After surrendering an often-far-too-easy 104 points to Ohio State in his team’s season opener on Tuesday, Cleveland State head coach Chris Kielsmeier knew the situation with his defense was even more urgent than it appeared.
Large-scale fixes, of course, are best done in the offseason. Once the lights are on, it’s extremely difficult to correct anything of great substance, given that the roster is set, the tape is out there, and there are usually at least two games every week. The hay, as they say in Kielsmeier’s rural Iowa hometown, is in the barn.
“That’s what makes it tough,” he said. “It’s on-the-job training. You’ve gotta figure things out before you get beat again.”
So when the Vikings limited Chicago State to 29 percent shooting from the floor in a dominating 111-67 victory on Saturday evening in the Windy City to improve to 1-1 on the season, it should probably be considered at least a partial success.
A partial success.
Certainly, nobody is going to confuse the long-downtrodden Cougars with Ohio State, a squad with Big Ten championship and Final Four aspirations. Still, Chicago State managed to apply enough stress to keep Kielsmeier restless.
“Obviously, Ohio State’s a great basketball team, but we weren’t, and still aren’t, doing enough things consistently really well where I want us to be at this point,” he said. “Today was a huge step forward for it, but we’ve gotta get better defensively and with rebounding, that got exposed heavy tonight.”
Kielsmeier continued: “There’s too much space, there’s too many windows, too many shooting lanes, there’s too much penetration that’s going on, there’s not enough deflections, there’s not enough shots in transition because of the turnovers that were forced. For us to force 12 turnovers is not nearly good enough.”
Oh, that’s all?
Though the Vikings didn’t do much to set up their typical “defend, rebound, run” posture for most of the game, there were still bright spots, including Paulina Hernandez, Sarah Hurley, Macey Fegan, Kali Howard, Brenae Jones-Grant, Mya Moore and Filippa Goula, who played most of the Vikings’ fourth quarter minutes. That crew was ostensibly on the floor to mop up a blowout win, though Kielsmeier felt that they played Cleveland State’s best team defense of the contest.
“I thought some of our best defense of the game was in the fourth quarter, with some of those young kids,” he said. “It’s a great sign for them, but it’s also a great step for the coaching staff to see that. I’m really excited about how we closed that game.”
Jordana Reisma also played well defensively. The junior post player blocked three shots (which moved into a tie for ninth place in school history with 81 career blocks) and grabbed five rebounds to complement her 14 points. That forced Chicago State to largely abandon the middle of the floor as the game went on, contributing to the Cougars’ low shot accuracy.
Reisma, along with position partners Moore and Hernandez, were also productive on the offensive end.
“Our 5s really needed to get going,” Kielsmeier said. “We had not played through the paint, through them, at all in any game we’ve played so far, including the scrimmages and exhibitions, and that’s not us. It got going tonight.”
However, the Vikings were led offensively by Mickayla Perdue, who connected on a trio of three-pointers in the opening stages of the contest to give her team a 9-2 lead that would not be threatened the rest of the way. The quick start helped the Springfield, OH native equal a career high with 31 points on 11-for-19 shooting, including an eventual five total triples – while also frustrating the south side fans, one of whom yelled “When are you guys going to get mad enough to not let her have the ball?” at the Cougars after Perdue stole the ball near center court late in the second quarter and cruised in for an uncontested layup.
“The game’s a whole lot easier when you hit shots,” Kielsmeier said. “Micky’s in a comfort zone right now, she’s making plays.”
Destiny Leo and Sara Guerreiro enjoyed strong outings too, as each posted a double-double. Leo finished with 16 points and 11 rebounds, while Guerreiro had 14 points and 13 rebounds.
Cleveland State’s 111 points on Saturday represented the 16th triple-digit game in school history, and the Vikings’ highest scoring total since amassing 113 points against Salem back in 2018, early during Kielsmeier’s first season in charge of the program.
“You love a lot of things that we did really well, hopefully they get a lot of confidence out of it, which I think is so important this time of year,” Kielsmeier said.
“But we’ve gotta get better, still.”
