Welcome back to the #HLWBB Starting Five, your sporadic offseason rundown of news and fun from around Horizon League women’s basketball.
1. A Hard Road
It seems like schedule announcements arrive earlier and earlier every season. Just a couple years ago, releasing during the second week of August meant you were among the first in the conference. Not so much in 2025, which will greet August tomorrow with the non-league slates of Northern Kentucky, Cleveland State, Youngstown State and Oakland fully in the world. On top of that, Purdue Fort Wayne has made several game announcements, likely including most of the high-profile events, while a handful of other games have trickled out as well.
We’ve already talked about NKU and CSU elsewhere, so let’s focus on the recent full drops from Youngstown State and Oakland. It seems like the Golden Grizzlies are angling for a Big Ten invitation, because…yikes.
The games against Michigan (yes, former OU star Brooke Quarles-Daniels is still with the Wolverines), Michigan State, and Wisconsin are an obvious focal point – including for the school’s accountants, as those three guarantees likely add up to roughly $100,000 – but it’s also brutal in other ways.
Oakland, unless the Horizon League throws them a bone during the first week of conference games, literally won’t play at the O’rena between November 10th and late December. Yikes again. On top of that, the non-Big Ten opponents aren’t exactly meatballs, including likely top-half teams such as Illinois State and St. Thomas.
Youngstown State did things a bit more conventionally. The Penguins also play MSU (11 days before Oakland, if that matters), and sprinkled in a couple of very strong mid-majors like Bucknell and Toledo, both at the Beeghly Center. They’ll open things up with the mighty Thiel Tomcats, a school quite literally responsible for my existence (my mom and my dad’s brother both went there, among several other relatives).
Overall, it presents as a very nicely-balanced effort with a good mix of opponents and reasonable travel.
You might remember that Melissa Jackson’s first YSU schedule included a soft runway, opening with a long string of winnable home games for her young team, before the Guins went out to Bucknell and got thumped. The training wheels are now off, so let’s see how they ride.
2. Crazy Train
Recruiting can often be fraught with surprises, particularly in the current environment. On the other hand, sometimes it can be the most predictable thing ever, as was the case when Green Bay landed the commitment of 2027 prospect Kardyn Peppler on July 24th.
Peppler, as you probably guessed, is the younger sister of Kamy and Kallie Peppler, the former Milwaukee Panthers who transferred to Kayla Karius’ program this offseason. Kamy will be out of eligibility by the time Kardyn arrives, but if all goes according to plan, she should get a couple seasons in with Kallie.
The oldest sibling, however, presents the more natural comparison for the youngest, given that she’s a 5-7 point guard. Here’s Prep Girls Hoops’ Brady Peterson’s scouting report:
“The Hortonville guard has been a steady presence at the lead-guard spot. She is one of the better off-hand finishers in the state and does a solid job of getting into the paint and helping her team earn open looks for herself or her teammates. Peppler is a player who could surprise some people with how well she plays as the offensive threat for the Polar Bears this season.”
To this point, Green Bay is the only Horizon League school (and one of just 13 nationally) to have prospects locked in for 2027. That list also includes Avalyn Albrecht, who pledged at the beginning of the month.
Even wilder than that? The Phoenix sister connections now include the Pepplers, Julianna and Kristina Ouimette, and 2026 commits Ady and Riley Ketterhagen.
3. Iron Man
Cassie Schiltz didn’t get to play with any of those people, outside of Julianna Ouimette last year, but she has much bigger concerns at the moment.
That’s because she’s now an assistant coach at UW-Oshkosh, which hired the former Phoenix standout on July 22nd.
Obviously, it’s impossible to get a perfect read on the coaching acumen of Schiltz, or any first-timer who just concluded their playing career. But throughout her time at Green Bay, she was always very prominent as a face of a program that can often be faceless (complimentary), and offered remarkable consistency on the court as well.
Given the strong coaching and cultural similarities that seem to exist throughout basketball in the state of Wisconsin, and Schiltz’s incredibly successful run at perhaps the foremost example of those things, she certainly seems to have a very solid baseline.
Or you can just take Oshkosh head coach Brad Fischer’s word for it:
“We are thrilled to welcome Cassie Schiltz to our staff,” he said in the school’s release. “Cassie is a proven winner who brings a relentless work ethic, strong basketball IQ, and a high level of character to our program. She had a tremendous playing career at Green Bay and has already gained valuable experience coaching with the Wisconsin Legends club program. I’m confident she will make an immediate impact and is without a doubt a rising star in our profession.”
If nothing else, Schiltz picked the right place to start, given that Oshkosh is one of the best and most respected programs in NCAA Division III. Since Fischer took over the Titans in 2012, they’ve won at least 20 games each season (other than a 9-2 mark in a COVID-abbreviated 2020-21 that nevertheless still produced a WIAC title), and have qualified for ten of the last 11 NCAA Tournaments. Last year’s 27-5 campaign culminated with a run to the national semifinals. So, uh, no pressure, Cassie. Just keep the wagon rolling.
Schiltz is the second member of her GB class to take up coaching, joining Jasmine Kondrakiewicz, who stuck around the Kress Center as a member of Karius’ staff.
4. Diary of a Madman
I was absolutely mindblown when the WBCA’s annual Academic Top 25 came out last week. Flabbergasted, even.
It’s not terribly difficult to figure out why, as Horizon League schools were represented a whopping six times on the list, which ranks Division I women’s basketball teams by their combined grade point average. Green Bay’s 3.862 was the best mark nationally, and the Phoenix were followed by Youngstown State (third, 3.781), Cleveland State (17th, 3.685), Northern Kentucky (18th, 3.678), Milwaukee (T-20th, 3.667), and Purdue Fort Wayne (24th, 3.624).
Robert Morris, which finished with a 3.431 GPA, was one of 90 schools listed as a “special mention” (basically, everyone not in the top 25 but above a 3.000). So was future HL member Northern Illinois, which posted a 3.585.
A couple of those schools, particularly Green Bay and Youngstown State (which topped last year’s list and, in fact, has a display in the lobby of their basketball office commemorating their WBCA finishes) are frequent flyers. Cleveland State and Milwaukee graduated from the special mention category last season to break into the ranking proper, while Northern Kentucky and Purdue Fort Wayne are new entrants.
As a reminder, there were 362 teams in DI last season. So, basic math, only the top 6.91 percent of teams made it into the top 25. Rounding to the nearest whole number, and in a randomly-selected environment, the Horizon League “should have had” one team on the list. Instead it had six, literally more than half of the conference.
Put another way, if GPAs decided the seeding for the NCAA Tournament, the HL would have had two top seeds (GB and YSU), three teams on the five line (CSU, NKU, and UWM), and a six-seed (PFW), with RMU and NIU (oh, why not) in the field as well. That’s comparable to what the Big Ten did on the court last season.
Phenomenal.
5. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
I’ve talked a little bit about the significance of Cleveland and Detroit recently gaining WNBA expansion franchises, particularly in the context of the Horizon League. IU Indy – based in a city that already has a team, of course – gave a recent demonstration of how HL schools can capitalize on being an epicenter for women’s basketball.
That city, Indianapolis, hosted the WNBA All-Star Game on July 19th, and the Jaguars jumped into the game itself, and its ancillary events, as thoroughly as they possibly could.
The post above does a good job of running things down, but let’s elaborate on a couple of those items.
Jags junior Nevaeh Foster participated in the Indiana Legends Game, an exhibition conducted as part of the WNBA Live fan event held at the Indiana Convention Center, and in conjunction with all-star week. The contest featured notable high school players from Indiana over the last 30 years. Foster was very much one of those as the 21st-leading scorer in state history at the end of her career, and someone who earned a long list of accolades that included a McDonald’s All-American nomination, as well as a first team all-state selection.
Meanwhile, Kaylin Moorehead attended The BOSS Experience. That event brought prominent women who work in sports together (to be precise, the acronym stands for “Bosses, Owners, Spenders, and Storytellers”) for a weekend of experiences and, of course, networking.
None other than Horizon League commissioner Julie Roe Lach was on the committee that organized The BOSS Experience. And, wouldn’t you know it, for as little as $1 per month, you can read Chris Schumerth’s feature on the conference office’s involvement with the WNBA this month, as it’s posted on our Patreon page.
How’s that for synergy?
