In a contest that largely defies clean explanation, Cleveland State overcame a slow start, the resulting 12-point second-quarter deficit, Colbi Maples’ severe foul trouble, and a staggering 32 turnovers, to improve to 2-0 with a 68-61 victory at Cal State Fullerton on Sunday.
Nevertheless, here’s an attempt at identifying five things that stood out through the chaos.
1. One of the major storylines throughout the affair concerned Cleveland State’s inability to handle Fullerton’s intense, press-whenever-possible defense. Though the Vikings do have an experienced backcourt – always a major asset when dealing with pressure – it doesn’t have a ton of time together as a unit.
CSUF forced 30 Pepperdine turnovers in its season opener on Tuesday. The Waves won the game, however, thanks to a 61.7 shooting percentage, one made possible by plenty of open looks on the occasions when the visitors were able to dissolve the Titans’ pressure.
Fullerton followed up that suffocating effort by…doing even better. Cleveland State coughed up the ball ten times in the opening quarter, and looked thoroughly discombobulated most of the time.
“We’re just so much a work-in-progress team right now, and to handle the travel and everything that comes with going out here is a lot, especially when it’s the first time that you’ve traveled with this group,” head coach Chris Kielsmeier said. “We were just not ready to play against that kind of pressure that we knew we were going to see.”
“Fullerton’s a really good basketball team, and I’ve known their coach, [new Titans boss John Bonner], for a long time,” he added. “They’re extremely well coached already. You can tell the impact that he’s had on the program. They’re going to win a lot of basketball games this year.”
The Vikings committed just four turnovers in the second quarter, as their comeback from a hole that hovered around ten points for most of the first 15 minutes of the game began in earnest.
Though things regressed after halftime, the visitors held Fullerton to just 4-for-23 (17.4 percent) from the floor over the final two quarters, largely negating the impact of their errors. It didn’t hurt that Cleveland State also cleaned up the overwhelming majority of those 19 misses, outrebounding CSUF 30-10 over the final 20 minutes.
CSU was also a bit fortunate, in that they surrendered 37 free throw attempts on 27 committed fouls, but the Titans only hit 21 of them.
“I’ve been here eight years and I don’t think any team’s ever shot 37 free throws on us,” Kielsmeier said. “We’re the team that usually flips that and has a much greater advantage with it. We didn’t have that tonight, our opponent shot 37 and we could have lost the game just by fouling too much. So we’ve got to get that cleaned up.”
2. After that productive second frame that saw CSU trim what looked like a dead game into a fairly-encouraging 37-32 deficit at the break, the rally hit some significant adversity when Maples committed her third and fourth fouls in the first two minutes of the third quarter.
The 2023-24 Horizon League Player of the Year was stapled to the bench from that point, until 7:19 remained in the game. Almost immediately after re-entering, Maples hit a step-back three against a dying shot clock to give the Vikings a 58-53 lead. However, less than a minute later, she ate her fifth foul and was reduced to a spectator the rest of the way.
In all, Maples participated for just over 21 minutes, but only 164 seconds in the second half.
Kielsmeier shrugged off his star’s issues and those 37 free throws taken by Fullerton with a quick “officials are officials, you’ve got to play through it and find a way.”
Actually, he was much more concerned with a bizarre technical foul levied against the Vikings midway through the first quarter. Essentially, it came about because Kielsmeier tried to substitute, but the referee didn’t hold up play to allow for it, leading to Cleveland State being penalized for having too many players on the floor.
“It was extremely disappointing that the officiating crew and the table crew, all of it, allowed that technical foul to happen. In 26 years, I’ve never seen that happen one time, and you shouldn’t inbound the ball until six people are not on the floor. And we get penalized for it, and it’s disappointing.”
3. As a result of Maples’ foul issues, most of the job fell to Jada Leonard, who took over point guard duties, Macey Fegan, who moved back to the off-guard (her position last year, though she had exclusively played forward this year), and wing Paula Pique.
All three offered massive responses.
Pique’s contribution was perhaps the most visible, as the Spaniard connected on back-to-back corner threes in the final two minutes that turned a 61-58 deficit – the Vikings went nearly five minutes without scoring following Maples’ final efforts, allowing CSUF to re-take the lead – into a 64-61 advantage.
Those points rounded out a stellar all-around effort, including ten points, ten rebounds, and six assists.
Leonard, despite struggling at times as a novice point guard, made two steals to close out the win. The first came with 17 seconds left and CSU still holding that 64-61 lead. After the Bronx native eventually hit two crucial free throws on the possession she earned, Leonard intercepted the ball again and took it the distance herself for the final points of the game.
“When you say you won a game with 32 turnovers and 37 free throws being shot [against you], and Colbi basically plays a few minutes the entire second half, and you make a run on them with a group that’s very inexperienced playing together, that’s just big-time toughness,” Kielsmeier said. “Sometimes everything’s going against you and you’ve just got to find a way to get it done. And that’s what our kids did.”
4. Beyond the work of Leonard, Fegan and Pique, perhaps the biggest positive takeaway for the Vikings was the play of Izabella Zingaro.
The former Montana and Iowa State center was virtually unstoppable for a lot of the contest, finishing with 16 points on 6-for-8 shooting, along with a game-high 12 rebounds. Her 29 minutes and 23 seconds on the floor were also a career high.
Just about everyone in green and white had both good moments and bad in Titan Gym, but Zingaro consistently answered the bell when needed.
In fact, Kielsmeier would like to see more of her, at least in terms of usage.
“Izzy’s got big time potential, and we’ve been working behind the scenes for months trying to get her to the level that we know that she can be at,” he said.
“We’re having a hard time getting in the ball right now. Teams are denying us and taking away the high posts, and we’re having a hard time getting that high-low going, and we’ve got to get that going because that’s a big part of who we are.”
5. Kielsmeier typically tries to put together his non-conference schedule with transformational experiences in mind.
Of course, that’s a lot easier said than done for something like a trip to Fullerton wedged into the normal course of the regular season, as opposed to the flexibility generally afforded by an MTE. In this case, the Vikings flew out to California on Friday, leaving only Saturday to figure out a non-basketball adventure.
They did, however, find a way to squeeze in plenty.
“We got on a bus tour and took ’em down to Hollywood and saw all kinds of famous people’s houses and the Chinese Theater and [the Walk of Fame], I don’t even know what you call all this stuff,” Kielsmeier said. “They got to buy some knickknacks on the street and take their pictures with Mickey Mouse and stuff.”
“It’s Hollywood, it’s Beverly Hills, man. There are so many things to see and do and you don’t have to do anything. Just walk around and you’ll experience things. But this is a pretty cool environment, and that’s a big part of why we wanted to come out here.”
There are two road trips remaining before Horizon League play fully takes over the 2025-26 season: November 21st at Northwestern (a game five days clear of any other, in either direction), and a return engagement at the Puerto Rico Clasico on December 19th and 21st.
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