Just about everyone who regularly watches basketball has seen it numerous times before: one team, out of nowhere, goes on a massive, unanticipated run to permanently take over what had been a tight contest, one that potentially might have otherwise gone all the way to the wire.
Cleveland State tends to follow that pattern more than most teams, and on Thursday afternoon in Bayamon, PR, the Vikings pulled it off once again, turning a 20-20 halftime deadlock with Morgan State into a 56-39 victory. The win, which boosted CSU to 10-2 overall, owed itself mostly to a 19-0 third quarter run that materialized about as suddenly as condensation in the Puerto Rican humidity.
In fact, the outburst was just about the unlikeliest sequence of events possible, given the circumstances of the game at the time.
Vikings leading scorer Mickayla Perdue had just picked up her third and fourth fouls early in the period, each on calls that could reasonably be disputed. Shortly after that, Destiny Leo fouled the Bears’ Gabrielle Johnson on a three-point attempt, and Johnson converted each of her free throws to give MSU a 25-23 lead. Cleveland State, if their managing just 23 points in 23 minutes didn’t tell enough of the story, hadn’t found any sort of offensive rhythm all game long.
So naturally, the Vikings scored the next 19 points of the contest, turning that two-point deficit into a 42-25 lead.
“You’re watching the same thing I’m watching!” CSU head coach Chris Kielsmeier exclaimed, dispelling any notion that some nuanced adjustment or vibe shift on the bench, invisible to most fans, caused the seemingly-random outburst.
“Micky picks up her fourth foul, we’d just made a poor foul on a three-ball, they’ve got a lot of momentum, they believe they can win, so a lot of factors were against us,” he admitted. “So no, I did not know that was coming. However, it can, and it can at any time. Our players believe that. That’s the system, and they went out and got it done.”
Perhaps the turning point was Filippa Goula.
The graduate guard quickly stepped on the court when Perdue was forced to sit. Almost immediately, she drove the paint and kicked it out to Leo, who hit a corner three to give the Vikings the lead back for good. Moments later, she was on the receiving end of a classic “defend, rebound, run” play, with Jordana Reisma firing ahead to the streaking Greek for a layup.
On a similar play late in the run, Goula missed the layup. However, she was so far ahead of everyone down the floor that she was able to easily rebound her own miss and convert from the opposite side.
In all, she finished with those four points, six assists, five rebounds, two steals, and important contributions to a defense that held Morgan State to 7.7 percent shooting in the third quarter (and 22.2 percent for the game).
“Flip stepped up big with the foul trouble that Micky was in,” Kielsmeier said. “It wasn’t like Flip came out and hit a lot of shots or something. Flip came out and played great defense, and she ran the show offensively. She got the ball where it needed to go, and she took a huge step in her development.”
Reisma logged her usual stellar effort with 17 points (on 6-for-8 shooting) and eight rebounds, as the Vikings capitalized on Kielsmeier’s repeated in-game exhortations that the high-low was open. Leo added nine points on a 3-for-9 effort from behind the arc, while Perdue scored 11 times, despite sitting for most of the second half.
Though the decisive 19-0 run was certainly not expected, Cleveland State’s slow start probably should have been.
“It was a tough trip,” Kielsmeier said. “Like yesterday, you get these kids out of bed at 3:00 in the morning to get to the airport before 5, there’s a lot that comes with it that can make you not ready to play. We were a little bit stagnant in that first half.”
“We would never normally travel on a Wednesday when you’re playing on Thursday,” he continued. “But our program takes great pride in not letting stuff that you can’t control bother you. When you get in the moment, your emotions get going, you can easily let it. But not this program and not these players, and I’m proud of them for that.”
