Cleveland State very nearly stunned Horizon League favorite Green Bay in the Phoenix’s home Kress Center on Friday night, but left three points too many on the floor in a 58-55 loss.
Here are five things that stood out, as the Vikings dropped to 12-4 overall and 2-3 in Horizon League play:
1. There’s no more fitting place to begin than the game’s ending.
With the visitors trailing 56-52 in the final minute of an affair that seemed to slowly be slipping away, Chris Kielsmeier called his new favorite “use in case of emergency” play, a three-point shot from the top of the arc designed for center Izabella Zingaro. As when burying the clinching points against College of Charleston in Puerto Rico on December 19th, Zingaro’s effort was true, pulling CSU back within one, with 34 seconds remaining.
Green Bay then burned through the shot clock on the other end of the floor, but the rebound from Maddy Skorupski’s miss at the end of that process would up out of bounds off the Phoenix. As a result, following a timeout, Cleveland State had a frontcourt reset with 3.7 ticks to go.
The next offensive play was remarkably simple, as Paula Pique lobbed the inbound pass directly to the paint for Zingaro, who drew a foul to GB’s Meghan Schultz.
Zingaro, an 82.8 percent free throw shooter this season, then headed to the line, trying to win the game, or at least force overtime. Instead, she clanged both of her attempts off the rim.
(As if to kick snow in the Vikings’ faces, Green Bay runs a very specific promotion with a local Mountain Mike’s Pizza location: should an opposing player miss both free throws in a single trip to the charity stripe, all fans in attendance win a free mini pizza. Zingaro’s tough moment delivered the pies to all fans present in about the most dramatic way possible.)
Kielsmeier, while obviously not thrilled with how things played out, still felt some satisfaction in a level of execution that might have shaken out differently on another day.
“What I try to do is inspire our players, people in our program, year-round to put the work in long before those moments come,” he said. “So when the moment comes, you can get it done the way you want to, and you can get the success that you want.”
“However, when you put everything you possibly have into this thing, you can still fail. Like…that’s just life. For me, I’m about the process. I’m about what it takes to get these kids ready to play long before the moment comes. And we nailed that moment.”
Against all odds, CSU did have one more chance to force an extra period following a pair of Jenna Guyer free throws, but Jada Leonard was locked down by the Phoenix’s Kristina Ouimette and couldn’t get a desperation three away.
“You can look at a long list of reasons as to why we lost the game and it certainly doesn’t have much to do with the last 30 seconds,” Kielsmsier opined. “It has a whole lot more to do with just giving away too many points and not creating enough plays that are there to make.”
2. The coach is right, of course; as he’s said on other occasions, the points all count the same, whether they’re scored in the first 30 seconds of the night or the fourth quarter’s final half-minute.
After leading for the majority of the affair, Cleveland State found itself behind during the decisive late moments thanks to five consecutive empty possessions prior to Zingaro’s made triple. Three particularly excruciating moments involved runout layup misses by Leonard and Colbi Maples, along with an errant Leonard pass that was picked off by Guyer.
An earlier film review candidate, another Guyer interception of Leonard, came late in the third quarter. The turnover transformed a situation where the Vikings were holding for a final shot, up by a point, into a Skorupski buzzer beater that instead gave the Phoenix a one-point edge headed into the final ten minutes.
“We’ve been talking about the turnover thing for months, and it’s just putting way too much pressure on our defense when you’re giving away that many possessions,” Kielsmeier lamented. “Green Bay had eight steals. We had 18 turnovers, so that’s ten unforced turnovers. We’ve been working on this, and talking about it as a program since July, and it’s not where it needs to be. We’re not a very well coached team right now.”
There were numerous other plays that had just as much of an impact on the final score as Zingaro’s missed free throws, scattered all across Friday’s game log.
“We’ve just got to become a smarter basketball team,” Kielsmeier reiterated. “That’s the bottom line here with this. We’re losing games because we’re not a very smart basketball team and we’re not very well coached. And so those things need to change.”
3. If that’s not enough to remove most blame from the 6-4 pivot’s shoulders, perhaps this is: Zingaro was CSU’s leading scorer and rebounder with 17 points and seven boards, taking the decision in a much-anticipated matchup with emerging Green Bay star Schultz (eight points, three rebounds).
It was, however, another Phoenix center, Guyer, who turned the contest on its ear when the second half started, by hitting three-pointers on each of GB’s first three possessions of the third quarter. Those bombs erased a dominant second period by the Vikings – Cleveland State outscored the Phoenix 19-10 in the frame, including an 11-0 run to kick it off – and put the hosts back ahead by three.
“I think she’s so talented and so important for our team,” Green Bay head coach Kayla Karius said of Guyer. “So there was really only one person to go to coming [out of] halftime. I just felt like we needed to go to something to help us get some confidence back, because again, I thought we got good looks in the first half, but when you’re not hitting, I think your confidence can easily drop.”
“So we decided to go with a certain action to get her going. Then I didn’t dictate the third one, that one just happened on its own. And of course, then everybody starts to get confident and excited, and then you’re right back in it. So it was a very important run for us.”
Green Bay turns small runs into massive ones as well as anyone, so it is notable that CSU did well enough to stay tethered to the contest, eventually battling back for a lead late in the quarter. Nevertheless, Guyer’s outburst wrestled the evening from the Vikings’ control and transformed it into something fated to go down to the wire.
4. The most shocking development of the game might have taken place even before the ball was tipped, when it became clear that Maples was a full participant in warmups and would eventually play.
On December 19th, of course, the star point guard injured her ankle in the Vikings’ victory over Charleston. She then sat out CSU’s home loss to Youngstown State ten days later. After that YSU defeat, Kielsmeier initially said Maples’ prognosis was 4-6 weeks of recovery, but immediately backed off of giving a hard timeline.
“Maybe it’s going to be a while,” he said. “I don’t know. There’s no update. She’s out until she’s not.”
The coach could have been sandbagging a bit, knowing his team’s trip to Green Bay was on deck, though Karius prepped her squad as if the 2023-24 Horizon League Player of the Year was fully healthy.
“There’s just only so much information that you have,” she said. “And we know that she missed the prior two games, but from what I know about that player and that person, she’s a competitor, and she’s certainly very talented, very athletic, can shoot the ball well. So I had a feeling that in a game like this – and we have a lot of these players on our team too – they’re not going to sit that one out.”
Karius’ instincts were right on all counts. Though she did appear to be favoring that ankle just a bit, Maples almost singlehandedly sparked CSU’s second-quarter surge with eight straight points during the 11-0 run. In all, she closed with 14 tallies, largely on 4-for-6 shooting from behind the arc, four rebounds, three assists, and three steals.
It might not be remembered as the signature performance of the MBA student’s career, but it was a gutsy effort that played a major role in her team nearly pulling off a gigantic result.
“I am proud of her,” Kielsmeier said. “I’m proud of our staff and people to get her out there [as well]. It’s the season. You’re going to have aches and pains, and our kids are going to have to show a lot of toughness moving forward because this stretch is tough.”
5. It’s hard to adequately explain a Green Bay contest in the Kress Center to those who have never experienced the phenomenon in person, but suffice it to say that the Phoenix have a home court advantage that’s unique within the Horizon League and rare nationally.
Friday’s announced attendance was 2,300 fans in the 4,000-seat venue, several times larger than the crowds of a few hundred that typically show up in the Wolstein Center and most other HL gyms. The throng was seemingly unaffected by the matchup’s timing during winter break, and on the day after a holiday.
Karius even credited it with helping her team through the pivotal late moments, partially redirecting a question about her reaction to Zingaro’s three-pointer.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard the building that loud,” she said. “The walls were shaking for the two free throws that [Zingaro] had to attempt at the end. And so I just give our fans a ton of credit. Thank you for coming out. You made it an awesome atmosphere for two great teams in our league.”
There might be just a touch of hyperbole in those comments, and either way, it’s possible that GB’s supporters just really like pizza. Regardless, it’s beyond dispute that between the always-brutal travel to Green Bay, and the number of supporters the Phoenix has accumulated over the program’s decades of success, visitors have to deal with a lot that simply isn’t an issue elsewhere.
Unsurprisingly, the Phoenix is now 247-35 in the Kress Center since its 2007 opening. Cleveland State has managed just two of those 35 successful invasions, most recently during the 2021 Horizon League Tournament – when spectators weren’t allowed in the building.
“Green Bay’s a great program,” Kielsmeier added. “Part of the reason is their fan base and how many people care about the program. And they show up, and they show out, and it’s something that their people should be really proud of.”
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