Vikings to Visit Xavier, Drake in November

Bob Dunn’s first non-conference schedule as Cleveland State’s head coach should seem pretty familiar to Vikings fans, as it retains most of the familiar beats of recent slates, while tinkering in certain corners.

For one thing, there’s the customary early visit to a power conference school, with Big East opponent Xavier standing as CSU’s likely next chance at a high-profile victory, on November 16th.

The Musketeers have just two winning seasons since officially joining the big time in 2013, but made measurable strides in Billi Chambers’ third season at the helm, including XU’s first double-digit victory total since 2018-19. One of Xavier’s 11 triumphs involved a wild finish against Purdue Fort Wayne in the Cintas Center early in the year, when Alana Nelson’s apparent overtime-forcing three was instead ruled a two-point bucket after a review.

Last week, the school announced the addition of Kejia Ran, a guard who was selected by the Atlanta Dream with the 46th pick of the WNBA Draft in April.

Former Vikings center Mya Moore also remains on Xavier’s roster, though her anticipated first season in Cincinnati was wiped out by an Achilles tear last summer. If healthy, Moore’s meetup with her old squad will be among her first competitive basketball games since suiting up for CSU in the 2025 WNIT.

The game contract, obtained alongside seven others through a public records request, requires that XU pay Cleveland State a $20,000 guarantee.

On November 10th, the Vikings will head to Des Moines, IA to battle Drake. The Bulldogs, of the Missouri Valley Conference, are typically one of mid-major women’s basketball’s strongest programs, but are coming off of their first losing season in 13 years. With seven of nine rotation players returning, including Anna Becker, Maggie Taylor, and Lexi Carlsen, a bounceback seems likely.

Just after getting home from Xavier, Dunn’s squad will host perennial Mid-American Conference contender Kent State on November 21st. The Golden Flashes are in a fairly similar position as the Vikings, given that they just lost a highly successful head coach, Todd Starkey (who is now on Becky Burke’s staff at Arizona), and replaced him with a former assistant, Fran Recchia. That smooth transition helped KSU retain players like Janae Tyler and Riley Rismiller – not to mention coaches like Mary Dunn, a former Youngstown State star. The Flashes also boast a large and talented group of newcomers, including former Robert Morris forward Da’Nia McClain.

Cleveland State’s Thanksgiving multi-team event will return to Woodling Gymnasium during the final week of November, with Lindenwood, Georgia Southern, and Western Michigan making the trek to Northeast Ohio. However, the showcase’s format may have been altered from previous iterations. In the past, each of the four participating teams played three games, on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of Feast Week. However, the contracts with Lindenwood and Western Michigan only list contests on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Vikings will play the Lions on that Wednesday, November 25th. No meeting between CSU and WMU, which is led by former Detroit Mercy coach Kate Achter, was shown on the Broncos’ contract. Georgia Southern’s agreement was not included in the university’s response to the records request, but process of elimination makes them Cleveland State’s likely foe for the invitational opener on November 24th.

Woodling Gymnasium will keep its basketball floor ready through December 11th, when dangerous Mercyhurst visits. The Lakers were 15-17 overall last year, but gave both Youngstown State and Robert Morris all they could handle before beginning their third-place NEC effort.

The Vikings will also play a pair of exhibition contests, both at the Wolstein Center. On October 23rd, Toledo will visit in an unofficial rematch of the Rockets’ victory in the first round of the 2024 WBIT. Five days later, the green and white will pay Division II outfit Clarion a $3,000 guarantee for their opposition.

Those two matches represent a slight departure from the program’s longstanding preseason philosophy. In recent years, CSU has typically elected to play one public exhibition game against a DII opponent, preceded by a closed-doors, off-the-record meeting with a DI adversary, an exercise colloquially known as a “secret scrimmage.”

Here is the full list of games discovered through the records request:

Date	Opponent	Location	Arena
October 23	Toledo (exhibition)	Cleveland, OH	Wolstein Center
October 28	Clarion (exhibition)	Cleveland, OH	Wolstein Center
November 10	at Drake	Des Moines, IA	Knapp Center
November 16	at Xavier	Cincinnati, OH	Cintas Center
November 21	Kent State	Cleveland, OH	Wolstein Center
November 24	TBA	Cleveland, OH	Woodling Gymnasium
November 25	Lindenwood	Cleveland, OH	Woodling Gymnasium
December 11	Mercyhurst	Cleveland, OH	Woodling Gymnasium

Notably, several of the 2026-27 game contracts include provisions for a return matchup in 2027-28. Drake is slated to visit Cleveland next year, while the Vikings will travel to Kent State, Lindenwood, and Mercyhurst, as well as to Toledo for an exhibition game.

Effective with the upcoming season, NCAA Division I teams are allowed a maximum of 32 scheduled regular season contests. Most expect the Horizon League to retain its double round robin format for conference play, even with Northern Illinois’ imminent entry bringing the HL’s membership to 12. That would account for 22 of CSU’s 32 games, leaving ten available for non-league opponents.

Since six or seven of those ten slots were addressed by the records request, Dunn still has three or four remaining openings. It’s possible that those will ultimately be used on a December multi-team event in a destination locale, on additional standalone games, or some combination of the two.