Chris Kielsmeier has never kept his opinion of postseason tournaments a secret: if Cleveland State is invited to one, the Vikings will show up and play in it.
“We’ll never change our approach with it,” he said during his weekly radio show on Monday. “We’re all in with it, and anytime you get a chance to play and compete, sign us up, let’s go.”
The coach is certainly justified in feeling that way. CSU has accomplished plenty during his time at the school, including a pair of conference titles and an NCAA Tournament bid, but success in the “lower” tournaments – the WBIT, the WNIT, and the now-defunct WBI – is prominent on the list as well, including the 2021 WBI championship and last year’s run to the WNIT Fab 4.
It’s tough to assign a specific value or hierarchy to those moments. But in terms of what’s realistically possible for a mid-major program, a postseason trophy from any sort of tournament unquestionably ranks pretty far up the list.
And, given that Cleveland State has been one of the last four teams standing in three of its five postseason events under Kielsmeier, buy-in from the Vikings’ roster hasn’t seemed to be an issue either.
“It’s just because we’re motivated,” Colbi Maples explained. “We don’t want to go home. A lot of us want to finish our careers with something to look back on. Just like that memorabilia you have at your house: ‘Yeah, I played in the WNIT, and we won.’ We just want to make those memories, something you can have for the rest of your life. Things you can tell your kids, your grandkids, everything like that.”
“It’s incredibly rewarding for everybody,” Kielsmeier added. “You work a lot for a straight year with trying to get to this point, and then you hope you’ve done enough. To be practicing in March is just an amazing feeling. And hopefully we’re still practicing in April.”
CSU’s stance on postseason play is far from universal. Ball State, which won 26 total games, tied for first place in the Mid-American Conference standings, and posted strong numbers in most selection metrics, was inexplicably snubbed from the WBIT, the second-tier tournament, on Selection Sunday.
On Monday afternoon, the Cardinals posted a statement from head coach Brady Sallee on social media expressing disappointment with that omission. Not only that, Sallee wanted to make sure everyone knew that his team subsequently declined a bid to the WNIT.
“We did not feel the tournament aligned with the level of play of this year’s squad and the standards our program has established,” part of the statement read. “This was 100% a decision made by me.”
There are perfectly valid reasons to turn down the WNIT. Unlike March Madness and the WBIT, the WNIT is run by a non-NCAA organization, Triple Crown Sports, and is pay-for-play. Participating teams bid on the right to play at home, and between those costs, travel expenses, and everything else, a deep run can easily become a six-figure bill (of course, Sallee didn’t say any of that, opting instead to go with a carefully-worded version of “the competition is beneath us,” three days after losing to a 17-15 Toledo squad in the MAC Tournament).
Regardless, Ball State is hardly alone in refusing the WNIT. As a result, a tournament that, in theory, should involve the teams placing 101st through 148th in the country instead includes multiple at-large invitees that sit outside of the top 200 in at least one major ranking system.
Kielsmeier, who was unaware of Sallee’s statement at the time he spoke on the radio, doesn’t agree with the approach taken by Ball State and others.
“I’ll never understand how anybody would look at it differently than [I do],” he began. “But again, everybody’s got their own approach to it, and my approach isn’t necessarily exactly the right approach. There’s a lot of ways to defend a ball screen. I mean, you pick what is right for you and your program and then you go with it.”
Of course, it always helps to have a school president and an athletic director willing to write the checks involved with something like the WNIT, though Kielsmeier said it a bit more tactfully than that.
“It’s amazing that we work for and play for an administration that has the same philosophy that I have, because there are some schools out there that maybe the coach has the same philosophy that I do, but the administration doesn’t align well with them, and now they don’t have the opportunity to do it,” he observed.
Bye Week(s)
During the regular season, Kielsmeier often groused about the density of the Horizon League schedule, particularly during a post-Christmas stretch that saw the Vikings play four games in ten days, including home contests on either side of the team’s annual weekend in Wisconsin.
Now, it seems, he has the opposite problem. Thanks to CSU receiving a bye through the first round of the WNIT, roughly two weeks will pass between the team’s most recent game (the Horizon League semifinal loss to Youngstown State last Monday), and its first WNIT action.
That was also the case with last year’s WNIT, which offered at least one opportunity to learn something that will influence how the team prepares for either Monmouth or Lehigh in the second round.
“We practiced hard last year, and I thought it was the right approach to physically get them ready,” he said. “But on the flip side, we also kind of got some players banged up doing that. I took the approach that the only way to get them ready to play an actual game is to play another game prior to it. We play pretty close to some simulated games, and you get the competitors going, they forget that they’re all Vikings and it’s all one team.”
So a reversal this year? Well, not exactly. Call the approach “aggressive, yet cautious.”
“There’s such a fine line with it,” Kielsmeier admitted. “It’s an incredible time to be playing, and we’re coaching them hard. We’re trying to really demand almost perfection, if not just straight perfection because we know that we can do that, and that’s what it takes to win this time of year. So there’s no right answer to it. We’re going to chase it with everything we’ve got.”
Pro Vikes
Late in her segment, Maples revealed that she has the desire to play professionally.
“That’s my biggest plan for right now, just getting in touch with who I need to get in touch with for it, just orchestrate or navigate the plan to get to where I want to go,” she explained.
Maples is certainly off to a good start with the whole “getting in touch with people” part.
“She’s been invited to multiple professional camps at Phoenix, at the Final Four, and she’s going to go and play there, and probably eventually sign with an agent, then get signed to go overseas and play,” Kielsmeier said.
The coach added that Izabella Zingaro will similarly play in Phoenix with the intent to secure a pro contract.
“The things that our program is able to put our players in a position for, to impact and change their life, are pretty significant,” he said. “It’s incredibly fortunate for us to be able to have the opportunity to help these kids to grow and chase their dreams. And that’s pretty cool to be a part of.”
Maples and Zingaro, should they go pro, would join a healthy list of CSU alumnae overseas, including Barbara Zieniewska, Taylah Levy, Sara Guerreiro, and Mariah Miller, one of Kielsmeier’s early Vikings stars. After graduating in 2020, Miller briefly played in Finland, but didn’t have the best experience.
“She came back and tried to chase coaching and do some different things,” Kielsmeier remembered. “And we talked and I said, ‘You can always go back over there, and then maybe the second go around is going to be better than the first go around.’”
Miller indeed decided to give it another shot after that chat, and resumed her playing career in Cyprus two years ago, before heading to China this season.
“She texted me out of the blue sometime in February,” Kielsmeier related. “She just said, ‘Hey, I’m not sure if you knew I was doing this, but a big part of your advice and giving me the encouragement to go back over here is why I came, and I’m playing the best basketball of my life, thank you for that.’”
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