CSU Courtside (December 17th)

To Everything – Turn, Turn, Turn

During the opening segment of his weekly radio show on Monday, Chris Kielsmeier responded to a comment from host Al Pawlowski by passing along something he said to the team at the beginning of practice earlier in the day.

“I don’t track this, so I don’t know this for certain, but if I’m going to say it, I’m pretty certain with it. If the season ended today, we would be the team with the highest forced turnover total of any team I’ve ever coached,” he recalled.

“We’re forcing almost 22 turnovers a game. That’s really, really hard to do. Twenty-six years, number one. Unfortunately, on the flip side, if the season ended today, 18.7 turnovers per game would most likely be the highest turnover total of any team I’ve ever coached.”

That claim isn’t totally correct, but it’s also not far off.

Kielsmeier’s last team at Division III’s Howard Payne University, 2007-08, was also his best at causing turnovers. Led by superstar point guard Meia Daniels and her 4.4 steals per game, that squad averaged a staggering 23.7 takeaways. Appropriately enough, the Lady Jackets went 33-0 and won the national championship that year. The previous season, a sign of things to follow in hindsight, witnessed an average of 23.1 forced turnovers on the way to a 28-2 overall mark.  

This season’s “almost 22” (21.4, to be exact) sits third, behind that HPU peak. Given that last year’s average, 14.1, was the worst of Kielsmeier’s career by quite a bit, he can hardly be blamed for mildly overestimating a wild swing in the opposite direction.

The Vikings’ present giveaway average also ranks third among Kielsmeier’s teams, behind his first two groups at Howard Payne.

“We saw this coming back in August,” he added. “If you came to our practices in the summer when you’re trying to put a whole new group together, and trying to get ’em to figure out how to play together, that’s tough and sometimes, just basic fundamentals can get exploited a little bit more when you don’t understand the system.”

Sheep Go to Heaven

Somewhat surprisingly, Kielsmeier and forward Ella Van Weelden never really crossed paths in their basketball lives until this year, despite both being native Iowans.

They’ve done their best to make up for lost time, sometimes engaging in spirited discussions about – what else? – farm animals.

“It’s just an Iowa thing,” Van Weelden said.

With Southern California native Queen Ruffin and Bronx product Jada Leonard undoubtedly rolling their eyes somewhere nearby during a recent team dinner, Kielsmeier and Van Weelden debated the temperament of Ovis aries, domesticated sheep.

“I had sheep when I was little and they were so mean,” Van Weelden explained. “Coach K was like, no, they’re not mean. I was like, yes, they are. [My teammates] were like, what are you talking about? I’m like, this is an Iowa conversation. Just stay out of it.”

Though sheep rate poorly on the MBA student’s kindness scale, they’re apparently not as bad as goats.

“Those horns, they can be…they’re strong. They’re strong,” she said.

Van Weelden did not elaborate on her firsthand experience with the horns and strength of goats, but suffice to say that there’s likely some unpleasant history backing her opinions.

Scouring the Globe

There’s something a bit unique about Cleveland State’s recruiting.

The Vikings, to an unusual degree, obsess over system fit and winning mentality. That might not sound terribly exceptional compared to most others, but the results can be confusing to the untrained observer.

For example, a team like Green Bay, which also had a bevy of roster spots to fill in the spring, picked up two well-known Horizon League stars in Maddy Skorupski and Kamy Peppler, as well as several former high-major talents. Robert Morris anchored its class with former ACC starter Aislin Malcolm and NEC all-conference pick Bailey Kuhns. Purdue Fort Wayne’s two most prominent additions were a two-time NAIA All-American, Alana Nelson, and another former ACC-er, Lili Krasovec.

Each of those players is, quite obviously, very good, and it was always reasonable to expect that their new teams would be good as well.

CSU’s recruiting centerpieces, meanwhile, were a Division II player who had ridden the bench at Toledo two years earlier, and a Wisconsin high schooler who didn’t even get a sniff from the Phoenix.

Oh, wait, those are the headlining players who left the Vikings for high-major teams and significant NIL paydays, Mickayla Perdue and Jordana Reisma.

Sure, CSU might never earn the April hype of the other conference favorites, but they clearly know what they’re doing, as demonstrated by the long list of relatively unheralded recruits who eventually touched greatness as Vikings.

Assistant coach Shelby Zoeckler spoke extensively about that process on Monday.

“There are a thousand players in the portal every year,” she said. “If they don’t get the system, we’re not going to bring them here, because they’re not going to be successful and they’re not going to be happy.”

Sometimes the targets are obvious, as in the case of Izabella Zingaro, who has done well filling Reisma’s old post spot. Other times, there needs to be a healthy bit of projection, as happened with Laurel Rockwood and Shay Magassa, who came from systems drastically different from how the Vikings play.

“I think a lot of it is seeing their potential,” Zoeckler said. “Laurel’s got a great build for the five in our spot, and she’s just never been taught how to play that way. So it’s seeing their attributes, and how we can mold and develop those.”

Then, of course, there’s that other piece, what Kielsmeier often calls the “it factor.” It’s a nuanced, complex concept, but one that can largely be oversimplified to a player’s desire to win and everything that might entail, from the long summer days learning a new system, to a possible reduction of playing time, to cultural fit.

“One of the first things that we always talk about with recruits is how important is it for you to play meaningful games in March?” he said. “How much do you want to play deep into the postseason? That’s what we want: Cleveland State women’s basketball on the court, in between the lines, to be defined by hanging banners in the Wolstein.”

The Process in Action

Van Weelden, obviously, checked all of those boxes.

“Ella can shoot the heck out of the ball,” Zoeckler said. “That’s a special stroke that you can’t teach. So when you see something like that on tape, you’re automatically in your brain like, wow, that’s a great piece we could add to our program.”

The subsequent courtship moved extremely quickly.

“I called her when I was at the Final Four, we were in between sessions, and she texted me back right away, so we got on the phone that day,” Zoeckler remembered. “It was exciting how interested she was in us, and I think she saw as the vision we put forward with her. We have great playmakers on the block, great playmakers who can get downhill, and we need those shooters who are going to step up and knock down that shot 60, 70 percent of the time.”

The two sides quickly arranged a visit, and Van Weelden – who has also spent time at Valparaiso and Northern Colorado – liked what she saw. After going 14-17 at UNC in 2024-25, and putting in two seasons with the downtrodden Beacons, it’s probably unnecessary to say that she was ready to bring sheep-like intensity to going out a winner in her final collegiate season.

“I was in the portal twice and you always hear that recruiting pitch, and it kind of all sounds the same [in] every conversation, but Coach K was really special,” Van Weelden said.

“He not only is talking the talk, but he’s walking the walk, and he has that resume, and he really spoke to me in a way that made me really want to compete for him and compete for what he’s been able to accomplish in the past.”

She canceled her other scheduled visits and began a story that is still being written, though her 5-for-8 line from three-point range over the last two games certainly validates what Zoeckler saw on that initial film viewing.