On a snowy Wednesday evening in the Wolstein Center, Cleveland State clawed back to 4-4 in Horizon League play with a 68-52 victory over Detroit Mercy, avenging the Titans’ victory in the Michigan half of the season series on December 4th.
Here are five things that stood out, as the Vikings improved to 14-5 overall:
1. Far and away, the most interesting part of the victory was the play of CSU’s posts.
Izabella Zingaro was pretty close to unstoppable, when available. In just 20:45 on the floor, she scored a game-high 20 points, and the Vikings outscored Detroit Mercy by 22 points while she was in the game.
Her highlight reel might be a bit boring though, as half of her points came on free throws, through a 10-for-11 effort from the line. Those large numbers are a byproduct of the extreme amount of attention Zingaro gets from every Cleveland State opponent.
“Usually when I’m going to the basket, there’s pretty much always contact,” she observed. “So I know that I have to practice that. And whenever I miss one in a game, obviously that kind of sucks, but it’s definitely something that I practice a lot.”
(Chris Kielsmeier interjected at that point: “Did everyone hear how there’s contact pretty much on every single shot? She shot 11 free throws, she should have shot 20. I’ll leave it at that.”)
Of course, one ongoing concern with Zingaro involves the whistles in the other direction.
Shortly after a Colbi Maples steal ended with a Paula Pique runout bucket to give CSU a 29-19 lead, the center committed her second foul with 4:53 remaining in the first half, and headed to the bench. The infraction came on a Maya Anderson score that trimmed the margin to 29-21, and the play began a 10-2 Titans run that left the Vikings’ lead at the break at just 31-29.
Back on the court in the third quarter, Zingaro picked up her third foul two minutes in, with the advantage still hovering at two points. That time, her absence didn’t prove lethal, as Cleveland State led 40-32 by the time she returned later in the frame.
“The girls went out there and they killed it,” she said. “And so, if I’m on the floor or not, I still get to have fun on the bench, and have the great energy. It’s obviously hard to not be able to be on the floor, but I think we did a great job today.”
“Izzi has to understand how important she is for her to be on the floor,” Kielsmeier added. “She affects everything we’re doing offensively.”
2. Zingaro’s foul issues opened the door for Laurel Rockwood to play a season-high 18 minutes. There wasn’t anything particularly flashy about the UC Santa Barbara transfer’s game, and her two points, five rebounds, and three blocked shots probably won’t jump off of the game sheet to most people. Regardless, she was a significant and understated part of the win, as someone who was able to play big minutes in a tough situation, and keep the team moving forward without one of its stars.
“Laurel’s a really good player and she just needs opportunities,” Kielsmeier said. “She got opportunities tonight, and she made a lot of big plays for us and plays that don’t show up in the stat sheet.”
What’s particularly impressive about Rockwood is that she spent four years in a Gauchos system where she wasn’t playing the sort of classic post game that’s vital to the Cleveland State engine. That adaptation hasn’t always been pretty (late in the game, she traveled while pivoting to make a move to the basket, a recurring issue), but the progress has been noticeable.
“They’re learning all this stuff on the fly,” Kielsmeier said of his post players. “Like this is not the way they’ve been able to play earlier in their careers. And so this is all new to them.”
“It’s fun to work with them and, you know, it’s how I love to coach is playing through that paint. I told our post players, nobody in the country’s going to want to try to get you the ball more than I am. So get lower, drive more. We still can help them. We’re still not anywhere close to where they can be to their potential.”
3. One of the oddest sights of Wednesday evening was that of Macey Fegan abruptly jogging all the way to the Vikings’ locker room – off of the opposite corner of the court from the team’s bench – in the middle of the first quarter, and then back shortly after.
Moments before, the junior had lost out on a pair of rebounds in her vicinity and exited the game. It wasn’t really a question of effort, as might be the usual assumption in that situation. It never really is with Fegan.
“How many players in the country play harder than Macey?” Kielsmeier asked. “I know that’s hard to really quantify, but she’s going after how many offensive rebounds, not getting them, and still making sure she’s not getting beat defensively and doing it at high minutes, which is hard to do physically.”
No, the issue was just something that every human being deals with several times each day.
“She wasn’t moving very well,” Kielsmeier said. Fair enough.
Appropriately unburdened, Fegan went on to collect her second straight double-double with 15 points and ten rebounds, alongside four assists.
A lot of that production coincided with Zingaro’s second extended turn on the bench in the third quarter, as Fegan scored nine of her points during the period. Four came consecutively early on, setting off a 13-2 run that took Cleveland State’s two-point lead out to 13, and offering the padding that the Vikings would more or less maintain the rest of the way.
“She plays so hard and players, her teammates, feed off of that and it’s hard to…if we don’t have that from her, we’re a different basketball team,” Kielsmeier said. “So she’s got to carry that and she loves carrying it.”
Fegan loves carrying a high and contagious energy level, to be specific. Other things, not so much.
“I thought she was playing a lot harder in the fourth quarter than what she was at the start of the game,” Kielsmeier said, while mentally winking.
4. Kielsmeier struggled to field questions about Fegan without also mentioning Sarah Hurley.
The two do go hand in hand in a lot of respects. Obviously, they represent two-thirds of CSU’s returning players from last season, and probably the less-heralded segment, given that Maples is the other player who stuck around from 2024-25.
Fegan played a prominent role on the team a year ago, but did so out of position, as a shooting guard. Now, back in the frontcourt, she’s truly become one of the Vikings’ centerpieces.
It didn’t happen quite as rapidly for Hurley, who mostly sat as a freshman last year, but she’s now a notable part of the rotation as well. In fact, she’s now a starter, as she trotted out with the first five for the second consecutive time on Wednesday.
“You look at what Macey and Hurley are both doing from a player development standpoint, where their game was at when they first came here, and those two are just kids that have just worked,” Kielsmeier said. “They’re in the gym all the time. They lived in the gym in the summer.”
“To see them grow their game and improve to the players they are right now and knowing how much more potential out there is just, you know, it’s really rewarding as a coach. You just want kids to put forth their very best effort. And if things aren’t going the way you want them to, dig in and find a way to get it done. And that’s what they both do.”
Hurley’s ascension has provided some clarity to the three position that has become close to a two-player effort, also including Ella Van Weelden, as Pique has primarily been on the court as a two of late.
The duo has the unenviable assignment of replacing program legend Destiny Leo, but they’ve often come close to Leo’s 11.3 points and 5.5 rebounds in 33.8 minutes per game last season. Their output included a combined 11 points and nine rebounds against the Titans.
Hurley also provided the closest thing the game had to a “nail in the coffin” moment, a Leo-esque pair of triples 44 seconds apart that helped hold off Detroit Mercy’s final serious push, and maintained the Vikings’ 17-point lead into the final four minutes of play. In all, she was 3-for-8 from deep.
“When she hits those shots, when Ella hits those shots, we’re a much better basketball team and they’ve got the ability to hit three, four, five, threes every night,” Kielsmeier said. “And we need that consistency from them.”
5. In some superficial sense, Cleveland State’s defense played very well. The Vikings limited UDM to 52 points and 34.5 percent shooting for the game, while thoroughly dominating the glass, with a 43-24 rebounding advantage. Titans center Addisen Mastriano, who ran riot during her team’s victory in the first half of the season series last month, was held to four points in 15 minutes.
Still, when talking about CSU and defense, turnovers are always going to be a significant piece of the discussion.
The Vikings forced just 11 turnovers on Wednesday, continuing what’s now a four-game stretch with 46 total giveaways by opponents, or 11.5 per game.
Kielsmeier pointed out that his team has been squeezing down in the paint a bit more (undoubtedly, Mastriano’s big game in Calihan Hall factored into that strategy), which impacts the number of high-visibility, runout-producing steals that players like Jada Leonard can generate. In theory and ideally, the Vikings won’t have to do that as much as the post players continue to improve within the system.
Cleveland State also did produce 15 points off of those 11 Titans turnovers, an improved bit of efficiency under the circumstances. But still…
“This system does not fire forcing 11 turnovers, and we’ve got to continue to get better with it,” Kielsmeier said.
Green Bay is well clear of everyone else in the Horizon League standings at 9-0 in the conference, but beyond the Phoenix, competition for a home game in the second round of the HL tournament – given to the top five finishers in the standings – is extremely tight. CSU presently sits in sixth place, but is only two games behind second-place Youngstown State. Northern Kentucky, Robert Morris, and Purdue Fort Wayne also sit between the Penguins and Vikings.
In other words, the system will have to start firing at some point, if Cleveland State is to be positioned for success in March.
Subscribe to our emails, and get our latest posts in your inbox, plus a weekly digest of everything we've published!
