Cleveland State recovered spectacularly well from Thursday’s disappointment at Detroit Mercy by controlling Oakland on Saturday, 72-55, ending their annual Michigan trip at 8-2 overall, and 1-1 in Horizon League play.
Here’s what stood out from a resurgent effort:
1. With two seconds left in the third quarter, Oakland’s Layla Gold drove in off the wing, and was interrupted when the Vikings’ Shay Magassa stepped in front of her and took a blocking foul.
“She penetrated from the three-point line all the way to the basket,” Chris Kielsmeier said. “You’ve got three seconds to get there and cut that, and we’re late on it.”
For the most part, CSU owned the afternoon – the Golden Grizzlies never led in the game – but that foul was one data point in a larger, alarming trend. After Gold made both of her free throws, what had been a 15-point advantage midway through the period was chipped down to ten.
In some completely-superficial sense, it felt a little similar to the green and white’s last game at the OU Credit Union O’rena. On January 3rd, the Vikings were ahead for most of the contest, including by seven late in the third quarter, before Oakland rallied for a stunning upset.
Regardless, the present situation didn’t sit well with Kielsmeier.
Perhaps with that evening 11 months ago tucked somewhere in his subconscious, the coach’s message in the third quarter intermission huddle was simple, and repeated frequently: “Stay in the moment.”
“I think that we still don’t grasp the importance of every possession of every game,” he explained. “We are giving a lot of points away. When have you seen a team, coached by this coaching staff, that fouls as much as we do, on like jump shots, or we blow a block out, or we make a big mistake on outbound defense?”
The team responded with a 9-0 run early in the fourth quarter, largely powered by Izabella Zingaro, that advanced the Cleveland State lead to 18 points, and all but clinched an important bounceback victory.
“It really is just self-explanatory, do your job in the moment and get it done the right way,” Kielsmeier added.
2. That fulcrum moment at the end of the third quarter was a microcosm of a much bigger picture.
After a disastrous loss on Thursday at Detroit Mercy, CSU needed to recalibrate quickly. Though the Horizon League did away with its travel partner scheduling format two years ago, the conference’s pair of Michigan schools endure as a single road trip for visiting opponents, with just one day off in between.
That left roughly 39 hours between the end of the Titans game and the beginning of Saturday’s affair at OU, a home court that can be a hornet nest for the underprepared.
It didn’t seem like it to Cleveland State, though, as the Vikings appeared a thoroughly-renewed team, while cruising to a comfortable victory.
“I think it’s just a reminder, again, how tough they are and how much resiliency they have,” Kielsmeier said. “Friday was tough. We had to grow up a lot, and we found a way to win a game on the road on the Horizon League in a dominant way, and that’s huge.”
Undoubtedly, much was said behind the scenes and light years off the record between the two games – Kielsmeier’s short answer to a fairly standard question gives that away a bit – but whatever transpired, it worked.
Oakland was limited to a 32.7 percent success rate on its field goal attempts, CSU decisively won the rebounding battle (34-25), and the Vikings scored 24 points off of 18 OU turnovers, just shy of the program’s 70 percent conversion benchmark.
3. Unquestionably, Cleveland State’s biggest individual star on Saturday was Macey Fegan.
Playing as close as the conference can get to her remote hometown of Bentley, MI, the junior threw in 18 points, on 8-for-14 shooting, while adding 11 rebounds and three steals. The scoring total set a new career high, and the outing was Fegan’s first-ever double-double.
Simply put, it was her best game as a college player by most measures.
“She played confident,” Kielsmeier said. “I love the fact that she shot shots with confidence, in rhythm. She didn’t kind of stare at down and [wonder] ‘Do I take this, do I not?’ She knew it was a good shot. We had a moment yesterday at practice where we talked about those shots and she responded, and that’s what you love about players and coaching. When you try to help ’em, you challenge ’em and they respond.”
Largely, Kielsmeier was referring to Fegan’s work from three-point range. Despite missing all three of her deep-ball attempts entering the game, following a 25.6 percent effort last year, the forward connected on a pair timely triples in four attempts. The first contributed to a 9-0 run that put CSU on the front foot in the opening frame, while a third-quarter bomb helped foil a Golden Grizzlies rally.
“She’s just the epitome of a kid that works really hard and finds a way to get things done,” Kielsmeier said. “Maybe she’s a little bit lacking of this or that, and it just doesn’t matter because she finds a way to produce. She finds a way to stuff a stat sheet in things that don’t show up big sometimes, but certainly the things [today] showed up big.”
“It was super fun to watch because she puts so much into it. She deserves it.”
4. Oddly, until a late Sarah Hurley three, just four players accounted for all of the Vikings’ points: Fegan, Colbi Maples, Jada Leonard (who was at her chaotic best all afternoon, en route to a game-high 23 points), and Zingaro.
After struggling a bit in the Detroit Mercy game, Zingaro logged a fantastic outing at OU, including 22 points and eight rebounds.
“Izzy sometimes is the one that stops herself, whether she’s not posting hard enough or getting herself in foul trouble, whatever it may be,” Kielsmeier said. “We know how talented all of our post players are, and she’s producing at a high level with making shots. We’ve got to continue to try to find ways to get her the ball.”
The graduate student made nine of her 11 shot attempts, seeing her heaviest usage in the opening stages of the game, and early in the fourth quarter. During one memorable 90-second stretch of that final period, she powered straight through contact, first by Lianna Baxter, then from Sereniti Roberts-Adams, for a pair of buckets.
5. Saturday’s game involved Oakland’s Filippa Goula and Cleveland State’s Madison Royal-Davis, each playing against their former teams after transferring in the spring.
Goula, a reserve point guard for the Vikings between 2023 and 2025, now starts at OU. Meanwhile, Royal-Davis, who played for the Golden Grizzlies during those same seasons, has seen roughly 15 minutes per game as a power forward at CSU.
Those occurrences have become both more common and less interesting in the modern era of college sports. After all, the nature of the transfer portal has significantly diminished what it even means to play against a past school. This year’s Oakland squad features a new coaching staff and just four returning players, while the Vikings only have three of Goula’s old teammates left.
In other words, it’s highly unlikely that there’s much in the way of old scores to settle, or any particularly compelling storylines, beyond “hey, they used to wear the other uniform.”
Neither player stood as crucial to the outcome. Royal-Davis had one rebound and one assist in nine minutes, while Goula scored one point and pulled in one rebound across 13.
The Greek national was also tagged for six of Oakland’s 18 turnovers, perhaps a partial explanation for her playing about half as much as she had in the Grizzlies’ previous contests this season.
“When you coach a kid for a long time, you can understand her a little bit better than what you would on film, which is what you’re doing when you’re playing a team for the first time, and you’ve never seen some of these kids play live,” Kielsmeier said.
During her time as a Viking, Goula played in 59 games, but is probably best remembered for one in particular: March’s second-round WNIT meeting with Duquesne, where her pair of vital three-pointers helped secure CSU’s advancement.
“Flip did a lot for our program,” the coach added. “She is a great person and hit some big shots, and did a lot of things that a lot of people will really remember. She had one of the biggest shots of the year last year in the WNIT, so we have nothing but respect for her.”
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