Vikings Notebook (December 10th)

False Alarm

It would be hard to blame Chris Kielsmeier for experiencing a little bit of PTSD any time a Vikings player ends up on the floor, given what has transpired with Destiny Leo and Colbi Maples over the past two seasons. So early in Saturday’s game against IU Indianapolis, when starting guard Macey Fegan needed attention from the training staff, what was Kielsmeier’s reaction? Does he immediately think the worst, or does he somehow remain an optimist?

“You just know that it’s part of the game,” he said. “I instantly go into ‘what now?’ I wasn’t really expecting that.”

Kielsmeier then drew a comparison between injury occurrences and other unanticipated strategic changes that have to be made on the fly.

“To manage a game, from a coaching staff standpoint is a lot,” he said. “When we talk about the versatility that we have to be prepared to play well against…we don’t know what they’re going to do. We may have patterns, but oh, now they’re doing this, what are we going to do?”

“I certainly didn’t think that we would be calling for [the guards] as much early in the game as what we were, based off of the size advantage, and how we thought we were going to be able to get [inside]. Well, they took that away, so now, what’s next? And that’s not what I woke up thinking about this morning, but you’ve gotta be on that.”

For what it’s worth, Fegan returned to the game relatively quickly after her apparent lower-body damage, and finished with seven points and seven rebounds in 28 minutes. Afterwards, assistant coach Chenara Wilson chirped the Toledo transfer a bit, posting on social media about how “that line jumped out at her on the court.”

Out of Place

When Maples suffered her season-ending injury on November 12th, it was impossible to avoid drawing a comparison with Leo. After all, both players were superstar guards at the time of their respective injuries, reigning Horizon League Players of the Year who were done in by whatever hellish lottery determines when it’s time for a player’s knee to give out on an otherwise-normal play.

But Maples’ absence has been a much more difficult adjustment, in at least in one sense. When Leo went down, it was basically a one-for-one swap to insert Mickayla Perdue in that spot on the floor.

Removing Maples, on the other hand, directly contributed to multiple position changes, including moving Perdue to point guard, and Kielsmeier got to the heart of that point during his weekly radio show on Monday evening. Essentially, he has an experienced team in the superficial sense, but things are much more complex underneath the surface.

“Jordana [Reisma]’s really the only one in that starting group that has a lot of reps at what she’s been doing previously,” he said. “Destiny’s doing new things, Micky’s doing new things, of course Macey is brand new to the program and Sara [Guerreiro], we’ve just mover her all over the place, she’s literally played [four different positions] in certain games this year, hardly any player’s ever done that.”

“We’re very much still a work in progress, but it’s looking better than what it did a few weeks ago.”

The Finals Countdown

One under-discussed staple of the college basketball season takes place in early December each year, when the semester concludes at most hoops-playing universities. That, of course, means finals week, and teams typically try to work around that sudden crunch on student-athletes’ already-minimal time and availability by scheduling lightly during exams.

Cleveland State students are taking their finals this week, for example, and following their game against IU Indianapolis on Saturday, the Vikings won’t play again until they host Bethune-Cookman on Friday. The week includes a brief respite from practice as well.

“On Saturday, when I left them, I told them that it’s going to be about 70 hours before I see [them] again on Tuesday afternoon,” Kielsmeier said. “Go be a student, be elite at everything you do in the classroom, if you need anything from the coaches, let us know, we’re here as always. But focus on your studies, and go be successful, and be a champion in the classroom.”

Certainly, finals week has changed significantly during Kielsmeier’s quarter-century in coaching, with lecture halls and blue books giving way to Blackboard and the dreaded Respondus Lockdown Browser, and many players will be able to knock out their exams relatively quickly. That list includes Leo, who is taking three online classes.

“I’ll get my finals finished up Monday and Tuesday, and think about basketball for the rest of the week,” she said, true to character.

Whatever the technology and the timing, the team seems confident in things. Kielsmeier pointed out that throughout his career, his program has had a GPA goal of 3.2, but that apparently wasn’t high enough for his current squad.

“Our team GPA last year was 3.48,” he said. “They came to me at the beginning of the semester this year and said that they wanted their goal to be 3.5 this year, they were frustrated that they didn’t get 3.5 last year.”

After some unspecified amount of haggling, once Kielsmeier cautioned his players against setting themselves up for failure, the parties settled on a goal of 3.3.

Shots in the Dark

When Leo began Saturday’s contest on fire, sinking three quick three-pointers to give Cleveland State a 12-0 lead that would never seriously be threatened the rest of the way, she credited her pregame work with assistant coach Bob Dunn.

“I felt good shooting, when I shoot before pregame warmups with Coach Dunn,” she said. “I felt good there.”

Is it possible that there’s some sort of correlation between the success rate of shots in the various pregame drills and what ultimately happens during the game? That notion was shot down with the same precision that made Leo the Vikings’ record holder for made triples.

“Not at all,” she said, even before the question was finished. “Not at all.”