Backcourt adjustment helps Cleveland State surge past Detroit Mercy

0
205

After Cleveland State’s upset defeat at Oakland on Friday night, head coach Chris Kielsmeier couldn’t shut down his brain while sitting in the team hotel, as he confronted the endless train of thoughts that dominates the rare fragments of down time afforded any coach.

Oftentimes, it’s a bit reminiscent of an exchange in The Blues Brothers, the 1980 film where, in one scene, freshly-out-of-prison Jake arrives at Elwood’s tiny, but noisy, apartment, right next to one of Chicago’s elevated train lines.

“How often does the train go by?”
“So often, you don’t even notice it.”

However, through that constant clatter of ideas, generated both internally and through Kielsmeier’s coaching staff, one did get noticed.

Get Mickayla Perdue off of the ball more.

That subtle move paid off splendidly, as the Vikings’ graduate guard – generally, the team’s primary ballhandler this season – went off for 26 points, including four three-pointers, along with six steals and four assists, to help CSU bounce back strongly with a 72-62 win at Detroit Mercy on Sunday to improve to 13-3 (5-1 Horizon League).

Appropriately enough, the conduit for the adjustment was a player nicknamed Flip, Filippa Goula, who has earned increasing levels of trust from Kielsmeier in recent weeks and played 24 minutes on Sunday. After Cleveland State got off to a slow start, the Greek point guard entered the contest for the first time late in the opening quarter, and quickly stole the ball before firing it ahead to Perdue for a transition bucket.

There was plenty more where that came from.

The Vikings opened the second quarter with a 23-4 run that gave the green-clad visitors the lead for good, eventually pushing the score to 35-21 in the final two minutes of the half. Nine of those 23 points came on Perdue threes, and 11 followed Titans turnovers. Mya Moore, who had a steal and a subsequent bucket in the middle of the run, Grace Ellis, and Sara Guerreiro were also on the floor as the contest’s momentum began to shift. Moore eventually gave way to Jordana Reisma, who scored 11 of her 16 points during the period.

Kielsmeier called the second quarter his team’s best of the season, and he felt like it was driven heavily by sliding Perdue over to the two-guard spot.

“It allowed us to run more stuff for Micky that she’s used to,” he said. “Micky can score any way on the court, no matter if she’s got the ball in her hands, or if she’s off the ball, she’s a playmaker. However, what really got her going last year, was playing more off the ball, and in a way where she could come off of screens and get transition shots thrown to her, as opposed to her throwing them.”

“It was transition, it was points off of turnovers, it was playing the way we want to play,” he added. “We were able to play more open, more free, and less in the half-court set.”

Concurrent to that offensive boost and Perdue’s outburst, CSU managed to limit Titans leading scorer Aaliyah McQueen to 16 points on 7-for-21 shooting, including 0-for-4 from three-point range.

However, three of those seven made field goals came during the third quarter, as UDM (10-3, 4-1 Horizon League) responded with a 9-0 run that trimmed the Vikings’ once-hefty lead to a single point, 41-40. Emaia O’Brien, who scored 15 times, contributed heavily to the surge as well, including a four-point play after she knocked down one of her four three-pointers while being fouled by Guerreiro.

“Detroit is really good, and they’re really good defensively,” Kielsmeier said. “They’re not going away, no matter what the score is, they were going to continue to come after us.”

Enter Destiny Leo, another player who knows a thing or two (or three) about deep balls.

With the teams still wrestling over a margin that ranged between two and five points, the 2022-23 Horizon League Player of the Year knocked down a triple in the final minute of the third quarter that gave her team some breathing room, at 53-47, entering the final ten minutes. She hit another just 106 seconds later to put the Vikings up by seven, then a third that effectively sealed the outcome by giving Cleveland State a 14-point edge with 1:21 remaining.

Those final three of her 11 points came after CSU had burned all but five seconds of the shot clock in an effort to end the game quickly, and from roughly five feet behind the arc.

“The level of difficulty of that shot, I’m not sure people could really understand,” Kielsmeier said. “She’s just a special player, she always has been. Those shots tonight were huge, as important as any shot in the game. They came in big moments.”

Things don’t get any easier for the newly-reenergized Vikings, however, as their next game will be against HL-leading Purdue Fort Wayne on January 12th in the Wolstein Center. The Mastodons obliterated Oakland – the team that beat CSU on Friday, of course – by a 77-37 score roughly 30 miles up the road from, and simultaneous to, Cleveland State’s victory over Detroit Mercy.

Over the next week, Kielsmeier will certainly continue to confront trains of thought, both large and small.

“It’s just gotta continue to get better,” he said. “I’ve tried to get our players to understand, it’s gotta be something that we fix moving forward. It’s not gonna fix itself. We’ve gotta play harder, we’ve gotta position better, and we’ve just gotta get overall more aggressive.”

Leave a Reply