When Chris Kielsmeier uses the phrase “Cleveland State women’s basketball,” he’s typically doing a lot more than simply identifying the program that he leads. Mostly, he’s describing a state of being, an ideal, some sort of self-actualized reality where the events on the floor during a game match perfectly with his always-present whiteboard.
The Vikings’ 79-52 destruction of Lamar on Saturday afternoon to complete a sweep of the Big Easy Classic in Westwego, LA was certainly Cleveland State women’s basketball in his estimation.
“That was some amazing basketball in the second half,” he said. “Just Cleveland State women’s basketball. The defense fired, we were able to create transition, shots, and points off of our defense, which we’ve lacked. It was a significant step forward with that.”
It’s hard to know where to begin when describing a thorough top-to-bottom victory. Kielsmeier, as usual, leads with the defense.
That defense limited Lamar – the preseason choice to win the Southland Conference, and arguably the second-best team on CSU’s non-league schedule – to 37 percent shooting for the game. Star Cardinals guards Sabria Dean and Jacei Denley bore the brunt of that effort, as the duo combined for just nine points on 3-for-19 shooting. As a contrast, they combined for 29 of LU’s 69 tallies in their Big Easy Classic opener on Friday, a victory over Pacific.
“We beat a really good basketball team,” Kielsmeier said. “They’re going to win a lot of games. They’re really well coached, they have outside-inside threats, and our defense was really able to stymie that and slow them down, and make a team that can really score look really stagnant and struggle to play the way they really wanted to.”
The Vikings forced 19 turnovers, leading to 24 points. CSU also scored 19 fast break points, offense that typically follows either a turnover or a defensive stop and a rebound.
On the other side of the floor, Cleveland State’s initial approach with the ball involved running things through post player Jordana Reisma, but when Lamar took that strategy away, the likes of Mickayla Perdue, Destiny Leo and Sara Guerreiro were more than happy to make the Cardinals pay in other ways.
Perdue bucketed a game-high 26 points, while shooting better than 50 percent from the floor overall, including 4-for-9 from three-point range. She also added five assists, continuing a season-long ball-sharing trend.
“Micky’s getting better,” Kielsmeier said. “She’s also getting better at trying to read how to make plays for others, which is a big part of the growth of her game, and stuff that we’ll continue to focus on with her. Obviously, the kid can score at will, how do we define her into a complete basketball player?”
“Our offensive reads we really good, trying to play through [Reisma] and our fives on the block, and when they took it away, we started looking out and really had some unselfish passes,” he continued. “That offense looked sharp tonight, we were really tough to defend.”
Guerreiro logged her typical stat-stuffing outing with 14 points, seven assists, and six rebounds while Leo added 14 points, 12 of them through four three-pointers. Two of those triples – both set up by steals – came 38 seconds apart during a 12-0 third-quarter run that drove the contest from “decisive” to “blowout.”
Despite the de-emphasis of Reisma in the game plan, the junior still managed 13 points and five rebounds, essentially matching the 15 and five of counterpart Akasha Davis, LU’s leading scorer and rebounder.
With some benefit of hindsight, and enhanced by the positive feelings of a big win to improve to 5-2 overall, Kielsmeier felt as though his team was set back by unexpected in-season developments, but is now rounding into form.
“We’re still just trying to figure out how to play together,” he said. “We were putting Micky on the ball a lot this weekend. There’s things we’re doing right now that I don’t think I thought that we would ever be doing with this team.”
“We were a really experienced team, and then some of the things we’ve had to go through made us not a very experienced team,” he continued. “Now we’ve gotta move some players around. It’s hard to run this system when you don’t really know what your role is, or where you’re gonna play, or how the coach wants you to play. That’s been all over the place over the last couple weeks.”
Those comments were likely a veiled reference to Colbi Maples, the Vikings’ starting point guard who was injured in Cleveland State’s victory over Bowling Green on November 12th, and hasn’t played since. Beyond the reigning Horizon League Player of the Year’s production, the sudden hole in the lineup threw CSU’s systems off kilter.
Suddenly, Perdue gained the added responsibility of being a primary ballhandler. Leo, who has played most of her career as a guard, was moved down to the wing. Finally, Macey Fegan has earned a starting guard spot, after having something of a fluctuating role during her first few months with the team.
“We’ve spent months putting Macey top, bottom, all over the place, and we’ve kind of settled in with playing her a lot up top,” Kielsmeier said. “I think that’s where some of the defense started. We got more pressure on the ball, we got more arms and tips on the ball, got into passing lanes more.”
“That’s just being able to adjust and adapt, and having a great coaching staff that huddles up and figures out ways to help these kids be successful. It’s scary how good we can be.”
Cleveland State women’s basketball good? With the opening games of the conference schedule, home contests against Northern Kentucky and IU Indianapolis, mere days away, the answer is imminent.
“You’ve known what the schedule is for months, and you want to make sure that you’re playing really well going into the first week in December,” Kielsmeier said. “Two weeks ago, we were not playing very well. The system fired this weekend, and hopefully we can show a level of consistency with that moving forward.”
