Whatever Cleveland State’s 67-54 victory over Northern Kentucky on Wednesday night in the Wolstein Center lacked in aesthetic value – and it lacked plenty – it more than made up for it with an entertaining clash between two of the Horizon League’s best players.
One was the Vikings’ Jordana Reisma, who entered college as a highly-regarded recruit and has followed a conventional, almost old-fashioned, development curve during her three-season career. After playing less than 15 minutes per game behind Amele Ngwafang as a freshman, she’s steadily earned more and more responsibility for her team’s success, and concurrent increases in trust from CSU head coach Chris Kielsmeier.
“In a world of transfers, and everything that’s going on in college athletics…I guess you can call her old school,” he said. “She’s been here for three years, has stuck with this program and has stuck by my side.”
The other, NKU’s Halle Idowu, has become one of the conference’s breakout stars after spending four relatively-anonymous seasons at Toledo and Northeastern. However, since electing to spend her fifth year at NKU, the Chicago-area native has unexpectedly blossomed, averaging 16.1 points per game against Division I competition entering play on Wednesday, while shooting 56.3 percent from the floor. Even Kielsmeier, who doesn’t often discuss opposing players, expressed unprompted admiration for Idowu’s footwork during his weekly radio show on Monday.
Well above her feet, however, Reisma’s length proved disruptive all evening, and Idowu managed only eight points on 2-for-9 shooting against the Vikings. Reisma also blocked a shot and out-rebounded Idowu eight to five.
Idowu did manage to get some measure of revenge by drawing a charging call that caused Reisma to foul out in the late going, but the results of both the game and the head-to-head were well decided by then.
The 6-3 graduate of Wisconsin’s Brown Deer High School relished her victory in the defining showdowns, which helped her squad improve to 6-2 overall and 1-0 in Horizon League play.
“Don’t you always want to win the matchup?” she asked rhetorically. “You just want to always do better than them, just take away their strengths, and do what you do best. The coaches were saying ‘hey, take her away, don’t let her have a good game,’ and that’s what we do.”
On the other end of the floor, Reisma was the beneficiary of Cleveland State’s concerted effort to work the ball into the middle, as she scored 18 points on 8-for-11 shooting. That success came despite Kielsmeier’s view that counterpart Jeff Hans was particularly focused on limiting his post players’ space and minimizing their impact on the evening’s events.
“I think it’s always a point of emphasis to get it in the block or in the post, it’s how Coach K’s system is,” Reisma said. “It just seems to be working these past few games, so why not [keep doing it]?”
“I’m incredibly blessed to be able to coach her and get to work with her on a daily basis,” Kielsmeier reflected, before adding that, despite her growing notoriety around the league, he’d still like to get Reisma the ball even more than he has to this point.
Regardless, on Wednesday, the Vikings were certainly blessed to have Reisma’s production. While CSU’s defensive effort was superficially very solid – NKU only made 29.5 percent of its field goal attempts, including misses on their first 12 attempts as the home team built its wire-to-wire lead – it also failed to fuel the vertical game essential to Kielsmeier’s offense. Cleveland State only managed an uncharacteristically-low 11 fast break points, in part thanks to losing the turnover battle that’s typically a source of pride for the program.
Thanks largely to that paucity of runouts and layups, the Vikings only shot 15-for-46 (32.6 percent) from the floor when excluding Reisma’s efforts, though four of the 15 made shots were important momentum-shifting three-pointers by Sara Guerreiro and Destiny Leo. Guerreiro was CSU’s second-highest scorer with 14 points, and she also pulled down a career-best 16 rebounds while dishing off five assists.
“They slowed the pace down, and when we’re not turning teams over, it’s hard to get our pace going the way we want it to,” Kielsmeier said. “We played slow tonight, and a lot of that was controlled by them. We’ve gotta find a way to get more pressure on the outside, we’ve gotta find a way to speed teams up. We can’t play the way we want to with six steals and forcing 13 turnovers. That’s just not us.”
With Idowu largely shut down, and with capable scorer Macey Blevins sidelined, freshman Kamora Morgan paced the Norse with 21 points. That total included back-to-back three-pointers midway through the second quarter to pull the visitors within 18-14, though CSU answered with the game’s next six points, and the margin wouldn’t shrink beyond eight the rest of the way.
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