While there’s certainly room for healthy debate, it’s possible that the most notable thing about Cleveland State’s game at Wright State on Monday night took place after the final horn.
That signal triggered the Vikings’ parade back to the Nutter Center’s visiting locker room, past one corner of the court, and a fair bit of concrete in the vast arena, for their usual postgame talk with Chris Kielsmeier and the CSU coaching staff.
This one, however, was not routine.
About 20 minutes after the contest ended, Raiders coach Kari Hoffman exited WSU’s media room following her press conference and, shortly after, left the building altogether. One of Hoffman’s players, redshirt freshman Rylee Sagester, hung around a bit longer to chat with legendary local columnist Tom Archdeacon, before the pair eventually disappeared into the damp evening as well.
Ten minutes after that, the family of CSU star Mickayla Perdue, at the game in their usual healthy numbers from nearby Springfield, OH, represented a clear majority of the people left in the arena bowl. Questions like “what are they doing back there,” asked of nobody specific, wafted out of the throng.
Another 15 minutes passed, and a security guard started making cracks about spending the night. The jokes quickly succumbed to serious concern, or at least curiosity, though, and he peeked through the door to make sure the Vikings were still back there.
Indeed, they were.
Finally, at 9:49 PM – an hour after everyone left the hardwood – there was a muffled cheer, followed by an opening door, and the appearance of the Cleveland State women’s basketball team.
It should be mentioned that, roughly three hours earlier, the Vikings scored the first ten points of the game against Wright State. They eventually built a 26-10 advantage at the end of the opening quarter, and that lead was never seriously threatened on the way to a comfortable 85-71 victory to improve to 9-2 overall and 3-0 in the Horizon League.
That part doesn’t really square with conventional wisdom. Lengthy closed-door postgame meetings are typically the domain of teams that have just lost. And generally, one loss isn’t enough to trigger those sessions, there were likely a few others prior to that day as well.
CSU obviously wasn’t and isn’t in that situation. So, to repeat the Perdue clan’s question, what exactly were they doing back there?
“Getting better,” Kielsmeier said, with an expression indicating that further details were not on the way.
While the “what” of the Vikings’ postgame might remain hidden forever to those not in the room, the “why” seems within reach.
Despite the decisive outcome, the Raiders carved up Cleveland State’s defense on the perimeter, making a whopping 16 three-pointers in 28 tries, a 57.1 percent success rate. Sagester’s 8-for-13 line from deep, producing a game-high 24 points entirely on threes, led the way, though Lauren Scott (4-for-6 from behind the arc), Makiya Miller, and Macie Taylor (2-for-3 each) proved worthy complements.
“I thought we had a good attack there, we kind of had them in rotations a lot to get good looks,” Hoffman said.
Of course, one coach’s treasure is the opposing coach’s trash.
“Our perimeter rotation isn’t good enough,” Kielsmeier countered. “We’re making mistakes on outs. We cannot give up 28 threes, attempted, let alone the makes. We have to play harder, we’re not playing hard enough defensively. I keep showing them that on tape, we’ve just gotta respond.”
“We’ve got a lot of things we can fix, and if we don’t, we’re going to get beat.”
Kielsmeier’s frustration is understandable, given that many of the same patterns tend to play out every time his team visits the Dayton area. In last season’s game at Wright State, the Raiders launched 27 threes and could have seriously threatened CSU’s 11-point victory with a bit more accuracy on a couple open looks in the late going. During the 2022-23 season, though the Vikings took the contest handily, WSU made a school-record 18 threes in 41 tries.
“I remember wanting to pull that redshirt off of [Sagester] for this game last year,” Hoffman remarked, likely noticing that same pattern.
Of course, the fact remains that whatever exists to both excite Hoffman and irritate Kielsmeier, the latter’s team keeps winning. The Vikings haven’t lost to WSU since a 2021 Horizon League semifinal game (the final meeting before the Raiders hired Hoffman), and have now peeled off seven straight triumphs in the series, all by double digits.
That’s generally been possible thanks to Cleveland State’s interior dominance. On Monday, the Vikings outscored Wright State 42-12 in the paint, led by Jordana Reisma’s 16 points and Mya Moore, who scored nine points, her best total since joining CSU’s roster from Seattle University.
“She’s getting better,” Kielsmeier said of Moore. “She’s hanging in there and trying to get better in this system, and I give her a lot of credit for that. She’s fun to coach.”
“It was our goal to shoot way more inside, but they do a good job of playing one-on-one when it gets in there, and we were in some foul trouble and our fives were run down a bit,” Hoffman lamented.
Besides owning the battle of the bigs, Cleveland State had a credible-enough answer for the Raiders’ deep attack, as the Vikings knocked down 11 threes of their own, led by Perdue’s six (leading to 18 of her team-high 23 points) and Sara Guerreiro’s three.
All of that is good for CSU, but not good enough for Kielsmeier. A reading of Perdue’s stat line will elicit a “she’s a straight baller” from the coach, followed by some high praise of how seamlessly she’s taken to becoming the team’s primary ballhandler after a season-ending injury to star point guard Colbi Maples last month. But it will inevitably be followed by “if I could just get her to defend now…”
It’s that sentiment that gave birth to an hour-long postgame session, and the subsequent media availability that carried the tension of a team that just lost.
“It’s almost becoming ‘let’s outscore people,’” Kielsmeier said. “We’re so talented offensively, and so versatile with how we can score, inside, outside, whatever teams throw at us, we’re making plays.”
“Respectfully, I will never become a coach that says ‘let’s just outscore people.’ Ain’t gonna happen. So let’s get better defensively.”
