Cleveland State won for the fifth time in its last six tries on Saturday afternoon, by beating Robert Morris 57-52 inside RMU’s UPMC Events Center in Moon Township, PA.
Here are five things that stood out, as the Vikings improved to 20-8 overall, and 10-7 in Horizon League play:
1. It’s hard to avoid feeling at least a little bad for the Colonials.
Within their last four games, they’ve been victimized by three highlight-reel game-changing efforts, the first two of which ended up in the SportsCenter Top 10 that night. On February 5th, Green Bay’s Kamy Peppler hit two three-pointers in the final 11 seconds of the fourth quarter, including a banked-in buzzer beater, to flip a late RMU lead into a 61-58 loss. Six days later, Youngstown State earned overtime against Robert Morris on a wild alley-oop play from Danielle Cameron to Sophia Gregory with just 0.4 seconds remaining, and the Penguins went on to dominate the extra period.
On Saturday, Colbi Maples became the latest HL star to make a spectacular and decisive play on Chandler McCabe’s charges.
In the final half-minute of the fourth quarter, with Cleveland State clinging to a 53-50 lead and in possession of the ball, Maples dribbled out as much time as she could. Just before the shot clock expired, she stopped and pivoted twice in each direction, attempting to find space over the smothering presence of RMU’s Myriam Traore. The long Colonials guard wasn’t budging, however, and Maples was forced to try a low-percentage turnaround heave from just above the free throw line with 17.1 seconds to go.
Somehow, it went in, then survived a timing-related review, all but clinching victory for the Vikings.
“I didn’t even know if she was going to be able to get it off, but I didn’t know that she wasn’t either, because Colbi being Colbi is pretty special,” Chris Kielsmeier said. “She understands moments, and she knows we needed it, and she made the play.”
That bucket represented the final two of Maples’ 17 points, which equaled Traore for the game high. More significantly, though, it gave the graduate student exactly 1,000 tallies since transferring to CSU from Grambling in 2023.
2. As great of a play as it was, Kielsmeier was irked that his team needed it.
Following an evenly-played, but entirely forgettable, first half, Cleveland State’s third quarter was one of the better periods that the team has played all season. The Vikings outscored RMU 21-11 over the ten minutes, finding traction through its usual big three of Maples, Macey Fegan, and Izabella Zingaro. The latter two, in particular, capitalized on persistent foul trouble to Colonials forwards Bailey Kuhns and Layke Fields.
“We did a much better job playing faster,” Kielsmeier observed. “We don’t play very well when we don’t play fast, and it may not be as fast as some teams in the country, but our pace needs to flow. And it did in that third quarter.”
It was quite a contrast with everything that transpired up until then. The Vikings attempted an impressive 16 field goals in the frame, compared to just 19 across the opening 20 minutes.
“Our offensive pace and movement…I’m not sure we’ve ever shot 19 shots in one half and only six free throws,” Kielsmeier said. “If we shoot 19 shots, we probably shot 15 free throws.”
“I just tried to calm them down. For whatever reason, [they were] pretty tight,” he continued. “It just seemed like we were pressing and trying to make it happen, instead of letting it happen.”
A ten-point lead with ten minutes remaining in a rock fight sort of contest might seem like more than enough in most cases, but CSU managed just two free throws as its entire scoring total across the first six minutes of the fourth quarter. That abrupt drought allowed Robert Morris to creep back within 46-40, with sufficient time remaining to complete a comeback.
The separation still sat at six points with 1:06 remaining when Zingaro fouled out on a drive by Colonials guard Jada Lee. Lee split the resulting foul shots, but RMU’s pressure forced the ball loose from Jada Leonard near the center court stripe, leading to a transitional layup for Traore, through Leonard’s foul.
The turnover, in particular, bothered Kielsmeier.
“You absolutely cannot foul in that situation,” he said. “We have timeouts late, if we’re in a tough situation, they’ve been taught to call that timeout, and those are the things that have to get cleaned up so it doesn’t end up getting us beat.”
Essentially, it was a three-point swing (CSU was fortunate that missed free throws kept it from being five), along with the disqualification of the Vikings’ star post player, all within 13 seconds of game time, necessitating Maples’ heroics.
“The last thing you’d ever want is for you to pour your guts and soul into this thing like they did, and then not be able to finish it out because of mistakes,” Kielsmeier added. “So let’s coach better and not let it come down to that.”
3. Though the mental side of the game had its rough moments on Saturday, Cleveland State’s effort, in some broad sense, was tough to beat.
Robert Morris entered the contest as the Horizon League’s top team in rebounding rate, both defensively and overall, but the Vikings won the team-wide carom count, 35-30.
“We challenge ’em a lot of times that rebounding comes down to effort,” Kielsmeier said. “There’s so many things that are hard to track when it comes to [effort], but not rebounding. Rebounding shows a lot, and these kids have taken pride in being a great rebounding team all year.”
He’s right. In fact, CSU took over conference leadership in rebounding rate with their head-to-head statistical victory over the now-former top team. The Vikings have snagged 53.5 percent of their rebound opportunities in Horizon League play, and have ended up with more boards than their opponent in 13 of 17 conference games.
Improving those numbers against an RMU squad that includes outstanding glass workers like Kuhns, Traore, and Eva Levingston is much easier said than done, but Zingaro (ten rebounds) and Fegan (eight) helped find a way to make it happen.
“That’s probably something that we haven’t talked about enough,” Kielsmeier said. “This has been a dominant rebounding team all year and we needed them tonight.”
4. For the second straight game, following Wednesday’s home victory over Green Bay, Paula Pique hit a massive three-pointer.
With 3:02 remaining, a moment when CSU still had just four points in the fourth quarter, while Robert Morris pushed to within 48-42, Pique connected from the wing to give the Vikings a nine-point advantage. Subsequent events ended up changing that shot’s significance in the big picture, but at the time, it felt like something of a clincher.
And, for the second straight game, the ability to hit big three-pointers was just about the least-impressive thing about Pique’s exploits.
Her final numbers included eight points, three rebounds, and three steals, though Kielsmeier was quick to point out that statistics are an awful way to measure the guard’s performance.
“We’ve had a great run of players that maybe don’t have the best stat lines, but they just produce and they do so many things that don’t show up in the stats,” he said. “She is just an incredibly smart basketball player, and she’s learned how to be that smart within our system quickly, which is really hard to do.”
Pique’s twin sister Emma has signed with the Vikings for next season, offering the notion of a doubly-understated impact on CSU games.
“Her sister’s already talking about how excited she is, and she can’t wait to play up on top of the zone and get a lot of tips,” Kielsmeier said. “I’m like ‘you might have to fight your sister for that, I think your sister likes to play up there.’ But there’s going to be a lot of good stories with that coming.”
5. Saturday’s victory was Cleveland State’s 20th of the season. The Vikings only had a pair of seasons meeting the traditional benchmark for college basketball success over the program’s entire history between 1973 and 2019, but have now fired off five 20-win campaigns in a row, and six in the last seven years (the only miss was in 2020-21, when COVID-19 limited CSU to just 23 total games).
News of the milestone was a surprise to Kielsmeier.
“It’s just us being us,” he said. “Really good players, really good coaches, committed administration. We just find a way to produce. I mean the system wins, and you come to Cleveland State to win 20 games as a standard, right? That’s the benchmark.”
“In everything that you get from this point forward, that’s supposed to be above and beyond a feeling of 20 wins. But it says a lot when you build a program.”
For the Vikings, “above and beyond” includes home games against IU Indianapolis and Oakland, sandwiching a trip to Wright State, to close out the regular season. They remain in the thick of the race for third place in the Horizon League, and crucially, own the tiebreaker against each of the other schools in the pack, including Northern Kentucky, Purdue Fort Wayne, and now, Robert Morris.
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