CSU Courtside (December 9th)

Finding Three for the MTE

Scheduling was the prevailing topic of Monday’s weekly women’s basketball radio show.

In past years, Bob Dunn served as the program’s schedule czar. With Dunn now at Penn State, that title has passed to Steve Lanpher, who is working on next season’s slate.

“It is kind of like preparing and developing your team,” Lanpher explained. “You’ve got to spend time doing it daily and just go to work at it. You’ve got to find programs that want to continue to get better, and aren’t afraid to go on the road. It’s not really an exact science, but it’s just [spending] time getting on the phone and trying to get teams in here. And a lot of times just explaining to them that playing better teams makes your program better. So we try to spin it as well as we can.”

Both Lanpher and Chris Kielsmeier speak routinely about the difficulty of putting together a schedule, particularly while scraping for as many games in Cleveland as possible.

It might sound like a simple matter of signing up for a bunch of home-and-homes with other regional mid-majors once the buy games and MTEs are set, but even that is heavily layered. If Western Michigan (for example) and Cleveland State are both short on home contests for 2026-27, even a mundane question like “which year at which place” can potentially be a dealbreaker.

When it comes to something like CSU’s Thanksgiving MTE, where a future return visit isn’t part of the deal, the difficulty sliders are cranked all the way up. Most of the time, the program has found a way through, though the Vikings had to eject to New Orleans for Thanksgiving last November, after a field didn’t materialize for games in Woodling Gymnasium.

As for next year’s MTE? To be determined.

“[Lanpher] told me last week we kind had very little interest in it at this point, which isn’t uncommon, because when the season starts, schools just shut down scheduling,” Kielsmeier said.

“It was a great experience this year and hopefully it can be even better next year, but it’s a work in progress, and hopefully we’ll get that done soon,” Lanpher added.

In-N-Out Burger

One other thing that makes scheduling tough, not only for Cleveland State, but for every Horizon League school? The conference schedule. Since 2021-22, the head office has presented league matchups during the last week of November and the first week of December, before returning to out-of-conference play through Christmas, then resuming its standings chase just before the new year.

Those early HL games are beneficial in some ways – they help set up a consistent timing and pace to things later, while allowing a full double round robin – but they also wipe out plenty of potential non-league dates.

“We’ve got to get the games in somewhere, and the way the schedule is with the league and trying to work around finals, there’s challenges with it,” Kielsmeier said. “It’s definitely not ideal for any of us, but we’re all playing by the same rules. So be ready to play when the ball gets tipped, and go out and play well, and give yourself a chance to win. But it is tough.”

Kielsmeier brushed off the suggestion that flipping between HL and non-HL games adds another layer of difficulty. After all, both count equally when postseason invitations are handed out.

“What we’re always focused on is building our resume, chasing the NET, because we all love that so much,” he said, while garnishing the end of the sentence with plenty of sarcasm. “So I think it’s easier for our players to understand conference [or] non-conference, you’ve got to be ready to play. You’ve got to build that resume, and continue to work on giving yourselves a chance to have better options when March rolls around.”

Between the NCAA Tournament, the WBIT, and the WNIT, 148 Division I teams qualify for postseason play (pour out your beverage of choice for the WBI). The Vikings’ NET ranking, as of Tuesday, is 167, so clearly, there is a bit of work to do.

More on Macey

The show did not feature a player guest this week, probably owing largely to it being finals week at Cleveland State (Jada Leonard was originally scheduled to appear, then was replaced by Lanpher).

It’s still fair to say that Macey Fegan emerged as one of the stars of the evening, something of a victory lap after her performance at Oakland on Saturday.

While on the floor for all 40 minutes of the 72-55 victory, the junior fired in 18 points, including a pair of three-pointers, while grabbing 11 rebounds and adding three steals. It was Fegan’s career scoring high, and also her first double-double.

“She played the best game of her life,” Kielsmeier said. “And I hope and think that it’s not really going to be looked upon as the outlier here in a month.”

It’s easy to overlook now, three years down the road, but Fegan was the sort of high school superstar that usually translates to something beyond “gritty system player” in college. As a senior at Standish-Sterling Central High School, she was a Michigan Miss Basketball finalist, and her 2,276 points (including 51 in a game on one occasion) ranked 12th in state history when she graduated.

Fegan has never owned a natural jumper, so most of that was accomplished through brute force and a willingness to outwork opponents for dirty buckets.

It’s been a bit of an awkward journey since then. Fegan barely played as a freshman at Toledo in 2023-24. Then, last season at Cleveland State, Colbi Maples’ ACL tear ended up pushing her to the perimeter as a two-guard, an unfamiliar position. She performed well, though less as a scoring threat, and more as a defender who could effectively crash the boards.

Now, in a comfort zone, and with some intense off-camera shooting work starting to show itself in games, is it possible that Kielsmeier is correct when he says that Fegan’s Oakland game won’t be an outlier in the future?

“I think she’s got that kind of game to her, but when you’ve moved her around as much as we have since she’s been here, it’s kind of hard for her to get comfortable in a position,” he said. “Hopefully she’s got that calm to herself now, knowing how we’re going to utilize her. When she hits those shots, she’s going to be tough to guard.”

Scraping Bottom

While speaking with Lanpher, host Al Pawlowski praised this season’s CSU Invitational field, in relation to past years.

“It was a struggle to get good Division I teams in here,” he opined. “You’re playing Morehead State, you’re playing NJIT, and those are bottom of the barrel DIs.”

Pawlowski probably had his wires crossed, as Morehead State and NJIT were the two schools that the Vikings men’s program hosted last season, while the women were in New Orleans.

The result of that misstep was this bit of awkwardness: Lanpher was the head coach of the NJIT women’s team from 2012 through 2018. He even won a conference title with the Highlanders in 2013.