In the opening days of Cleveland State’s offseason, the Vikings’ frontcourt has been nearly wiped out by the transfer portal, as four players, including all three of the team’s centers – Jordana Reisma, Mya Moore, and Paulina Hernandez – will seek to continue their careers elsewhere. Power forward Kali Howard is the other portal entrant.
The quartet joined guard Filippa Goula, who became CSU’s first outbound transfer the morning after the CSU’s WNIT run ended in the semifinals at Buffalo on Wednesday.
Reisma is the clear headliner of the group, given that the 6-3 pivot was an All-Horizon League second team selection this year, after averaging 14.5 points and 6.9 rebounds per game. That scoring arrived largely through a national-leading 67.7 percent field goal conversion rate, and Reisma also topped Division I in related advanced statistical categories like effective field goal percentage and true shooting percentage.
She was frequently an offensive focal point for the Vikings, who typically made a concerted effort to lob the ball into the low post during half-court sets, but Reisma was also an HL All-Defensive Team selection this past season. She posted ten double-doubles during her three-year CSU career, a run that also included 86 total victories and a pair of conference titles.
Moore, who is originally from Milwaukee and played grassroots basketball with Reisma on the Wisconsin Lady Shooters, wound up as her once-and-again teammate’s primary backup during her sole season in Cleveland.
For all intents and purposes, the former two-year starter at Seattle was firmly within what ultimately became an eight-player CSU rotation. However, that rotation leaned increasingly on the starters late in the season, leaving only about seven minutes per game for Moore – much of it coming during the rare instances when Reisma was in foul trouble. Understandably, she struggled to develop a ton of consistency and went several contests where her only appearance on the floor was essentially a first-half cameo.
Still, her 2.4 rebounds and 0.8 blocks per game stood as numbers that significantly outpaced her playing time, as they ranked 62nd and 7th nationally when measured on a per-minute basis.
Both Reisma and Moore have one year of eligibility remaining after three full Division I seasons.
Hernandez was just behind that duo on this past season’s depth chart, as well as on the career timeline. The sophomore, who is coincidentally also from the Milwaukee area, averaged roughly five minutes per game in each of her two seasons in green and white. Her only double-digit scoring effort came in the third game of her career, with 13 points against Chicago State at the 2023 Viking Invitational, though she also blocked five shots in this season’s opener at Ohio State and fired home a quick eight points in the Horizon League quarterfinals against Detroit Mercy on March 6th.
Similarly, Howard saw a disproportionate number of her minutes in blowouts, or in games against lower-division foes. Nevertheless, the Louisiana native, a 2023 transfer from Hutchinson Community College, is a strong rebounder who hauled in double-digit board counts twice during her two years at CSU. She exploded for nine points late in the Vikings’ victory over Wright State on February 26th, matching her season-best total first established on December 21st against Puerto Rico-Mayaguez.
As things stand, and accounting for players out of eligibility, the Vikings’ roster is down to seven, including guards Destiny Leo, Mickayla Perdue, Colbi Maples, Sarah Hurley, Jannah Eissa, and Macey Fegan, as well as forward Brenae Jones-Grant. An eighth, Swedish guard Hanna Medina Kajevic, is expected to join the team for the 2025-26 season.
Two of that group’s three current or former conference players of the year, Leo and Perdue, offered somewhat cryptic social media posts hinting at a return to Cleveland State next season in the aftermath of the loss at UB, though neither have formally confirmed their status yet.
