In 1995, Michael Jordan famously issued a two-word press release declaring “I’m back,” after the Chicago Bulls legend spent two years in basketball retirement, chasing an ill-conceived and ill-fated baseball career. Following that announcement, the Bulls ran off three straight NBA titles.
Cleveland State’s 60-42 victory over Louisiana in the Big Easy Classic on Friday decidedly didn’t offer the same dramatic flair as Jordan’s comeback, though the Vikings certainly hope that the abrupt return of the team’s defense from its early-season slumber has the same championship effect.
“The halfcourt defense was somewhat what you’re used to, and how we win games,” CSU head coach Chris Kielsmeier said after his squad improved to 4-2 overall in Westwego, LA. “That has taken a significant stride over the last two weeks, which it needed to.”
“It was a dominant win by us, because of our defense.”
Kielsmeier might be understating things a bit.
The Vikings held Louisiana to a paltry 14-for-63 (22 percent) from the floor and forced 17 Ragin’ Cajuns turnovers, seven of those on steals. Part of the result of those numbers was a level of defensive perfection almost never seen in basketball: Cleveland State didn’t surrender any points over the first 5:41 of the game, then assembled a subsequent run of 8:18 of shutout ball across the third and fourth quarters. The latter surge was more impactful on the final score, as it allowed CSU to increase its lead from 32-24 to an insurmountable 49-24.
Those outcomes were a far cry from a mere 13 days beforehand, when Akron did just about whatever it wanted offensively in an upset victory over the Vikings.
“Our fans, and people who are close to the program know that we have the ability to do that in spurts, and we hadn’t been doing that,” Kielsmeier said. “We really couldn’t get stops when we needed them, and we consistently got stops all night tonight.”
So what changed?
“We’re getting more pressure on the ball,” he continued. “We moved Macey [Fegan] up [to the perimeter] kind of exclusively, and put Sara [Guerreiro] up there more. It starts with that, and we just hadn’t been doing that. That was the focus of the last couple weeks, to get more pressure on it, and get into a position where can speed them up and let them feel us a little bit more.”
Fegan earned her first career start, and though the Toledo transfer only scored two points (in fact, she only attempted two shots in 26 minutes), she still had a measurable contribution to the win in Kielsmeier’s estimation.
“She’s got some size and length up top, and she’s learned quickly how much she can impact the game and not score,” he said. “Maybe she’s the next great player who can do a lot of everything and not have that impressive of a stat line. But she helps us win on every possession, and she’s got that capability.”
Guerreiro, by most assessments the current great player who can do a lot of everything, scored 12 points while pulling down nine rebounds and registering four assists. Destiny Leo’s 16 points – all of which came on three-pointers or on foul shots resulting from infractions during three-point attempts – paced Cleveland State’s offense, while Jordana Reisma’s 10-11 double-double against a Ragin’ Cajuns team with good size and length was the latest bit of evidence that the starting post is “playing the best basketball of her life,” as Kielsmeier put it.
The only blemishes to the CSU effort were the team’s 27 turnovers and the 19 rebounds it allowed to Louisiana, stats that helped ULL attempt 25 more field goals than the Vikings. Those turnovers weren’t really the conventional steals and errant passes, instead, they were overwhelmingly the result of charging fouls, traveling calls, three-second violations, and the like.
“Some nights, it seems like they’re just going to call everything with it, and other nights they’re not going to call much with it,” Kielsmeier said. “Louisiana gets a lot of charging calls, they jump in front of players and get calls off of that. It can be a tough game to officiate, but we certainly can’t have 27 turnovers.”
Those errors aside, Kielsmeier, and everyone else concerned with the fate of Cleveland State’s program, knows that the Vikings’ defense is the engine that drives everything else. After some promising signs against Division II side Ohio Dominican last Saturday, things finally seem to have clicked into place.
“We beat a really good basketball team tonight, and we did it in a way that resembled something close to Cleveland State women’s basketball,” Kielsmeier said.
