions right now. It was easy to assume that she would end up in a standard time share with Reisma following the departures of Brooklynn Fort-Davis and Faith Burch, but Moore’s arrival clouds things quite a bit. Still, Hernandez offers length only matched by Reisma on the roster, stretches the floor a bit better than the other posts, and showed well in limited minutes last year.
Grace Ellis – After transferring from Wyoming during the summer of 2023, Ellis saw a pretty sharp dip in her playing time and production from what she had established with the Cowgirls. However, at her best, the Australian is a true three-level wing who is extremely dangerous from the corners, and the Vikings hope that another year in the system will help her get back to that point.
Kali Howard – Howard is a quality depth piece who is a bit undersized for the frontcourt at 5-11, but nevertheless offers the versatility to play a couple different positions as needed. She’s a tenacious rebounder and has a track record of producing above and beyond the minutes she receives.
Jannah Eissa – A portal addition with a compelling backstory, the Cairo (Egypt, not Illinois) native spent last season at NC State, where she helped the Wolfpack to the Final Four. The three-time youth national champion (two of those titles coming in 3×3 ball) likely projects as a three-point specialist.
Brenae Jones-Grant and Sarah Hurley – Cleveland State has typically filled most of its openings through the transfer portal in recent years, so it’s tough to say at this point what sort of role either of the Vikings’ two true freshmen will hold during the coming season. In 2023-24, Hernandez (CSU’s only rookie) played 137 total minutes, while Burch redshirted in 2021-22. In between those two years, Reisma played significantly during her freshman season – in fact, she was on the Horizon League’s all-freshman team – though post players were more of a need at the time than wings are now.
Jones-Grant, in particular, is an intriguing prospect who brings a lot of athleticism and versatility to the squad. She’s an elite interior defender who won conference championships with two different New Jersey high schools, Bound Brook and Immaculate Conception. Hurley is a more conventional wing who shoots the ball well and captained Hamilton, Ontario’s Lincoln Prep squad as a senior.
“Everybody has really come into a new school, a new environment, and really showed what they can do, and everybody has different traits on and off the court,” Perdue said of her collection of new teammates. “Everybody’s showed something, whether it’s rebounding, defense, off-the-court things, everybody brings something positive to the team and everybody brings a new attribute, a new trait, to the team.”
Outlook
Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin likes to say that “the standard is the standard,” and for better or worse, in year seven of Kielsmeier’s tenure, Cleveland State’s standard includes consistent championship contention. The Vikings are the only team in the Horizon League to qualify for the conference semifinals in Indianapolis at the end of each of the last five seasons, and the last two years have produced a pair of titles (one regular season, one tournament) and a trip to the NCAA Tournament.
In 2024-25, those sorts of expectations have somehow reached a new pitch, now that the CSU roster includes two players that have been named the conference’s best and another who easily could have won that award last season had it not gone to her teammate, while returning nearly everyone else who could fairly be considered a difference maker and adding a couple of high-impact transfers.
It’s essentially championship or bust for the Vikings, though Kielsmeier understands that with fellow contenders Green Bay and Purdue Fort Wayne likely carrying that same outlook, nothing is guaranteed.
“It’s a mindset, it’s a culture,” he said. “You can talk about the fact that we’ve been [to Indianapolis] five straight years, or you can realize that that’s completely irrelevant to anything that this team is doing this year.”
“We chase excellence and try to be the best at what we can do. We walk on that floor, we want to get better, they have that mindset with it. We certainly have a lot of talent coming back, but nothing on paper wins games. Any hype that there is around this team doesn’t give us an advantage. We’ve gotta go out and prove ourselves, and we try to do that each day we come to practice.”
