Whether fair or not, at least part of the story of Cleveland State’s 2024-25 women’s basketball season concerns disappointment. The Vikings, for the first time in program history, were voted as the preseason Horizon League favorites, then finished a distant third to Green Bay and Purdue Fort Wayne.
That’s not to say that CSU wasn’t an objectively good team. After all, bad teams don’t win 27 games and make it to the WNIT’s Fab 4. However, between a blowout loss to the Mastodons in the HL semifinals, a pair of close-yet-not defeats to Green Bay, and upsets against the likes of Oakland and Youngstown State, it was clear that what became an extremely top-heavy roster was a couple steps shy of greatness.
None of that is lost on Colbi Maples.
Maples, of course, was a huge part of the preseason hype backing the Vikings. The 2023-24 conference player of the year had just finished leading the squad to its first-ever Horizon League regular season title. Along with Destiny Leo and Mickayla Perdue – themselves past or future players of the year – the rationale was that Maples and Cleveland State’s backcourt would be able to overwhelm any opposition.
Then, in CSU’s third game of the season, against Bowling Green in the Wolstein Center on November 12, 2024, Maples tore her ACL on a drive to the basket. From that point, she was relegated to supporting her teammates, including in their moments of struggle and her moments of what-if.
“When you’re watching, you just feel like you can be out there,” she said. “I can make a difference. That was a big thing.”
That difference extended well beyond the 16.6 points or 4.1 assists per game that Maples offered two years ago. Perdue, best suited to play the off-guard in the Vikings’ system, instead became the team’s primary ballhandler in the aftermath of the injury. Macey Fegan eventually earned a starting spot on the perimeter, though she was also playing out of position, after spending the first bit of her CSU career playing wing.
Chris Kielsmeier’s defense demands a backcourt that serves as an engine for turnovers and quick points, but it sputtered without Maples to drive the process. Cleveland State slid from 9.3 steals per game to 6.7 last year (or 51st nationally to 260th). The bottom-line numbers didn’t fall off quite that drastically, but the Vikings’ scoring and margin numbers still dipped from elite to merely solid, certainly enough to be something of consequence against a top opponent.
“I think sometimes we didn’t talk about how much we missed her last year from a defensive standpoint, and how much she gets others involved,” Kielsmeier said. “Obviously, it’s easy to see that she can score, and the points she puts up, but what she does on the defensive end, and being able to create easy shots for others, it’s hard to replicate when she’s not out there, no matter how good of a coach you are.”
While Maples couldn’t help much of that, she contributed in every way she could. Much of that involved serving as something of an auxiliary assistant coach, helping with calls from the sideline, leading pre-practice stretching routines, and everything in between. She then stayed in Cleveland during the offseason and helped each of her 11 new teammates move in and get settled.
“She’s now pouring into other people in ways that I didn’t ever think she could do, it has been just astonishing,” Hanna Zerr, the team’s director of basketball operations, said back in June.
Of course, there was also the matter of Maples’ rehab, and its inherent frustration.
“When you get to that three-to-five month stage when everything seemed like it’s just going slow and you’re just doing everything repetitive,” she began, “it’s kind of hard to realize…am I actually getting better? Or is it just the same thing over and over again?”
“It’s taught me that everything doesn’t have to be fast-paced, and everything is not going to go at your pace. God taught me that patience is key, and just to lean on what he has, because he has a big plan at the end anyway.”
What ultimately became a ten-month process formally ended in September, when Maples was finally cleared for full activity. While that’s certainly a notable step towards getting the one-time Grambling point guard back and at her best, there’s still something of a secondary rehab needed to get re-acclimated to the Vikings’ tempo.
“She’s had some really good moments on the court,” Kielsmeier said. “It’s still a process though. You’ve still got to continue to monitor her from a physical standpoint to make sure she’s not getting too fatigued because she wants to go. She don’t want to pull back.”
“I’m still getting my speed and stuff back,” Maples conceded.
That will happen eventually, of course, and the hope is that what follows is a Cleveland State team that re-discovers a vital piece of its recent conference titles while its star point guard takes her previous position as one of the top players in the HL.
Those are issues for November, though. In October, Maples is just thrilled to be back.
“I can’t even describe it,” she said. “I’m just giddy, I’m ready to get back on the court. This is a thing that I really love, and being able to play, I just feel like I’m at ease again.”
Subscribe to our emails, and get our latest posts in your inbox, plus a weekly digest of everything we've published!
