Colbi Maples secured the basketball tightly against her body, with both arms wrapping the orange sphere in a hug, as if loosening her grip might cause it to fade away, like a dream upon waking.
The sound echoing overhead at that moment, however, wasn’t an alarm clock. It was the Wolstein Center’s buzzer, crystallizing Cleveland State’s overtime victory against juggernaut Green Bay on Wednesday. Maples knew that by rebounding Jenna Guyer’s last-ditch attempt, she had obtained something rare and fleeting, both within the course of a season, and maybe even life itself. Accordingly, only the reassurance of a mob of pink-clad teammates finally caused her to release the ball.
As most are aware (at least in some general sense), the Vikings are just 12-76 against GB in the all-time series. Those victories are infrequent enough to dive a little deeper.
The first three occurred in 1997, 2001, and 2002, under the stewardship of Duffy Burns. They were massive results, even then – the Phoenix machine began humming in earnest about when Kevin Borseth began his first stint at the school in 1998 – though they were ultimately little more than blips for the perpetually-.500 teams of that era.
CSU’s next two triumphs are mileposts in Vikings lore: conference tournament semifinal victories at the Kress Events Center in both 2008 and 2010 behind superstar Kailey Klein, results that eventually led to the school’s first two Horizon League titles and NCAA Tournament bids. Kate Peterson Abiad picked up another win in her final crack at the Phoenix, during a mostly-successful 2017-18 season, before she returned to her native Wisconsin (and eventually, as fate would have it, the GB coaching staff).
Chris Kielsmeier’s teams have beaten Green Bay six times. The first victory occurred during the 2020-21 regular season and, in hindsight anyway, was a signal of Cleveland State’s rise. The next three arrived during the HL tournament, including the 2023 championship game, and were followed by a win in February of 2024, one that was essential to CSU claiming its first regular season conference title.
Then there’s Wednesday night. What should anyone make of that result, particularly in the middle of a season where the Vikings’ appearances have waffled between “contender” and “mediocrity” in nearly-equal turns?
Kielsmeier likes to use the word “steadfast,” which happens to be an appropriate way to describe his bullish view of his team’s potential, an opinion he’s offered with more reliability than just about anything else about the 2025-26 version of CSU. After ugly losses against the likes of Detroit Mercy and Milwaukee, consistency was his overriding theme. When Kielsmeier’s team wins, he pivots into talking about ceilings and capability. Both lines, of course, ride shotgun to the belief that there’s more in the Vikings’ tank than what has shown on the court.
“I know what this team is capable of, and I’m going to push and push and push until I help them get there,” he said after a revenge win over the Panthers last month. “And maybe we won’t, but it ain’t going to be a lack of trying from anybody in this program. I can assure you that.”
Then, rather presciently, on Monday, during his radio show: “I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re going to go on that run that I know that we’re capable of going on. And that’s how I feel about Wednesday.”
The coach, of course, carries more than a quarter-century of experience and can assess those sorts of things much better than the average observer. If he accurately sized things up during recruiting season, or summer workouts, that’s the product of innumerable film sessions, practices, and games over his career, along with a keen eye and a knack for pattern recognition.
For most of the rest of us, believing necessarily follows seeing. That might even include the Vikings’ players, to some extent.
Consider Maples. The 2023-24 Horizon League Player of the Year missed most of last season with a torn ACL. Pulling herself back into form has been a months-long struggle, one briefly interrupted by an ankle injury in December. Only within the last three weeks have the various components of Maples’ game congealed into a once-again-elite whole.
Or there’s Izabella Zingaro. After spending three seasons buried at the end of Iowa State’s bench, she took a year off from basketball, before re-emerging at Montana in 2024-25. Zingaro certainly had her moments with the Grizzlies, including a pair of 20-point outings, but broadly speaking, she was an irregular starter who played 15 minutes per game.
Cleveland State is the first of her three stops to truly use her as a center of gravity. That’s paid off in what will likely turn out as an All-HL season, but it has also carried some growing pains.
Macey Fegan was a bit of an unknown as a small-school prep star in the northern reaches of Michigan’s lower peninsula who didn’t play a ton as a freshman at Toledo. Largely thanks to Maples’ absence last year, she was then forced out of position during her first season at CSU, a shift that she has admitted affected her mentally at times. Now, at her natural power forward spot, she’s a consistent double-double threat, and a play driver that Kielsmeier claimed is “playing as well as anybody in the league right now.”
That motley trio, unified by a uniform and battles with doubt during their respective careers, accounted for 70 of Cleveland State’s 83 points against Green Bay.
What’s more, the Vikings have recovered from a 3-4 start to 2026 to win four of their last five games, with impressive victories over Northern Kentucky and Purdue Fort Wayne preceding the outcome against the Phoenix.
Kielsmeier, of course, knew what was possible all along.
“I didn’t need anybody to tell me,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I knew what I had with this team.”
“[Beating Green Bay] was a moment for them, and I hope that they remember it for the rest of their lives because they should, and I hope there’s a lot more of these coming because they can.”
Wins over the Phoenix are exceptionally rare, but when CSU does manage one, it tends to lead down a fruitful road more often than not. And right now, with the roster’s belief and buy-in finally evident, all roads are open.
Perhaps, even beyond the immediacy of a monumental victory, that notion was lurking somewhere in Maples’ subconscious as she clung to a basketball five feet below a glowing backboard on Wednesday night.
“We’re the only ones that can kind of step in our own way,” she said. “When we play like we know how to play, and go out there and give it all we got, we know we can beat anybody that we play.”
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