Cleveland State collected a stunningly-decisive 73-56 victory over Purdue Fort Wayne in the Wolstein Center on Saturday afternoon, helping the Vikings keep pace in an extremely competitive Horizon League race.
Here are five things that stood out, as the green and white improved to 18-8 overall, and 8-7 in conference play:
1. Chris Kielsmeier nearly always leads by talking about his team’s defense – even when directly asked about its offense – and after beating PFW, he had more reason to do so than normal.
“If you look at how we defended in that second half, that was as good as we’ve defended all year, on a lot of tough stuff,” he said.
There are plenty of statistics to back up that assessment, but the bottom-line numbers make the case pretty definitively: the Mastodons scored just 22 points after halftime, and hit just five total field goals in 26 attempts across the third and fourth quarters.
As the coach mentioned, Purdue Fort Wayne typically presents a lot of challenges for any defense.
Chief among them is Alana Nelson, who was nearly flawless in PFW’s 80-70 victory over Cleveland State on January 21st, including 23 points on 9-for-12 shooting (4-for-5 of which came from behind the arc). However, Boston College transfer Lili Krasovec has emerged as one of the Horizon League’s best post players, athletic Jordan Reid is always an x-factor, and Rylee Bess has spent most of the year among the nation’s top freshmen for three-point percentage.
Those players helped the Mastodons begin that matchup less than three weeks ago by hitting their first seven shots, wrestling control of the evening from the opening tip.
“They’re hard to guard,” Kielsmeier added. “They have great inside-outside punch.”
That’s what made the outcome a bit shocking.
The ‘Dons aren’t really the carefree bombers of years past any longer, but they’re still squarely among the top half of Division I teams in both points from three-pointers and success rate on deep balls. CSU, however, limited its guests to just 3-for-19 from behind the arc, including 0-for-8 in the second half. Bess, the ringleader of the shooters, missed all five of her attempts and ended up playing just 16 minutes, well under her season average.
The Vikings have also had a love-hate relationship with rebounding all season, but they dominated PFW on the glass as well, winning that category by a 43-29 count. Macey Fegan and Izabella Zingaro did a disproportionate amount of the work, with 13 and 11 boards, respectively.
“It’s us versus us,” Kielsmeier said. “It’s just…we’ve got to figure ourselves out with a higher level of consistency and when we do that, we’ll play a lot better for 40 minutes.”
2. Of course, things weren’t always that clear cut.
Cleveland State gave up an early lead, thanks to a 10-0 Mastodons run late in the first quarter. Then, by the early stages of the second period, both Zingaro and Laurel Rockwood each had two fouls, and remained on the bench until halftime. Purdue Fort Wayne relentlessly attacked the resulting massive hole in the middle of the floor, largely through Reid (12 first-half points), Nelson (nine) and Hillary Offing (eight), shooting exactly 50 percent – 13-for-26, to be precise – during the opening 20 minutes.
It almost felt as if the Vikings were a bit lucky to be within two at halftime, though Colbi Maples might dispute that characterization.
The star point guard scored a game-high 27 points, including 17 of CSU’s 32 first-half tallies, at times seemingly keeping her team close in the early going through sheer force of will.
There was a little bit of everything from the MBA student. She went 4-for-7 from three-point range, accounting for all but one of the Vikings’ triples during the afternoon. She was frequently on the business end of runout layups after one of Jada Leonard’s four steals or Cleveland State’s 31 defensive rebounds. And, of course, Maples put the ball on the floor in the half court plenty of times too.
“When she’s like that, she’s unguardable,” Kielsmeier stated. “When she gets that three-ball going, and she gets in her zone…obviously she hit a lot of shots, but she took a lot of shots, and she needs to take a lot of shots.”
“When she’s in attack mode and going at it, that’s when she’s at her best. She certainly had an incredible night, but I also think that it’s kind of just Colbi being Colbi.”
After a rough midseason patch that included an ankle injury and a subsequent slump, Maples has now scored 20 or more points in three of her last four contests. Her 13.4 tallies per conference game are seventh best in the league.
3. Following the break, Zingaro was back on the floor, and did plenty to make up for lost time.
“We just kind of regathered ourselves at halftime, and knew we had to come…this is what we want,” she began. “We want to beat this team, obviously. [It] will put us in a much better position. And mentally, just knowing we had to put everything into it.”
For the graduate center, “everything” meant an and-one play 1:21 into the third quarter that gave Cleveland State the lead for good, and offered the collateral benefit of tagging Krasovec with her third foul. Zingaro went on to score 11 of her 18 points during that frame, helping propel the Vikings to an eight-point advantage entering the final ten minutes.
Just as impressive as all of that was her defense, which allowed the top of the zone to focus on PFW’s shooters. Krasovec was a non-factor in the contest, thanks partly to persistent foul trouble. Offing, her replacement, led the ‘Dons with 21 points, but gave a lot of that production back on the other end of the floor, and ended up with four fouls herself.
“For me, just clearing, like starting from zero and remembering back, we want to win this game, and I want to do it for the team and everything,” Zingaro said of her mindset entering the third quarter. “And so [that meant] just really putting it all out there in the second half.”
“I thought she got really tired in the second half for a good reason, because she’s playing her ass off,” Kielsmeier added. “When Izzi’s at her best defensively, she impacts the game every bit as much on the defensive end and rebounding wise, as what she does on the offensive end. She’s the glue for what we do in that paint and it’s hard on you when you get tired and she’s been able to learn how to play that way and sustain it.”
Beyond Zingaro, Fegan was also a major factor behind the Vikings’ eventual separation, as she scored 13 of her 16 points in the second half to complete the fourth double-double of her career, each of which have taken place this season.
4. Neither Kielsmeier, Zingaro, nor anyone else affiliated with CSU’s program can come up with much of an explanation concerning the wild swings of fortune that Cleveland State experiences, on nearly a game-to-game basis.
“I’m not sure [why that happens],” Zingaro said. “I think we’re trying to be more consistent. I mean, every game we come out with the correct mindset, and the passion, and the heart. It’s really hard. I don’t know. We want to win every game. We want to play hard every game. I’m not sure.”
Make no mistake, the lows have been brutal, including losses to sub-300 NET teams like Detroit Mercy and Milwaukee, squads that also happen to be among the bottom three in the Horizon League standings. Wednesday’s setback at IU Indianapolis is also in that category, less for the quality of the opponent than for the cold dose of reality it presented after an extremely successful week, one that could have been construed as the Vikings finally exiting their roller coaster.
On other occasions, Cleveland State has looked every bit like a team that can contend for a conference title, even in a league where Green Bay is five wins away from a perfect regular season. In fact, the Vikings were a couple of free throws away from toppling the Phoenix on the road in early January, and victories over Northern Kentucky (twice), Robert Morris, and a top-100 College of Charleston squad in non-league play also speak to CSU’s potential.
Saturday’s result can certainly be added to that latter list as well.
“The difference between how hard we played on Wednesday [at IU Indy] and how hard we played today is significant,” Kielsmeier offered. “And they have to look from within and find out why the it is there some nights and it’s not on others. It’s not that they don’t care, or that they’re not trying. It just goes back to the same thing. If it was easy, then everybody would be doing it. It’s not.”
“If it was an easy answer, we would’ve said it already.”
Easy answer or not, the Vikings’ fate this season might ultimately depend on their ability to find it.
5. If it seems like the fifth observation in these posts is always set aside to discuss the race for HL tournament positioning, well, there are pretty good reasons for that. There are just five games left in the regular season, the standings are extremely tightly packed, and Cleveland State’s eventual fortunes seem pretty strongly linked to the outcome.
After Wednesday’s loss, it looked as if CSU might be forced to settle for fourth, fifth, or sixth place. Green Bay had long run away with the top spot (before officially clinching it on Saturday). Youngstown State sat in second, three games ahead of the Vikings, while also owning the tiebreaker, thanks to the Penguins’ sweep of the season series between the teams. Purdue Fort Wayne was a half-game behind YSU, and 2.5 ahead of CSU, and had also won the first half of the head-to-head matchup.
All three teams seemed out of reach at that moment.
However, the Vikings received an unlikely gift the next day, when Wright State upset PFW. Between that game and CSU’s victory over the Mastodons, Cleveland State’s 8-7 HL mark is now just one game behind the ‘Dons’ and Robert Morris, which are both 9-6. Northern Kentucky sits between the factions, occupying fifth place with an 8-6 record.
Purdue Fort Wayne’s NET took a massive hit after losing to the Raiders, though Maria Marchesano’s squad still sat 141st entering the weekend, making it CSU’s second-biggest victory of the season in that regard. It might not have been a make-or-break result in terms of the Vikings’ postseason hopes beyond the conference championships, but it will certainly end up somewhere near the top of their eventual resume.
“Everything is still out there for us to get,” Kielsmeier said. “We can get a postseason bid. There’s nothing that’s off the table if we play consistent, and go on a run. So we don’t have to worry about what everybody else is doing. We need to go play well, we need to win. And when we do that, everything takes care of itself.”
“Everything is out there for this team to still get,” he repeated.
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