Cleveland State fell just short in its only scheduled game against a high-major opponent this season, as Northwestern took a 75-68 decision over the Vikings in Evanston, IL on Friday night.
Here are five things that stood out, as CSU fell to 4-1 this season:
1. Oftentimes, when a mid-major team visits a power conference foe, the former struggles a bit with “bright lights syndrome.”
That’s natural, of course; it’s hard to avoid being impressed when walking into a glistening arena jammed with every available amenity, and seeing a famous logo that’s enjoyed a lot of historic athletic success on the opposite sideline, often in front of a large crowd. Then, by the time the underdogs finally realize that the rims are the same ten feet above the floor as at home (apologies to Norman Dale), they’re already down by 15 or 20 points and have essentially lost the game.
CSU has sometimes appeared in awe of their surroundings at times when matched up against a moneyed program, but that was not at all the case inside Welsh-Ryan Arena. The Vikings jumped all over Northwestern from the opening tip, building a lead that eventually peaked at 28-13 early in the second quarter.
Macey Fegan delivered one tone-setter, stealing a rebound from NU’s Grace Sullivan, then putting home a layup while drawing a foul. After that, Colbi Maples and Ella Van Weelden carried most of the weight, combining for five three-pointers within those first 28 points.
“You want to start games well like that,” head coach Chris Kielsmeier said. “The players were certainly confident. I didn’t get the sense all day that they didn’t believe they could win and believe that they belonged here and could compete, and they went out and proved that.”
But then…
“That’s two back-to-back games where we started great, but that’s also back-to-back games where we didn’t play worth a lick in the second quarter, and it kind of all got washed away.”
Northwestern went on a 13-0 run immediately after Cleveland State obtained its largest lead of the night, pulling the affair back to a tightness that lasted most of the rest of the way.
2. Going into the game, it was well known that the Vikings would need to find an answer for the Wildcats’ two dominant frontcourt players, Sullivan and Tayla Thomas.
The duo lived up to billing, particularly Sullivan, who finished with 20 points and 11 rebounds. What’s more, the 6-4 senior was far from a one-dimensional low block specialist, and presented matchup issues all game long with a jumper that was deadly accurate from just about anywhere inside the three-point arc.
“That’s kind of why I get excited for the zone, because I love the mid-range,” the forward said. “So I think that coming into this, I was ready to take that.”
“Once it started falling, I just kept taking it.”
Thomas fouled out in the fourth quarter, but managed 11 points and six rebounds before then, in addition to proving an immovable object in the middle of the floor on the defensive end.
Most of those results were anticipated going into the contest. Claire Keswick, however, was a surprise.
Keswick is decidedly a bit player for the Wildcats. The sophomore barely saw the floor last year, and played a total of 24 minutes across NU’s first four games of this season. Yet against Cleveland State, she obliterated her career highs with 25 minutes and 18 points, the latter figure derived entirely from a 6-for-14 effort from three-point range.
“Claire really, you know, just helps open things up for everybody else,” Northwestern head coach Joe McKeown said. “And you know, she’s a great weapon when we can get her the ball in the open court.”
That “open court” was a sticking point for McKeown’s counterpart.
“I kinda knew that we were going to get beat from that three-point line if we didn’t get our rotation quicker and better,” Kielsmeier offered. “Our wings are too low…maybe some of that was that going into the game, we were worried about the high-low, so maybe I overcoached that and got them a little more worried about the inside game than what [Keswick] can do.”
Two of Keswick’s triples launched the 13-0 run that pulled Northwestern back into the contest, and two others put her team on the front foot during a seesaw fourth quarter.
3. Throughout the evening, Cleveland State’s plan on offense was obvious: get the ball down low to Izabella Zingaro.
The problem? Zingaro collected two early fouls, and only ended up playing five minutes of the first half.
“Izzi’s gotta learn how to stay out of foul trouble,” Kielsmeier lamented. “It’ll be something she continues to grow and learn with. Post players in this system, it’s always a learning curve for them, figuring out how to defend without fouling when an official is right there, just waiting to blow a [whistle]. It’s just something she’s gotta get better with.”
That wasn’t all. Northwestern dominated the glass, outrebounding CSU 48-28, and only turned the ball over 11 times, meaning that the Vikings were rarely able to shift into their preferred posture of generating points through transition. Maples and Jada Leonard generally found the sledding tough in the paint against a large Wildcats interior that blocked seven shots.
“When you turn teams over [only] 11 times, in this system, it puts a lot of pressure on your defense,” Kielsmeier said. “It also puts a lot of pressure on your offense, because you’re not getting any turnover points off of those. I think at the end of the first quarter, we had nine points off of turnovers, and we finished the game with 14.”
“We’ve showed that that’s been a strength of ours, but it wasn’t there tonight. [Northwestern] really played well in the moment, and executed once they got settled down, and we never really forced them out of it.”
All of that meant that the Vikings became a team that was a bit over-reliant on three-pointers, particularly in the first half, since their preferred offensive avenues were unavailable, for one reason or another.
The good news was that it worked well for a time, as Maples – who finished with a game-high 24 points, thanks mostly to six deep balls – and Van Weelden were both hot in the early going. The bad news was that it proved unsustainable, and Cleveland State finished the game with a 33.9 percent effort on field goal attempts, after the Vikings missed out on their usual array of transition buckets.
4. Once Zingaro was back on the floor after halftime, CSU took full advantage. It almost seemed at moments that the 6-4 graduate student was the Vikings’ first, second, and third option as she rolled to 18 points, all in the final 20 minutes, along with eight rebounds.
“We did a good job of getting her the ball in the second half,” Kielsmeier said. “We’ve been working on that a lot behind the scenes, so we need to continue to get better with that, because we know how well she can play.”
Zingaro was integral to the foul issues faced by both Sullivan and Thomas, and was a spotless 10-for-10 from the free throw line. She even attempted a pair of three-pointers, an extreme rarity for a post in the Vikings’ system (for context, the team had a total of two attempts by all players at the position across the three seasons prior to 2025-26).
5. In spite of everything, including the second quarter collapse, a ten-point deficit at one juncture of the third quarter, following a 14-2 Northwestern run, and Keswick’s final two deep balls that put NU ahead 64-58 with just under six minutes remaining, Cleveland State still had a fantastic opportunity to beat a Big Ten team for the first time since taking down Indiana during the 2012-13 season.
Maples quickly answered Keswick’s final barrage to pull the Vikings within 64-61 then, after an even exchange of points between Zingaro and the Wildcats’ Casey Harter, dropped another bomb to tie the score at 68.
After a stop on the home team’s ensuing possession, CSU held the ball in a deadlocked game that had crept into the final two minutes.
However, things went completely sideways from there, as Maples, Leonard, and Zingaro missed threes, and the Canadian center also committed a traveling violation on a crucial possession. Ultimately, Northwestern would score the final seven points of the evening, mostly on free throws.
“There’s a long list of things that we could change that would’ve changed the outcome of this,” Kielsmeier said. “The game comes down to finishing, and we just didn’t do enough to finish possessions. We didn’t do enough to finish on out-of-bounds defense. And we certainly didn’t do enough to finish offensively, we didn’t shoot the ball very well at all.”
“We didn’t do a lot of the things that we needed to do to win the game, but their toughness, and how they’re never going to give up was apparent again. They’ve just gotta play smarter and gotta execute better.”
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