Four high school seniors have announced they’ve committed to sign letters of intent to play for the Kent State women’s basketball team once they graduate.

Their friends and coaches know it.

Kent State coaches and players know it.

But no one at Kent State can talk about it.

Such are NCAA rules, designed, I guess, to keep pressure off of the high school students. And players still can change their minds before signing day in November. One point guard from Pennsylvania committed to former KSU coach Danny O’Banion a year ago, then switched to Duquesne in the summer. But generally, verbal commitments stand. All four players coming to KSU have “Kent State commit” in their online profiles.

So coach Todd Starkey and his staff can’t talk about their promising 2017 class, which includes a post player, a forward and two shooting guards as reported earlier in this post. 

But in an interview last week, the coach was able to talk about how recruiting has gone, what his philosophy has been and, without naming names, what the outlook is for further commitments. 

Starkey said he still had one or two scholarships available for the 2017 class. He said he’d still like to find a point guard – but wouldn’t take one just for the sake of taking one. He and his assistants were at the last AAU tournaments of the year last weekend, looking at players for next year and beyond. One 2018 point guard tweeted about have a “great meeting” with Starkey.

The four verbal commitments are from four different states. Starkey said that for now, national recruiting was essential.

“We knew we had to do the unconventional,” he said. “We were very late getting started for the 2017 class. By the time I got here, most of the top 2017 class had already at least gotten down to their final five choices. Some were offered scholarships a year ago.

“We’ll recruit Ohio. We’ve already offered two of the best in the class of 2019 (that’s current high school sophomores), and they’re going to visit campus.

“But until we’re established again as a destination school for Ohio players, we’ve got to look everywhere we can.”

Ohio, Starkey said, is almost over-recruited.

“You’ve got five or six MAC schools here, plus Cincinnati and Xavier and places like Duquesne. And the Big Ten, of course,” he said.

Starkey’s clearly happy with the class he can’t talk about.

“Now we need an even better 2018 group,” he said. “And we’re close already.”

One of the 2018ers

A 6-2 forward from Indiana — who graduates from high school in 2018 —  tweeted on Sept. 18, “Thank you to Coach Starkey and staff for offering me a scholarship to play at Kent State #GoFlashes.” The same day her dad tweeted a picture of him, her and Starkey with her wearing a KSU uniform. (Recruits can do that on campus, though they can’t take the uniform home.)

The young lady is an interesting story. Her name is Bree Boles. ESPN rates her a three-star recruit and 10th best in the nation at her position. She averaged 19 points and 9 rebounds a game as a sophomore.

Boles committed to Indiana while she was in eighth grade — yes, eighth grade. The Indiana coach then was former Bowling Green coach Curt Miller, who left a year later. Starkey joined the next Indiana staff as an assistant and obviously knows Boles from there.

Boles decommitted earlier this year. In an interview with an Indiana sports website, her mother said that all of the coaches who had recruited her had left and her daughter wanted to look other options.

Sounds great for Kent State, right? Four days later after her Kent visit, her dad tweeted a picture of Boles in an Evansville sweatshirt with coaches and family. Bree tweeted, “thank you to coach Ruffing and staff on a great home visit! #Evansville #AcesUp”

Boles hasn’t announced a new commitment. She may not for months.

But this gives you an idea of the recruiting trail these days. I’m not sure I’d want my daughter going through it. And I suspect the bottom line is the same as I used when I recruited journalism students for Kent State: Often making the decision is much harder than living with it.

Why do we know more about recruiting this year? The NCAA changed a rule this fall and now allows coaches to retweet or “like” a recruit’s tweet. So anytime someone puts “@toddstarkey33” or “@kentstatewbb” in a tweet, it pops up in my feed.

I’m not going to report on every tweet about KSU recruiting;  a good chunk of it would be pure clutter. I will keep fans informed of commitments and if something really interesting turns up – like a visit from the 10th best power forward in the class of 2018.

 

 

 

Every player who started at guard last season for the Flashes returns.

KSU’s only true freshman is a guard. Megan Carter, one of last year’s top recruits, returns from a knee injury that knocked her out of last season after three games.

So there are lots of possible combinations for new coach Todd Starkey as he starts looking for his eight- or nine-player rotation for the upcoming season. In an interview last week, Starkey gave early impressions of his roster from the two hours a week the NCAA allows him to work with players on the court in the off-season.

Full-scale practice starts Monday, and KSU’s first game is Nov. 11 against Bradley.

Our last post talked about post players. Today, the rest.

Shooting guard and wing

Most coaches call these the “2” and “3” position these days. The 2 guards tend to be outside shooters and drivers to the basket. 3 guards do the same but tend to be taller and at times will post up along with crashing the offensive boards. “1” guards are point guards, and we’ll talk about them separately.

KSU’s guards start with Larissa Lurken, who will become the first four-year starter for the Flashes since Bob Lindsay graduated his entire starting line-up in 2011. That was also Kent State’s last winning team (20-11, second in the MAC East).

Lurken almost certainly will become the Flashes’ first 1,000-point scorer since Jamilah Humes, who graduated in 2008. Lurken has 911 points going into the season. She was KSU’s second-leading scorer (behind forward Jordan Korinek) last season at 13.9 points a game and led the Flashes in scoring in 2014-15 at 11.1 points a game. She’s led the team in minutes played in both the last two seasons and was a team captain as a sophomore.

Lurken has been the team’s only consistent three-point threat throughout her career, but she hasn’t ever had a great shooting percentage — 31 over her career. She can be streaky — last season she made 7 of 8 three-pointers while scoring 37 points against Northern Illinois, then 2 of 13 in the next three games combined. And other teams concentrated on shutting her down because the Flashes had no real alternative. In 10 of KSU’s 29 games, she got off five or fewer three-point shots.

Starkey knows she’s a key component. “She certainly has ability as a shooter,” he said. “We need to get her better looks.” That likely will come from Lurken setting screens, then peeling off as a shooter. (Starkey repeatedly mentioned screens as a key to his offense this season.)

Sophomores Alexa Golden and Tyra James started with Lurken last season. At 5-11, James is a classic wing or 3 guard who can score on drives, jump shots and three-pointers She was the Flashes third leading scorer and rebounder. She’s a player who tries to make things happen, which also led to her leading the team in turnovers. Starkey called her “sneaky athletic” and the best on the team at slashing to the basket.

Golden was KSU’s defensive specialist last season. “She plays at as high an (energy) level as you could want,” Starkey said. “She’s learning where we want her to be on defense.” At times last season, he said, she seemed to be so aggressive that she got out of position. The coach also said she had “more ability to shoot than she gets credit for.” Golden tied with James as KSU’s second leading three-point shooter last season (but just 15 baskets). She averaged about 16 points a game as a second-team all-Pennsylvania player in high school.

Ali Poole was the only recruit signed by former coach Danny O’Banion last year. She was a second-team all-Ohio player at Carrollton High School, where she averaged 18.5 points a game and was conference player of the year as a sophomore and as a senior. Starkey talks  of her as the outside threat who could take some of the pressure off of Lurken. Poole, who’s 5-11, had 39 points, 13 rebounds, five assists, six steals and four blocks in a district tournament game.

Keziah Lewis was a big scorer at Ellsworth Community College but scored only 2 points in 9 minutes per game last season. Starkey said she showed potential as a “fourth big guard.” She played mostly in the wing last season.

Point guards

O’Banion never really found a strong point guard in her four years. She had ball handlers who didn’t score — Mikell Chinn, who led the MAC in assists — and scorers who weren’t strong ball handlers — Ashley Evans, who led the team in scoring  and turnovers in 2014.

Last year’s starters were 5-6 Naddiyah Cross, who averaged 9 points a game through KSU’s first five games and less than 2 points for the last 24. She lost her starting job late in the season to walk-on Paige Salisbury, who never looked fast or flashy but steadied the offense and kept turnovers down. Starkey talked of Cross as a capable guard who needs to learn to take the right shot — and cut down on turnovers. Salisbury, he said, can be a better shooter than she showed last season and might find some time in that role.

Sophomore Taylor Parker (“quick on quick,” Starkey said) still wins every sprint in practice. But she needs to learn more on changing pace and ball control, where she struggled last season.

The unknown factor at point guard is redshirt freshman Carter. She was one of the better guards in Michigan in high school, when she averaged almost 19 points a game her senior year. Carter had off-season surgery on a knee and a shoulder but is fully cleared for practice. “She’s a playmaker with the ball in her hands — perhaps the most effective on the team,” Starkey said. Because of missing so much time with injuries, “she’s got to make up some ground.”

Right now, Starkey said, it’s still “point guard by committee, as it seems to have been.”

But the coach said the offense likely will de-emphasize point guard as the primary ball handler and the player who always starts the offense.

“We’ll play to our strengths,” Starkey said, “and we do have some. What we need to be is the best version of us we can be.”

Last season’s statistics and this season’s roster.

 

There are 15 players on Kent State’s roster this season. By conference season, coach Todd Starkey says, he’d like to be at a eight- or nine-player rotation — normal, he said, for college basketball.

I can see some big battles for those spots.

Forward Jordan Korinek and guard Larissa Lurken – KSU’s leading scorers last semester – will be key pieces. 

After that, things may be very open.

Starkey ran down his line-up in an interview last week and give some preliminary impressions. He emphasized that he had only worked with them on the court for two hours a week since he was named head coach in April (that’s all the NCAA allows), and that he’ll know a lot more once full practice starts next week.

Lurken and K0rinek averaged about 30 minutes a game last season. Then came wing Tyra James at 26, forward McKenna Stephens at 24, point guard Naddiyah Cross at 22, guard Alexa Golden at 21,  point guard Paige Salisbury at 18 and forward Chelsi Watson at 17.

Add to that:

Redshirt freshman guard Megan Carter, a highly regarded recruit who missed almost all of the season with an injury.

Guard Ali Poole, the only true freshman on the team, whom Starkey called a very promising outside shooter.

6-4 sophomore center Merissa Barber-Smith, a player Starkey said had make the most improvement in the time he’s worked with the group.

6-1 junior transfer Zenobia Bess, who started 22 games as sophomore at Illinois State.

The final three on the roster are senior guard Keziah Lewis, who played about nine minutes a game and averaged 2 points, sophomore point guard Taylor Parker, who played 70 minutes total, and senior center Lacy Miller, a former walk-on who got in just three games.

Here’s a rundown, with some impressions from Starkey:

Post players

It starts with Korinek, of course. She was Kent’s leading scorer and rebounder last season and has 662 points in two season. That’s almost exactly the same pace as 2006 grad Lindsay Shearer, one of the best players in Kent State history. And Shearer played on much better teams with a much better supporting cast. In a previous post, we talked about how Starkey said he plans to use Korinek in multiple roles — in the post, at mid-range, from the three-point line. Not planting her in the foul lane, the coach also said, could help keep her out of foul trouble. Last season she fouled out of five games and had four fouls in 13 others. Many were offensive fouls.

Starting opposite her last season was Stephens, the one-time Michigan State softball player who transferred to Kent State during the middle of her freshman year. Stephens averaged 6.4 points a game and showed a good mid-range jumper. She scored 19 points in Kent’s MAC tournament loss to Eastern Michigan. “She can shoot off the dribble and can shoot the three,” Starkey said. “She needs to keep working on defending and rebounding.”

First post player off the bench last season was Watson, a 5-10 junior college transfer. Starkey called her the best athlete on the team. “She can be a really good offensive player,” the coach said. “She can finish left-handed and right-handed and is fantastic in transition.” Watson has to best vertical leap on the team but still is an undersized post player. “We need to learn what her comfort level is” away from the basket, Starkey said.

Sophomore Barber-Smith is the tallest player on the team at 6-4. Starkey said that in pre-season practice, she’s been “consistently our best rebounder and post defender.” “She’s probably made the most progress of anyone on the team,” he said. “She’s aggressive and likes contact, and she  has length and the ability to affect shots around the basket.” Barber-Smith played only 69 minutes last season and had 17 points, but she was second on the team in blocked shots with six.

Former coach Danny O’Banion would sometimes call Bess, the 6-1 transfer who played high school basketball for Gahanna Lincoln, “the best player on the court in practice.” Though a starter her sophomore year at Illinois State, she averaged only 3 points and 3 rebounds a game. “She’s savvy and skilled around the basket,” Starkey said. “She’s the best screener on the team,” and Starkey repeatedly said in the interview that screening was a key to Kent State’s offense this season.

Miller, the 6-1 former walk-on, was a key practice player for the Flashes last season. Like O’Banion, Starkey said she and Salisbury, also a walk-on, were the kind of people who made valuable members of the team.

Here’s a link to last season’s final statistics.

NEXT: A LOOK AT THE GUARDS.

 

 

 

 

 

Even though 14 members of the Kent State women’s basketball team return from last season, you may not recognize what you see on the court.

New coach Todd Starkey has spent the summer and early fall putting in the beginnings of new offensive and defensive systems.

Gone will be the dribble-drive offense and match-up zone defense that dominated last year’s play — a 6-23 season that led to former coach Danny O’Banion’s contract not being renewed.

In its place will be a motion offense that emphasizes passing and screens, and a defense that starts with a half-court man-to-man.

Starkey last week sat down with me for a 90-minute interview. Overall, he says, the team is ahead of where he thought it would be.

Over the next week, we’ll cover what he said about his style of play, his roster and his first months of recruiting.

Since Starkey arrived in April, he’s been able to practice with his team two hours a week while school (including summer school) was in session. NCAA rules allow the team to do another six hours of strength and conditioning exercises a week in the off-season.

Regular season practice starts Oct. 3. KSU’s first game is at home against Bradley on Friday, Nov. 11.

“We have just been able to put a skeleton in,” Starkey said. “Until we get into full practice, all we have are glimpses.”

But, he said, so far the team’s “buy-in has been fantastic.

But almost everything he’s taught so far has been new.

“There’s not a lot of carryover,” Starkey said. “The principles we’re using on offense and defense are quite different — the players have said so.”

When Starkey talked about his offense, he must have used the word “screen” a dozen times. He spoke of screens to get a shooter open, screens to get the screener open, screens to get someone like junior forward Jordan Korinek — an all-MAC honorable mention player who led the KSU in scoring and rebounding last season — open in many ways. Much of KSU’s offense last season was devoted to getting Korinek the ball in the post.

“We’ll play a style that won’t let other teams just focus on her,” the coach said. “She has ability in the post, as a mid-range shooter, as someone who can face the basket, and to shoot the three.”

When Starkey talked about the best three-point shooters on the team, he mentioned Larissa Lurken, who almost certainly will become the leading three-point scorer in school history this season, freshman Ali Poole — and Korinek.

Korinek had a reputation as a good outside shooter coming out of St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, and O’Banion often talked about her as a three-point threat. But in two years when she scored 662 points, Korinek has taken only 26 three-point shots. She’s made six. Listening to Starkey, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her take well over 60 this season.

(That’s not as crazy as it may sound. Lindsay Shearer, who had about as many points as Korinek after two seasons, averaged almost 70 three-point shots in 2005 and 2006. Tracy Lynn averaged more than 100 her junior and senior years in 1991 and 1992. Like Korinek, both were post players.)

Starkey talked about using screens to get Lurken better shots. While the senior guard has made 146 three-point shots in three years, she’s averaged about 31 percent on them. But through most of her time at KSU, she’s been the team’s only three-point threat, and other other teams would try to smother her.

Point guard was probably the team’s biggest weakness last season, and the position is still unsettled.

Back are the two players who split the job last year — junior Naddiyah Cross and sophomore Paige Salisbury, along with sophomore Taylor Parker, who played sparingly. Back and healthy is redshirt freshman Megan Carter, a highly regarded recruit who was knocked out for the season by a knee injury in KSU’s third game.

“I can’t say how it is going to play out,” Starkey said. “I suspect we’ll take some of the focus out of having a point guard always bringing the ball up court and always starting the plays in motion.

“We can get the ball to any number of people on a break and can advance the ball on a pass.”

On defense, Starkey said, his system is to start with a basic half court man-to-man and “builds out from there.”

“We’ll have some zone looks and some press looks, but the techniques in the man-to-man are the base,” he said. “We need to be a very adaptable defense with multiple styles that make us hard to scout.”

Kent State played a match-up zone almost exclusively through the first two-thirds of last season but began to play its best when it mixed in a good bit of man-to-man late in the season.

Starkey said that some MAC coaches he had previously known have told him that he had better players than he thought he was getting. He said he certainly couldn’t predict a record for the Flashes in 2016-17.

“I’ve told the players what we want to be is the team that nobody wants to face in the MAC tournament,” he said.

Next: a look at the team player-by-player and position-by-position.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coach Todd Starkey and his staff are putting together a national recruiting class.

So far four high school seniors – from California, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan – have announced that they’ll play for the Flashes starting in 2017.

NCAA rules don’t allow coaches to talk about specific recruits until after they’ve signed letters of intent in November.

The four verbal commitments have very good junior year credentials and include a center, forward, and two combination guards who look more like shooting guards on paper.

The list, gathered from the players’ or their AAU teams’ Twitter feeds:

KASEY TOLES, a shooting guard who can also play point, from Sandy Creek High School in Tyrone, Georgia, about 25 miles from Atlanta. She’s the sister of KSU assistant coach Morgan Toles, a starting point guard herself at both Auburn and Florida State. Kasey was an all-regional player who averaged 14 points, 3 rebounds, 4 assists and and 2 steals last season. Here’s a very nice profile of her from last December.

She and her sister, who got her masters degree from Florida State in May before joining the Kent State staff, come from an amazing athletic family. Their father, Alvin, was a first-round draft pick by the New Orleans Saints in 1985 after playing linebacker and fullback at Tennessee. Their mother, Vicky, played shooting guard at Hiawasse College in Madisonville, Tennessee.

Brother Andrew is a rookie outfielder with the Los Angeles Dodgers, hitting .357. Uncle Johnnie Jones is the fourth leading rusher in Tennessee football history and played in the NFL and Canadian Football League.

The other three recruits don’t have the same family pedigree but have equally impressive high school statistics.

AMANDA SAPE is a big, strong center from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a Detroit suburb. She’s 6-3 and 210 pounds and an all-state shot putter. Sape averaged 15 points, 10 rebounds and 3 blocks last season but missed a number of games because of a concussion. She was honorable mention all-state as a sophomore. Here’s a story on her that talks as much about her track career that basketball.

MONIQUE SMITH is a 5-11 forward from Serra High School in San Diego. As a junior, she averaged 17.6 points, 13.3 rebounds, 6.7 steals and 2.7 assists on a team that went 20-10. She also led the team in scoring, rebounding and steals as a sophomore.

KAILY KAIMIKAUA is a 5-9 shooting/point guard from Liberty High School in Henderson, Nevada, a city 16 miles from Las Vegas. As a junior she averaged 8.4 points and 3.1 rebounds per game on a team that went 26-4 and was ranked third in Nevada. She made 23 of 36 three-point shots.

Both Smith and Kaimikaua come off of what seems to be a legendary GBL Lady Rebels AAU team in Los Angeles. (A link to that history.)

Sape and Toles also come from nationally known AAU teams – the Michigan Storm in Sape’s case and the Georgia Metros for Toles.

Starkey has four or five open scholarships for 2017. Three-year starting guard Larissa Lurken graduates, along with wing Keziah Lewis and post player Chelsi Watson (both junior college transfers last season) and center Lacy Miller, a walk-on who earned a scholarship from former coach Danny O’Banion.

Another scholarship opened up when Savannah Neace, a freshman forward who missed all last season with a medical issue, left the team this summer. I haven’t heard whether Paige Salisbury, a walk-on who started 12 games last season at point guard, got that scholarship for the upcoming season.

Starkey had recruited several point guards this summer, but I haven’t seen any announcements on that front. I swear I saw a photo from a Southern AAU tournament of three point guards, one of whom was wearing a KSU t-shirt, but I didn’t save it and can’t find it again. The point guard from West Virginia – not the same person – who visited campus earlier this summer hasn’t announced where she’s going to school. She has multiple offers, including Kent State, Akron and Xavier.

The four who have verbally committed look like an impressive group. We certainly haven’t seen national recruiting like that since early in the Bob Lindsay era. That’s likely due to Starkey’s national recruiting experience at Indiana University, where he was an assistant. Current KSU assistant Pat Mashuda and recruiting coordinator Fran Recchia came out of the South. And of course Toles had an in with her sister.

I struggle evaluating recruiting in these days of junior commitments. It’s often hard to find information on out-of-state recruits. All-state teams tend to be dominated by seniors, especially for MAC-caliber players.

But to me, this class looks deeper and more talented than I can remember in at least 10 years. It’s far stronger than O’Banion’s first full recruiting class, which included Lurken and three players who didn’t last beyond their sophomore years.

Article has been corrected for the right name and city of  Monique Smith’s high school.