The Kent State women’s team heads to California over Thanksgiving, but it will be playing an Eastern team and a Southern team.
The Flashes will be part of the Cal Poly/ShareSLO Holiday Tournament. On Friday they’ll take on the University of Texas at Corpus Christi. Saturday they’ll play Dartmouth.
Dartmouth is 2-0 and Texas-Corpus Christi 0-4, But Corpus Christi may have the better team.
The Islanders, who were 18-12 last year, lost four starters including their leading scorer to graduation. But they have four transfers, two of whom were top players on their previous teams.
Junior Shay Weaver holds the single-season record at Marshall for most three three-pointers, leads Corpus Christi with an average of 17.7 points per game. Second in scoring (16.0) and leading in rebounding (12.3) is senior Olivia Fouty, whom Kent saw during her sophomore and junior years at Eastern Michigan. Fouty had more than 500 rebounds over those seasons for the Eagles.
The Islanders aren’t a very big team. Fouty is 6-foot. Tallest starter is 6-1 sophomore 6-1 sophomore forward Camesha Davis. But they have a plus-3.3 rebounding margin per game.
Corpus Christi has lost to UNLV (2-2), 77-65, Houston (2-1), 68-66, and Rice (2-2), 59-54.
Brown won its opener over the New Jersey Insittitue of Technology in overtime, then beat winless Holy Cross 69-53 at home. The Big Green were 5-23 a year ago and are picked to finish sixth in the Ivy League. They return their leading scorer, 6-1 guard-forward Fanni Szabbo, who averaged 13.2 last year and is averaging 26 this year. Also back is their second leading scorer and leading rebounder, 6-foot junior forward Lakin Roland. She’s averaging 16.5 points and 12.5 rebounds in the first two games. Last year she averaged 11 points and 5.9 rebounds.
Audio of both games will be on Golden Flash Radio on iHeartRadio and Akron Fox sports 1350, starting at 5:50 p.m. As I write this Tuesday, I don’t see any word of video. You can check on kentstatesports.com later in the week to see if anything has been announced.
I’m out of town this weekend. I’ll try to listen/watch online, but you can always get results at the Kent State websiteite.
Some extra notes from Kent State’s 58-55 victory Tuesday:
- Freshman Madison Ridout had seven points, including a three-pointer, in 22 minutes. Both were career highs.
- Kent State outscored Belmont 33-21 in the paint but was outrebounded 41-33. The rebounding was after the Flashes outrebounded Northwestern of the Big Ten by 10 last week.
- Belmont made only 11 of 21 free throws. Kent wasn’t much better at 11 of 18.
- Seniors Cici Shannon, Montia Johnson and Mikell Chinn all played more than 34 minutes.
- Four Kent players had at least two fouls in the first half. Johnson had three. No one fouled out, but this team has only nine scholarship players who have significant minutes so far. They’ll have to avoid depth problems.
- Freshman Naddiyah Cross, who had been leading Kent with assists, played just five minutes. She was yanked after a turnover and a foul at a critical time in the second half.
- Freshman forward Jordan Korinek continues to struggle. She went 0 for 5, with two rebounds and four fouls in 16 minutes.
- Through four games, Lurken leads Kent State in scored at 12.8 points per game. The Flashes haven’t had a player average in double figures since 20011-12.