When Macey Fegan, then a transfer portal recruit, visited Cleveland State back in the spring, she watched a Vikings workout and immediately knew she could make a difference.
“I really like this system,” CSU head coach Chris Kielsmeier recalled her saying.
“Her face kind of lit up,” he continued. “You love to see players who can see themselves in the system, and being successful in the system.”
The connection between Fegan and Cleveland State made sense on several levels. The former Michigan Miss Basketball finalist, who averaged 28 points and 14 rebounds per game as a senior at Standish-Sterling Central High School, decided to look for a new home after playing just 32 minutes across 12 games as a true freshman at Toledo, and seeing her coach (Tricia Cullop, a good friend of Kielsmeier’s) depart for Miami.
Her versatility, length, and competitiveness in the messier areas of the paint approached Kielsmeier’s ideal for a wing, and while Sara Guerreiro and Destiny Leo were firmly entrenched as returning starters, Fegan could certainly find plenty of minutes as a rotation player somewhere alongside Grace Ellis and Kali Howard.
So, sure, she could definitely make a difference. However neither she, Kielsmeier, nor anyone else, knew that it would be a season-saving difference.
That phase of the story began when starting point guard and reigning Horizon League Player of the Year Colbi Maples was lost for the season on November 12th, which scrapped most of Kielsmeier’s meticulously-crafted lineup plans. Though the coach prides himself on training his players for versatility (Guerreiro, for example, frequently plays three different positions in the same game), he also admits that he dials things back at times, particularly with those new to his program, to avoid overwhelming them.
Eventually, after going through “a lot” of potential lineups in the wake of Maples’ injury, he settled on a starting backcourt of primary ballhandler Mickayla Perdue and freshman Sarah Hurley for two games. Then, beginning with a contest against Louisiana at the Big Easy Classic in New Orleans, Fegan took over for Hurley opposite Perdue, and has been one of CSU’s first five ever since.
“As we were trying to go through all of the lineups and all of the different opportunities and different ways to play, she was the one who really stepped up and stabilized that starting group,” Kielsmeier said. “It gave us a lot of confidence to be able to play the way we wanted to play really well on both ends of the floor.”
Fegan was a significant part of an effort that held the Ragin’ Cajuns to 42 points, before helping produce a 79-52 victory over Lamar – the Vikings’ best non-conference victory this year on just about every measurement – the next day.
Not bad for someone who barely had any idea what she was doing out there, as a player new to the program who had just switched positions, from primarily playing the three to the two-guard spot.
“At first I was just trying to play hard because most of the time I wasn’t in the right spot, so if I was playing hard, I could cover up some mistakes,” she admitted, unintentionally citing the advice of generations of coaches.
Around that time, Kielsmeier described Fegan as “faking it, but faking it really well.” Still, he trusted her tools and effort, believing that the 4.0 student would eventually internalize things enough to reach the “make it” phase of the old expression.
If nothing else, CSU desperately needed ball pressure and defensive acuity, and Fegan offered plenty of both as a compliment to leading scorer Perdue.
“She’s just got a way to get her hands on balls,” Kielsmeier said. “She rebounds as well as anyone in our program from an offensive standpoint. She plays really, really hard, and she’s kind of just that glue kid for us that kind of pulls everything together. She’s willing to do anything it takes to be successful.”
There have certainly been bumps in the road, including the Vikings’ Horizon League losses to Oakland and Purdue Fort Wayne earlier this month, games that saw Cleveland State’s perimeter defense battered for 49 three-point attempts, 20 of which were successful.
Still, there’s been plenty more good than bad, as CSU has bounced back over the past couple weeks and is once again poised for a conference title run, despite losing the league’s best player for the second season in a row. In Thursday’s win over Youngstown State, Fegan had the opportunity to show off her progression a bit.
“We got hit with a brand new play on Thursday night that was a good play design by them, and she gave it up,” Kielsmeier said. “It was hard as heck to defend, then they ran it four more times later in the game, and she didn’t give up one of them. You give that up one time, it’s great coaching. You give it up a second time, that’s not very good execution. She nailed some tough stuff on Thursday.”
Just as importantly, Fegan’s initial impressions of the system that she’s now excelling in haven’t really changed.
“It’s more work than man-to-man, because you have to be in sync with everybody,” she said. “If one person’s out of position, you can be screwed. And sometimes, people are all in the right position, and you’re still sometimes screwed. It’s hard, but it is fun.”
Though Kielsmeier was quick to point out that “no player ever fully masters” the intricacies of his defense, Fegan has quickly gotten much closer to that point than most.
“I don’t think she’s faking it anymore,” he said. “I think she really knows what she’s doing.”