In the first eight games of Cleveland State women’s basketball’s 2024-25 campaign, some of the major storylines have included Mickayla Perdue’s presence among the national scoring leaders, as well as Jordana Reisma’s evolution into a dominant post player and another focal point of the Vikings’ attack. There has also been, of course, the catastrophic injury to last season’s Horizon League Player of the Year, Colbi Maples, and the resulting position shift of Macey Fegan that helped get Chris Kielsmeier’s defense back online after some early struggles.
Destiny Leo used CSU’s 82-49 thrashing of IU Indianapolis in the Wolstein Center on Saturday to remind people that, hey, she can play a little bit of basketball too.
The senior guard, herself an HL Player of the Year two years ago before losing most of last season to a torn ACL, knocked down a trio of three-pointers during a span of just 72 seconds early in the first quarter to give her team a 12-0 advantage over the Jaguars. The Vikings would never subsequently lead the contest by fewer than eight points on the way to improving to 2-0 in conference play and 7-2 overall.
That was the opening salvo in a team-wide 13-for-27 effort from three-point range that saw four different players make at least one deep ball. The 13 converted triples were the most for the Vikings in a single game since hitting 15 against Green Bay on February 3rd, and indicated an adjustment to counter IU Indianapolis’ attempts to take away Reisma and CSU’s post players.
“I thought they schemed really well,” Kielsmeier said. “We talked about a lot of different defenses that they can throw at us. We didn’t really talk about them pressuring out, overplaying the high post, fronting the block, and really doing a great job of taking away the inside game, people know that’s where we’re trying to go with it.”
“We showed that we can play the game in different ways, just with what they threw at us,” Leo added.
Leo finished with 19 points, most of those coming thanks to her 6-for-11 line from behind the arc, while adding seven rebounds, three blocked shots, two steals, and a partridge in a pear tree. Though her six made triples tied as the third-best single game mark for the program’s all-time career leader in the category, it was the sort of well-rounded effort that has epitomized CSU’s best wing players over the years.
Not bad for someone who had spent most of her career playing on the perimeter, with this year’s position change originally made to accommodate the emergence of Maples and Perdue as star players.
“I’m still growing into it,” she said of that adjustment. “It’s been something that I’ve done in the past, but I’m doing it more frequently now. I’m really trying to be able to just adjust to whatever Coach K wants from me, what the girls want from me. I’m trying to really fit into that role, and you could say that I’m starting to figure it out.”
There wasn’t an overwhelming amount of doubt concerning the Vikings’ 27th straight home victory at halftime – Cleveland State led 39-25 at the break – but whatever lingering questions may have still existed were wiped out during a third quarter that Kielsmeier called the best period that his team has played this season.
“We fed off of both ends of the floor,” he said. “We got some runouts, we got our transition game going, and then we were really efficient offensively.”
Perdue took the wheel during the frame, scoring 14 of her game-high 27 points within those ten minutes. Eleven of the 14 were part of a quarter-closing 16-2 run that pushed the Vikings’ lead to 33 points. Sara Guerreiro logged three assists (of her game-high seven) during that run, including two long feeds for Perdue after rebounds.
In addition to her helpers, Guerreiro scored nine points (six of those on a pair of third-quarter threes that contributed to the surge), and pulled in seven rebounds. Fegan also had seven rebounds to go with her seven points, and her contributions to a defensive unit that limited the Jaguars to 8-for-28 shooting during the second half.
Alexa Hocevar – a Willoughby Hills, OH native who attended West Geauga High School – paced an IU Indianapolis that only had eight available players with 12 points, while adding three rebounds.
