Fort Wolstein
When Cleveland State visited Milwaukee on Saturday, it got me thinking about home court advantage in the Horizon League.
Though the conference did away with a strict travel partner structure to its schedule before the 2023-24 season, several exceptions remain. Arguably, the most significant of those involves Milwaukee and Green Bay, as nearly every HL team plays its annual road games against the geographic outliers in a single trip, with one off day between the games.
For most, including myself, the travel to America’s Dairyland is brutal. Last Thursday, I woke up at 4:00 AM to get dressed and head to the airport for a 6:40 flight. After a connection in Chicago, I landed in Milwaukee at 11:11 central time (the plane was in the air for literally 18 minutes between Chicago and Milwaukee, if you were wondering). I then grabbed a rental car, drove the hour-fifty to Green Bay while eating on the way, tried in vain to nap in the car for a little bit, covered the 6:00 game between the Vikings and Phoenix, then drove back to my hotel room in Milwaukee.
It was a long day, to say the least. At some point, I considered that driving the whole route to the Kress Events Center myself would have been marginally faster, along with several other life choices.
Regardless, I still wasn’t fully recovered two days later for Cleveland State’s game against UWM at the Klotsche Center – and I’m just some slug on a laptop, I don’t have to play basketball.
Basically, there’s at least something to support the thought that Milwaukee has a unique home court advantage. In a world where the crowd factor is close to negligible at most schools, the Panthers benefit from their opponents’ travel, along with the fact that the HL teams they play are typically licking their wounds from, or looking ahead to, a game against the Green Bay juggernaut.
With that in mind, I decided to look it up each school’s in-conference home and away splits, going back to 2009-10 for the six universities that have been members for that long, and back to the date of entry for Oakland, Northern Kentucky, IU Indianapolis, Purdue Fort Wayne, and Robert Morris. What I discovered stunned me enough to trigger a double-check of the numbers.
| Team | Home W-L | Home Pct. | Away W-L | Away Pct. | Home-Away Pct. Difference |
| Cleveland State | 101-45 | 0.692 | 70-79 | 0.470 | 0.222 |
| Youngstown State | 87-66 | 0.569 | 53-90 | 0.371 | 0.198 |
| Robert Morris | 17-28 | 0.378 | 10-40 | 0.200 | 0.178 |
| Milwaukee | 81-67 | 0.547 | 61-95 | 0.391 | 0.156 |
| Northern Kentucky | 52-39 | 0.571 | 40-55 | 0.421 | 0.150 |
| Detroit Mercy | 65-81 | 0.445 | 43-100 | 0.301 | 0.145 |
| Purdue Fort Wayne | 25-23 | 0.521 | 19-30 | 0.388 | 0.133 |
| Wright State | 96-52 | 0.649 | 81-71 | 0.533 | 0.116 |
| Oakland | 54-58 | 0.482 | 42-69 | 0.378 | 0.104 |
| IU Indianapolis | 54-23 | 0.701 | 42-28 | 0.600 | 0.101 |
| Green Bay | 144-17 | 0.894 | 121-23 | 0.840 | 0.054 |
Again, this is 15-plus years of data, something far bigger than CSU’s recent home winning streak or even Chris Kielsmeier’s tenure. Kailey Klein’s career is included in these numbers. Nevertheless, they show that the Vikings, for reasons that completely escape me, have the biggest performance jump in the Horizon League when playing on their home floor.
Get the Show On, Get Paid
On Tuesday, Mickayla Perdue was named to the watch list for the Women’s College All-Star Game, which will be played in Tampa, FL on April 5th (the Saturday of Final Four weekend) and televised on ESPN2.
Perdue, whose 20.4 points per game lead the Vikings, was the only Horizon League player among the 68 selections, 51 of which are from the Power 5 conferences.
We're looking forward to once again hosting the Women's College All-Star Game during championship weekend! This year, we'll be in Tampa on Saturday, April 5, at 3 pm ET, televised live on ESPN2.
— Intersport Basketball (@IntersportHoops) February 4, 2025
Here is the Women's College All-Star Game Watch List presented by @Herbalife! pic.twitter.com/cCrECp9FIM
According to a release from Intersport, the organization that produces the event, the watch list was “compiled with the help of a nationally renowned panel of media experts, broadcasters and other stakeholders, while also taking into consideration national preseason, midseason and weekly award winners.”
In other words, it probably didn’t hurt that Perdue has won several major Horizon League awards, including Newcomer of the Year last season, along with placement on the all-conference and all-tournament teams, while drawing extensive praise from opposing coaches like Melissa Jackson and Chandler McCabe. She is also a three-time HL Player of the Week and 190 points away from tying Shalonda Winton’s single-season program scoring record.
The rosters won’t be finalized until early April, mostly because the event is not sanctioned by the NCAA, so all participants must have exhausted – or be willing to forego – their college eligibility. Perdue has remaining eligibility beyond this season and could certainly chose to use it, passing on a game that is primarily a showcase for professional prospects.
Coincidentally, the rebooted Women’s College All-Star Game debuted at the Wolstein Center last spring, after similar past events had been absent from the Final Four for 18 years. In that contest, a ten-player team led by celebrity coach Nancy Lieberman beat Cheryl Miller’s squad 95-88, and four participants (Syracuse’s Dyaisha Fair, Mississippi State’s Jessika Carter, Indiana’s Mackenzie Holmes and Columbia’s Abbey Hsu) were subsequently selected in the WNBA Draft.
State of Grace
While Perdue’s near future could involve any number of directions, Grace Ellis seems like she has things pretty much figured out.
The fifth-year wing was a guest on Monday’s weekly women’s basketball radio show, and when asked about her post-college plans, Ellis said that she’s “really looking forward” to returning to Australia and playing for her hometown Brisbane Capitals.
The Capitals were Ellis’ club before leaving for the United States, as they sponsor several youth teams along with a senior squad that competes in the NBL1, the second tier of Australian basketball.
The league includes 72 teams are spread across five regional conferences, with Brisbane among the 14 teams in the North Conference. Despite that nomenclature, the conferences essentially operate as separate leagues, with schedules and playoffs contested entirely intraconference. The structure only becomes fully national for a grand final involving the champions of each conference, which caps the season in August.
It’s been a popular destination for Cleveland State and Horizon League alumnae, including former Viking Taylah Levy, who teamed up with Youngstown State graduate Lilly Ritz to lead the Central Districts Lions to the NBL1 Central championship last summer (Ritz has already re-signed with the Lions for the coming season). Emily Saunders (Youngstown State/Norwood Flames), Cori Coleman (Cleveland State/Hobart Chargers), and Kahlaijah Dean (Oakland/Ipswich Force) have also popped up in various NBL1 outposts over the past couple years.
Before joining that list, however, Ellis has the rest of Cleveland State’s season in front of her, and she’s played an increasing role in the Vikings’ championship push in recent weeks.
Her presence was particularly notable on January 18th at IU Indianapolis, then on Saturday at Milwaukee, when she was able to trigger first-half momentum shifts in the pair of wins. Though Ellis had season highs of five points, seven rebounds, and four assists against the Panthers, her contributions largely involve things outside of the box score that later balloon into a stat line.
“It’s all the little things that get my game going, if I go out there and get my hand on the ball a couple times, I get an assist, I get a couple rebounds,” she explained. “If I can get myself going really early when I’m out there, I just settle in so much quicker.”
Is It The Shoes?
Shoes have been important to basketball players at least since Chuck Taylor began slinging Converses over 100 years ago, though the genre truly exploded in the 1980s when Michael Jordan started wearing Nikes.
Since then, it’s been just about impossible to find a hooper that isn’t also a sneakerhead, as the two cultures have become thoroughly intertwined over the past couple decades. In some sense, a basketball player doesn’t truly become iconic until they have their own shoe, and those seeking to reach that level typically line up behind their favorites.
Of course, that individualistic reality doesn’t really mesh with the team sports ethos.
There’s no universally-accepted way to reconcile things, with a full range of answers that generally lead back to the coach’s preferences and budgetary considerations. Some programs let players wear whatever they want. Others set some broad color parameters, allowing everyone to pick their own shoe, as long as it’s (usually) white or a team color.
Then there’s Cleveland State, where each player conspicuously wears matching green-and-white Nikes on gamedays.
After observing the contrast between the Vikings and mismatched Milwaukee on Saturday, I asked Kielsmeier why his team chose to standardize their shoes. Here’s his unedited answer:
“Team uniformity. It’s important to me, it’s cool to be at a program that has the resources to be able to do that, because it’s a lot of money that was bought for by our school. I really want a uniform look with everything we do. Everything about our program is a presentation, and we want to represent Cleveland State in the highest possible way that we possibly can, every single time everybody sees us.”
“I’ve learned, and my belief is, [from] a long time ago, that the more you can look alike, it just sends a powerful message – here comes Cleveland State – and that’s important to me, and it’s really become important to our program. Shelby [Zoeckler]’s in charge of gear, so she’s gotta do a lot of work with it. I appreciate you noticing it, because it’s important to the program. How we look and present ourselves is the most important thing we do all the time, our players understand that, and I love how much everyone embraces that.”
