Cleveland State used a hot start to bury IU Indianapolis by a 74-45 count on Thursday in the Wolstein Center, improving to 21-8 overall and 11-7 in Horizon League play.
Here are five things that stood out from the Vikings’ sixth win in seven tries:
1. In some games, diagnosing the precise moment when the separation between the teams occurred can prove difficult. That was decidedly not the case here.
CSU scored the first 16 points of the night, serving notice of a comfortable outing, quite literally, as early as possible. The Vikings essentially spent most of the rest of the contest maintaining that margin, slowly padding it out to 24-5 at the end of the first quarter, then to the final 29-point spread during the second half.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen [a start] here where it was 16-0,” Colbi Maples said. “So yeah, I think that’s one for the books right there.”
“You don’t wake up in the morning thinking you’re going to start the game 16-0,” Chris Kielsmeier added. “But our players went out and created that, and made that happen. We were ready to play a complete team win tonight.”
There wasn’t any great mystery to how it happened either.
Cleveland State’s trademark zone forced nine turnovers in the first quarter alone, resulting in 14 Vikings points. Macey Fegan grabbed three steals in that opening frame (just one piece of her routinely-stellar efforts that also included 12 points, 11 rebounds, and six assists), though Paula Pique ended up with four total thefts, leading a team count of 15.
“I would hate to be on the other side of Paula playing defense on me, honestly,” Maples admitted. “[At practice], she got a few tips on me, so I know how hard it’s to play against her. But we’re able to communicate well [defensively] and move well off each other. So it’s just something that comes with time, and it’s just something that’s been developed and slowly over the years.”
Even on the occasions when IU Indy managed to get a shot up, things didn’t go particularly well for the visitors. The Jaguars hit just two of their 13 field goal attempts in that opening quarter, and went 6-for-28 in the first half; those numbers produced a halftime total of only 15 points.
2. Kielsmeier still insists that the Vikings still have what he often calls “another gear,” despite what was a near-flawless showing early in the contest.
“We can get better,” he reiterated. “We’ve got more in us. We really do. And that’s not the coach just saying there’s always something wrong. There’s always something to get better with. This team’s got more in them and again, they’ve only played 20-some games together. We’ve got more in us.”
Following a run that now includes six Cleveland State wins in seven games, including over Green Bay, Purdue Fort Wayne, and Northern Kentucky teams that are among the Horizon League’s best, it’s a little bit hard to figure out what Kielsmeier means by that.
For his part, the coach declined to elaborate, using Maples’ rumbling stomach as an excuse.
“If you want me to get into the list of things we can get better with, it won’t be tonight. Somebody’s hungry. She wants steak.”
3. Izabella Zingaro only played 22 minutes, her lowest amount of playing time in about a month, and saw her streak of six consecutive games with a double-double come to an end.
The primary culprit behind the situation was foul trouble, along with a healthy dose of effective defending by IU Indianapolis, which generally fronts the center with the likes of Julia Hall, Ariana Williams, and Destini Craig.
However, Kielsmeier saw an additional factor in play.
“The pace of this game didn’t really set up for us to get it in there a lot,” he observed. “We were scoring a lot in transition and forcing turnovers, which got the ball down the floor faster.”
Though Cleveland State’s offensive pace is obviously what affects Zingaro’s production the most, Kielsmeier thinks both sides of recent Vikings clashes have kept their feet on the gas a bit. That can be something of an adjustment in the HL, which has very few teams that truly play vertically most of the time, and has often been ruled by plodding Wisconsin-based squads.
“Teams are playing a much faster style against us than what they are on tape and I’m trying to get them to adjust to that,” the coach added.
With Zingaro stapled to the bench for a lot of the contest, Laurel Rockwood ended up playing 18 minutes, her biggest chunk of time since January 18th. CSU already had a big lead by the time the UC Santa Barbara transfer was heavily involved. Nevertheless, she provided an important steadying presence in the middle of the floor, with seven points and seven rebounds, along with quality defense.
Adding in Zingaro’s efforts, the Vikings two primary posts went for 15 points and 16 rebounds, so there wasn’t really any dropoff from what’s typical for the position, even if it required two players to get there.
“[Laurel’s] got so much talent and game and when you’re playing behind Izzi it’s hard to get her playing time sometimes,” Kielsmeier said. “But she was ready to go tonight. She’s always such an emotional player for us. She brings so much energy to practice every single day. She does a lot of things behind the scenes, that people don’t really know how much she brings to our program, and it’s great to see these kids have the success that they’re having right now, even if it’s just short spurts.”
Rockwood often worked in tandem with Shey Magassa, who took over for Fegan during most of the latter stages of the evening. Magassa wound up with 11 points and five rebounds, with one of her five field goals coming on a late drive down the middle, and a gorgeous back-door feed by Rockwood.
4. Maples was briefly honored prior to the opening tip for scoring her 1,000th point as a Viking, a milestone reached on her spectacular game-sealing jumper at Robert Morris on Saturday.
She then added an additional 18 tallies on Thursday, a game-leading total, after unexpectedly becoming the team’s singular offensive leader while Zingaro was held below her season averages.
“I just do what I can to get the win,” Maples said. “That’s literally what I think about every game. Just what can I do to help my team today, and today it was, I guess, scoring 18.”
Milestones always tend to put people in a reflective mood, including Kielsmeier, who thought about his three-year journey with the star point guard, particularly her decision to stick around while so many others transferred out last spring.
“When she made the decision, with the help of Mama getting her here, I knew we had something special,” he remembered. “I’m thankful that she had that belief in us, and I’ve said it all year, I don’t know how many times, and…write about this, this kid’s loyalty. Because if she would’ve went in the portal, she’d have had a couple hundred schools that would’ve wanted her, and she said Cleveland State is where I want to be, and I want to finish this thing the right way. And that’s something I’ll never forget the rest of my life.”
Maples did transfer once, of course, as she spent the first two seasons of her college career at Grambling, a fact that will keep her from populating a ton of top ten lists in CSU’s record books. Still, there’s little doubt that the Arkansas native is one of the best to ever wear green and white, even if she had to pack that status into, essentially, two seasons.
“A thousand points,” Kielsmeier began. “I mean sometimes things just get thrown out there [like they’re] so easy. A thousand points. Take a step back from that and realize how many stinking points that is, [even] for a whole career of four or five years. It’s phenomenal basketball, and some people just know how to score and she’s one of ’em.”
Coincidentally, Maples’ usual backcourt partner, Jada Leonard, scored the 1,000th point of her career (including totals from two seasons at Saint Peter’s) on a third quarter free throw, so the redshirt junior will likely receive her own ceremonial basketball before CSU’s next home game.
5. Thursday’s win continued what’s been an interesting trend this season. Six of CSU’s seven Horizon League setbacks have come in the first game of the season series with a conference rival, including a February 4th defeat against the Jaguars in Indianapolis. However, the Vikings have gone 5-1 in rematches following those six losses, with only Youngstown State stopping revenge of the earlier defeat.
Sure, the adage that it’s tough to beat a team twice certainly applies here, but Kielsmeier sees a little bit more to it than that.
“I think it shows the growth of this team,” he said. “It shows the leadership of [Maples], the engine. She makes the thing go. Colbi has really stepped into a much more impactful leadership role, with trying to be vocal in practice and trying to encourage her teammates to really figure this thing out the way that she knows they can.”
Cleveland State’s ability to figure the thing out – along with some scoreboard help, most recently from Oakland and YSU – has placed the team in a position that seemed incredibly unlikely even two weeks ago: third place.
CSU doesn’t fully control its destiny in terms of finishing in the top three, an important cutoff guaranteeing that only three victories will be needed to capture a Horizon League tournament title, instead of a possible four. Regardless, with wins its last two regular-season games, on the road at Wright State and a home finale against the Golden Grizzlies, a third-place finish is extremely likely. The Vikings presently own tiebreaker advantages on their closest pursuers, Northern Kentucky and Purdue Fort Wayne, both individually, and in the case of a three-way deadlock.
“Our goal is to get better tomorrow,” Kielsmeier said. “I don’t care about the tournament right now. I don’t care about anything other than getting better tomorrow, and putting in a good game plan, and getting ready to play a really hot Wright State team that is playing really well right now.”
“So it’s a simple philosophy for us. Whatever the next game is, that’s the most important game of the year. It’s been that way 30 times.”
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