For the first quarter and a half, Kent State showed home fans the team that had made such a strong showing in Florida last weekend.

The Flashes jumped to a 24-6 first-quarter lead over Fort Wayne and led by 26 midway in the second.

Then they held on for a 66-55 victory.

The win takes the team to 4-4, the first time Kent State has been at .500 after Thanksgiving in six years. 

Larissa Lurken, sixth in the country in scoring going into the game, beat her average by two with 25 points. Alexa Golden had a career-high 13.

Kent State, which had beaten one conference favorite and taken another to overtime at the Gulf Coast Showcase, made 8 of 11 field goals and held Fort Wayne to 1 of 12 in the first quarter. Lurken, who had 78 points in three games in three days in Florida, had 16 in the quarter.

The Flashes outscored Fort Wayne 12-4 to start the second quarter, but that was their high-water mark. The Mastodons outscored them 13-4 for the rest of the quarter, 14-10 in the third quarter and 18-16 in the fourth.

Still Fort Wayne never got within 10, and the game was never in doubt.

Kent State looked tired at times after the first quarter.

“It was our fifth game in nine days,” coach Todd Starkey said his postgame interview on Golden Flash iHeart Radio. “There was probably some residual of that. We were a little leg weary in the second half. You could tell we were fatigued, probably more mentally than anything.”

Even playing as well as they did early, the Flashes had seven turnovers in the first quarter and 21 for the game. The team missed 14 foul shots — it missed 16 total in all three games in Florida. That can be a sign of tired legs. Starkey said the team got away from its game plan. And before the game, Starkey said Fort Wayne, despite its 1-6 record, was a team that didn’t quit.

“It’s part of changing the culture,” Starkey said, “to continue to keep playing no matter what the score is.”

The Flashes have won more non-league games than they have in any of the last five seasons. The last time they were at .500 other than at 1-1 was in 2010-11, their last winning season.

Golden, a sophomore starter who’s mostly known as a defensive specialist, played a season-high 31 minutes in scoring her most points in college. She made five of seven field goals and had six rebounds.

“I just couldn’t take her out of the game,” Starkey said. “She played a really good job defensively, ran the floor well, and she made big plays and she kept fighting through fatigue.”

Golden said scoring isn’t on her mind when she’s in a game.

“I love defense and do whatever I can to help the team,” she said, agreeing that she did get more confidence in her offense after a good start Wednesday.

Big test for the Flashes comes next Wednesday at 4-2 Wright State, whose losses are to Georgetown and Auburn. KSU hasn’t won a true road game since February 2015 (17 straight).

“We’ll rest our legs and rest our minds and get ready,” Starkey said. “That’s the next step for us: to go on the road and get wins.”

Notes

• Chelsi Watson led the team with seven rebounds — four of them offensive — and two blocks in 26 minutes. She had started in Sunday’s win against Florida Gulf Coast, but Starkey said he had told her before today’s game that her energy was more valuable coming off of the bench. McKenna Stephens moved back into the starting line-up, though she played only 12 minutes.
• KSU had six assists on its first eight baskets and ended with 11. Naddiyah Cross had four.
• Megan Carter, the redshirt freshman point guard had two points, two assists and a steal in eight minutes. A year ago she injured her knee against Fort Wayne and was lost for the season.
• Zenobia Bess, the junior transfer from Illinois State, equaled her Kent State high with 12 minutes. Sophomore Paige Salisbury, playing more shooting guard as point guard, was in the game a season-high 12 minutes. She had started 12 games at point guard last season. Sophomore Merissa Barber-Smith scored her first point of the season, a foul shot in the second quarter.
• Jordan Korinek had 11 points, her third straight game in double figures after struggling in three of the team’s first four games. She also had five rebounds.
• The Flashes made 22 of 48 field goals for 46 percent; Fort Wayne was 36 percent on 18 of 50.
• Kent State outscored Fort Wayne in the paint 36-18 and outrebounded the Mastodons 38-25.

The Lurken watch

• Lurken’s 25 points give her an even 1,100 for her career. She needs 124 to move past Amy Slowikowski (1987-90) and 126 to move past Carrie Nance (1998-2001) into 16th place in all-time scoring for Kent State.
• Before the game, Starkey presented her with a personalized basketball to honor her becoming the 20th player in KSU in history to reach 1,000 points. She got a standing ovation from the 300-plus fans at the game.
• Lurken had four steals and a career-high three blocks against Fort Wayne. She also had a career-high nine turnovers.
• Allen Moff of the Record-Courier points out that Lurken was 98 of 126 in foul shooting all of last season. This year she’s 74 of 93 through eight games. She was leading the nation going into the week in free throws made and attempted.
• Earlier in the day, she was named the Mid-American Conference’s female scholar-athlete of the week. Lurken has a 3.68 grade point average in nursing. KSU football player Nick Cuthbert, who has a 3.8 average in grad school and had a 3.97 undergrad GPA in criminal justice, was the league’s male scholar-athlete.

Kent State-Fort Wayne Box score

Story from kentstatesports.com website, including video highlights and player and coach interviews.

Story from Fort Wayne team website

Other MAC scores

Bucknell (5-2) 61, Akron (2-2) 47 at Akron.

Ohio (5-0) 73, Middle Tennessee (1-3) 52 at Middle Tennessee. (Ohio is fourth in the latest Mid-Major Top 20. Florida Gulf Coast, the team KSU beat Sunday, is 23rd.)

Bowling Green (3-4), Division II Davis & Elkins (4-3) 46 at Bowling Green.

Drake (3-2) 95, Northern Illinois (4-2) 86 at Drake.

Western Michigan (4-2) 68, North Dakota State (1-6) 63 at North Dakota State.

From Tuesday

Eastern Michigan (3-4) 66, Incarnate Word (0-5) 47 at Incarnate Word (San Antonio).

MAC standings and some team statistics

Game stories from MAC website

Todd Starkey and Larissa Lurken were happy people as they sat in the coach’s office for an interview Tuesday.

They had been back from the Gulf Coast Showcase tournament, where they:

• Beat Florida Gulf Coast, which is picked to win its seventh straight Atlantic Sun Conference title this season.
• Lost in overtime to Western Kentucky, which is picked to win Conference USA and got votes in last week’s top 25 AP poll.
• Did better than most teams have against Baylor, which has been moved up to the No. 4 spot in the current AP poll.

Lurken scored 88 points in three games, including the 1,000th of her career. She set a tournament record with 39 points against Western Kentucky, became Kent State’s all-time three-point leader, and made an all-tournament team that includes at least two players likely to be All-Americans.

“Florida accomplished exactly what I hoped it would,” Starkey said. “That’s to get us in the company of really good teams and then fight to belong. And everybody down there knows that we belonged in that tournament, that we weren’t the eighth seed just showing up to get beat.”

Every team in the tournament but Kent State won at least 26 games last season. Kent was 6-23.

“We learned some things about ourselves,” Starkey said. “One is that we can play with just about anybody. And two, there are certain things you have to do in tense moments in order to beat good teams. Good teams are good teams for a reason: they know how to win. Western Kentucky knows how to win, and we’re still learning that process.”

Kent State is now 3-4 this season and plays 1-5  Fort Wayne at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the M.A.C. Center.

Is the team where Starkey hoped it would be?

“If I’m honest with myself,” Starkey said, thinking back to before the season,  “and we were to say that after this stretch we’re 3-4 going into IPFW and a have a chance to go .500, we would have taken that.”

Kent State has played five mid-major teams picked to finish no lower than third in their conference, along with Baylor, one of the best teams in the country. Besides Florida Gulf Coast, the Flashes have beaten Eastern Kentucky, which is picked third in the Ohio Valley Conference, by 13. In their opener, they beat Bradley, a second-division team in the Mississippi valley Conference, by 25 points. Bradley had beaten KSU by 8 points a year ago.

Lurken, who’s played against the best in the MAC for three years, says the teams KSU has played so far are comparable, “or even better.”

How Kent has competed, she said, “shows us that we’re a lot better than we have been.”

“We are able of not just competing with them, but beating them,” she said.”It just takes a couple more possessions of flipping that loss to a win. It gives us a lot of confidence — a lot of confidence — as a team.”

Lurken said that a lot feels different that the teams that went 18-81 over her first three years here.

“The style of play, the tempo, is really good for our team because we like to push it,” she said. “We’re better at executing. Last year on offense, we were looking for one specific thing. This year we’re looking at multiple options.”

(I’ll have a lot more about Larissa herself from her and her coach in a later post this week.)

Starkey said the team is ahead of where he thought they’d be.

“I also have greater expectations for this team than I did a few months ago,” he said.

The Fort Wayne game

We used to call the team and school IPFW (Indiana-Purdue at Fort Wayne), but they’ve switched to just “Fort Wayne.”

Fort Wayne is 1-5. The only team the Mastodons have beaten is Division III Defiance. Probably the best team they’ve played is 4-4 Belmont, the preseason favorite in the Ohio Valley Conference. Belmont beat Fort Wayne, 85-59.

Fort Wayne beat Kent State 86-68 in Indiana last season and went on to a 7-23 season and seventh in the Summit League. The Mastodons have three starters back from that team, but none averaged more than 7 points a game. They have a new coach in Niecee Nelson, who was an assistant at San Diego for 11 years in which that team went 222-124.

Fort Wayne’s leading scorers have been 5-7 sophomore guard De’Jour Young and 5-10 guard Peyton Fallis, both of whom average about 11 points a game. As a team, the Mastodons average about 65 points and give up about 74.

“They play really hard, and they crash the offensive glass, and they don’t give up on possessions,” Starkey said. “They’re hungry. Sometimes the biggest trap games you plays are against a team that comes in at 1-5 and has nothing to lose.”

Preview from Kent State website, including links to roster, statistics, schedule, etc.

Preview from Fort Wayne website, including links.

The Lurken watch

Lurken was named MAC East player of the week Tuesday, only the second time in six years a Kent State player has won that award. Lurken did last season after she scored 35 points against Northern Illinois.

Lurken is sixth in the country in scoring at 23.4 points a game. She leads the country in free throws (67 or 9.6 a game) and free-throw attempts (82 or 11.7 a game.) A lot of that comes from her 22-of-25 game against Western Kentucky in which she set KSU records in both foul-shooting categories.

She’s second in the MAC in scoring (to Akron’s Hannah Plybon, who’s averaging 27 but in just three games). She’s 11th in rebounding at 7.0 a game, 11th in free-throw percentage (81.7), 14th in three-point percentage (41.7) and ninth in three-point baskets per game (2.1). She’s third in the league in minutes played (25.3).

Some team numbers

Thanks in large part to Lurken’s numbers, Kent State is tied for second in the country in free throws made (134 or 19.1 a game) and third in free throws attempted (185 or 26.4).

The Flashes are eighth in the conference in scoring (66.6 points a game), 10th in scoring defense (69.6), third in free-throw percentage (72.4), ninth in field goal percentage (38.1) and seventh in rebound margins (plus 1.6).

Those numbers are a little distorted by the 84-42 loss to Baylor. But the Flashes’ 3-4 record is eighth best in the 12-team MAC.

Full MAC team and individual stats, plus standings.

NCAA statistics

If you can’t go to the Fort Wayne game

• Video starts at 7 p.m.
• Audio at about 6:45 on Golden Flash iHeart radio.
• Live statistics.
• In-game updates on Twitter at @KentStatwbb.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Florida Gulf Coast, the team Kent State beat 77-64 Sunday in the Gulf Coast Showcase, is a good team. But it’s hard to figure out how good.

The Eagles, 2-2 at the time, were ranked 11th in last week’s Mid-Major poll. They’ve won six straight Atlantic Sun Conference titles and are picked to win again this season. They were 33-6 last season and runner-up in the WNIT.

After the weekend tournament, Gulf Coast is 2-5. But the Eagles have lost to very good teams. Besides Kent State (3-4), the teams that have beaten the Eagles are a combined 19-6. Those teams are George Washington (5-2), No. 8 Ohio State (5-2) , Northern Colorado (5-1 and ranked 18th among mid-majors) in two overtimes and Quinnipiac  (4-1).

The Eagles lost eight seniors from last year’s 33-win team. They’ve rebuilt around guard Taylor Gradinjan, who led the conference in three-point baskets last season and was a preseason all-league selection. They added China Dow, a transfer who averaged 16.4 points a game at Middle Tennessee State and two junior college players ranked in the top 50 in the nation last year.

“We need more consistent performances,” said Florida Gulf Coast head coach Karl Smesko after the Kent State game. “Hopefully we’ll learn from it and make fewer mistakes next time. We’re disappointed in our play, but we understood there would be some growing pains. Right now it just seems like they’re at a maximum.” (Here’s link to that story.)

(Smesko, in case you missed it in a previous post, is a 1993 Kent State graduate. Wikipedia says he walked on to the KSU men’s team as a senior but left the team to take care of a family member. He graduated summa cum laude in communications. His first job was at Walsh Universty the year after he graduated from Kent State. He has a 439-101 career record as a coach and has been Atlantic Sun coach of the year seven times.

Baylor wins tournament

No. 5 Baylor beat No. 8 Ohio State 85-68 Sunday to win the Gulf Coast Showcase tournament. After beating Kent State, 84-42, the Bears beat No. 18 DePaul 104-72 in the second round. So Kent State “held” Baylor to its lowest point total in the tournament. (Actually, the Flashes held Baylor to fewer points than any team except No. 2 and defending national champion Connecticut, which beat the Bears 72-61 at Connecticut. Baylor also scored 84 points in an 84-70 win over No. 9 UCLA.)

Other third-day scores from the tournament

• No. 18 DePaul (5-1) 108, No. 11 Syracuse (4-3) 84.
• George Washington (5-2) 68, Western Kentucky (3-3) 49

The Lurken watch

Larissa Lurken’s 24-point, 13-rebound performance against Florida Gulf Coast was her third double-double of the season. She made a season-best 8 of 15 shots, 2 of 3 three-pointers and 6 of 8 free throws. (The 24 points was corrected from the 22 reported after the game.)

She’s averaging 23.4 points and 7 rebounds a game. and making 37 percent of her shots, 42 percent of her three-point shots and 82 percent of her foul shots.

Her 24 points Sunday took her past Ashley Bland (1995-98) into 18th place on Kent State’s all-time scoring list with 1,076. Next up the list is Amy Slowikowski (1987-90) with 1,224 and Carrie Nance (1998-2001) with 1,226. Highest in KSU history is Bonnie Beachy, with 2,071 points from 1979-82

Lurken was named to the Gulf Coast Showcase All-Tournament Team. She set the tournament record in scoring with 39 points against WKU. 

Lurken played 35 minutes Sunday. In three games in three days, she played 108 of a possible 125 minutes.

Other notes from Sunday

• Kent State dominated Gulf Coast inside, outrebounding the Eagles 47-26, outscoring them in the paint 32-18 and in second-chance points, 18-9.
• Senior Chelsi Watson started her first game of the season at forward in place of McKenna Stephens. She had 10 points and 8 rebounds in 32 minutes. She’s averaging 6.3 rebounds a game, second on the team, in 20 minutes a game. 20 of her 44 rebounds have been offensive. She’s fifth on the team at 6.4 points a game. Her foul shooting has improved from 34 percent last season to 62 percent this year.
• Watson’s starting was the first change in the starting lineup this season. Other starters have been Lurken, junior forward Jordan Korinek, sophomore guard Alexa Golden and junior point guard Naddiyah Cross. Freshman Ali Poole has played starter minutes at 22 per game, fourth highest on the team.
• Cross made 5 of 6 foul shots in the last minute to keep the Flashes in a comfortable lead. She’s made 16 of 19 on the season (84 percent). Her 11 points were second highest of the season (she had 13 against Robert Morris). She also leads the team with 4.7 assists per game.
• For the season, Kent State is making 72 percent of its free throws. Last year it made 68 percent. Two years ago it was less than 60 percent.
• 6-4 sophomore Merissa Barber-Smith had seven rebounds, a career high, in five minutes. She’s averaging 2.4 rebounds in six minutes a game.
• All three of Kent State’s wins have come by 13 or more points. The last time KSU won three games by double digits in a season was 2010-11, the team’s last winning season.
• Even though Florida Gulf Coast is five miles away in Fort Myers, Sunday’s game was technically at a neutral site in Germain Arena. The Eagles play their home games on campus. Kent State actually was the “home” team Sunday. The neutral setting means the Flashes still haven’t technically broken their 16-game road losing streak.

Kent State plays Fort Wayne (formally IPFW or Indiana-Purdue at Fort Wayne) at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the MAC Center. Fort Wayne is 1-5 on the season with its only win coming over Division III Defiance College. The Mastodons beat Kent State 86-68 in Fort Wayne last season.

Kent State season statistics

Florida Gulf Coast box score

Kent State website story on Florida Gulf Coast game

Other Sunday MAC scores

• Bowling Green (2-4) 73, Saint Peter’s (0-5) 68 at Basketball Hall of Fame Challenge in Springfield, Massachusetts.
• Providence (6-0) 75, Miami (2-4) 59 at UNC Wilmington Thanksgiving Classic.
• Northern Colorado (5-1) 58, Eastern Michigan (2-4) 57 at Texas-San Antonio Thanksgiving Classic.

Ohio (4-0) is only undefeated team in league. Northern Illinois, Buffalo and Toledo are 4-1. NIU is averaging 97 points a game, highest in the country.

MAC standings and some team statistics

Sunday game stories from MAC website

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Florida Gulf Coast shot a lot of three-point baskets and didn’t make nearly enough.

Kent State got a lot of rebounds and its best-balanced scoring of the season.

The Flashes broke a four-game losing streak and won their first game away from home in two seasons in a 77-64 victory in the last game of the Gulf Coast Showcase Sunday.

KSU is now 3-4 on the season. Florida Gulf Coast, the preseason favorite to win the Atlantic Sun Conference, is 2-5.

Larissa Lurken, coming off a 39-point game against Western Kentucky, had 22 points and 13 rebounds. Jordan Korinek had 16 points, Naddiya Cross 11, Chelsi Watson 10 and Ali Poole 8.  It’s the first game of the season the Flashes had four players in double figures. Nobody but Lurken and Korinek had more the six against Western Kentucky.

Florida Gulf Coast came into the game averaging almost as many three-point shots as two-point shots.

KSU held the Eagles to 2 of 20 from three-point distance in the first half in building a 41-22 lead.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever been in a game when a team took 43 three-point shots,” KSU coach Todd Starkey said in his postgame radio interview. Florida Gulf Coast eventually made 12 of them, eight in the fourth quarter.

Those 43 shots were 10 more than any opponent has taken against a MAC team this season. There’s nothing in the Kent State record book about most three-point attempt by an opponent. The most the Flashes have ever attempted themselves is 44.

Starkey was pleased with his defense, especially in the first half.

“It was a morning game and they came out cold,” KSU coach Todd Starkey said in his postgame radio interview. “But we were able to match up with them well in our match-up zone. 

“Overall it was a really good defensive effort.”

Kent State had lost Western Kentucky in part because of WKU’s 19 offensive rebounds. Sunday the Flashes out rebounded FGCU 47-26.

“At every timeout, at every media timeout, I pleaded, implored, begged them to rebound,” Starkey said.

After Lurken’s 13 rebpimds, Watson had 8, Merissa Barber-Smith had 7 off the bench in just five minutes, Korinek 5 and Poole 4.

The Flashes came out of the tournament perhaps better than they expected. Every other team in the field had won at least 26 games last season. Florida Gulf Coast was 33-6 and was runner-up in the WNIT. The Eagles lost eight players to graduation but were still picked to win their league.

“I’m happy with the tournament and beating a good Florida Gulf Coast team,” Starkey said. “It’s a great step in the right direction for our program.”

Kent State returns to action at home at 7 p.m. Wednesday against Indiana-Purdue at Fort Wayne.

Box score

Coach Todd Starkey was asked by the Flashes’ substitute radio broadcaster whether the team needed more experience to win close games like their 79-73 loss in overtime to Western Kentucky.

“This is a team that has a lot of experiences,” Starkey said. “All these players have played a lot of college basketball. So it’s not necessarily the experience but the right type of experience. This team has struggled in winning basketball games, and they have to relearn the ability to win close games. They have to understand how to stay focused in tough possessions and not squander those opportunities.”

Fourteen of the 15 players on the Kent State roster have some Divsion I experience. (Only true freshman is Ali Poole.)

But the Flashes have lost 77 games since the oldest of them — senior Larissa Lurken — set foot on campus four years ago. They’ve won 20.

Kent State is 9-18 in games decided by six points or less in that time and 13-34 in games decides by 10 points or less. (A sidelight: the Flashes are 7-43 in games decided by more than 10 points. Two of those games were this season — wins over Bradley and Eastern Kentucky.)

Other notes from the Gulf Coast Showcase:

The Flashes will play at 11 a.m. Sunday against host school Florida Gulf Coast, which lost to George Washington 76-47 Saturday. Florida Gulf Coast, like Kent State, is 2-4 on the year and 0-2 in the tournament. Gulf Coast was 33-6 and runner-up in the WNIT a year ago but lost eight players from that team to graduation. They still were picked to win the Atlantic Sun Conference this season

Florida Gulf Coast coach Karl Smesko is a 1993 Kent State graduate. Wikipedia says he walked on to the KSU men’s team as a senior but left the team to take care of a family member. He graduated summa cum laude in telecommunications. His first job was at Walsh Universty the year after he graduated from Kent State. He has a 439-100 career record as a coach.

Lurken’s 39 points Saturday were a tournament record for men or women. 

It was her second game over 30 points this season (she had 32 against Eastern Kentucky) and third in her career (37 against Northern Illinois last season.)

It was the most points scored by a Kent State player since Lindsay Shearer scored the school record of 44 in the MAC tournament finals in 2005. Other games better than Lurken’s were 43 by Ann Forbes in 1992 and 41 by all-time leading scorer Bonnie Beachy in 1981.

Lurken, who became the 20th player to score 1,000 points in KSU’s game against Baylor Friday, moved past Amy Schiller into 19th place with her game Saturday. Lurken now has 1,051. She’s 17 points behind Ashley Bland for 18th place.

Lurken played 43 of KSU’s 45 minutes Saturday and played a team-high 30 minutes Friday against Baylor. Most recent statistics said she was fourth in the MAC in minutes played.

Kent State played its fourth conference preseason player of the year Saturday in Western Kentucky’s Kendall Nobile, who had 28 points and 7 rebounds. That’s the best any of the players have done against the Flashes. Eastern Kentucky’s Jalen O’Bannon (Ohio Valley Conference) had 10 and Detroit Mercy’s Rosanna Reynolds (Horizon Leaguye) had 17. Baylor’s Nina Davis, a two-time all-American and Big 12 preseason player of the year, had only three points but played just 15 minutes. Most of Baylor’s scoring came from its two 6-4 and one 6-7 players, who pounded KSU inside.

The loss was Kent State’s 19th straight on the road or at a neutral court.

Besides Lurken’s 37 and Jordan Korinek’s 19 points, there weren’t a lot of statistical highlights from the Western Kentucky game. Lurken, Korinek and Watson had five rebounds. Poole and Watson had six points. Point guard Naddiyah Cross had five assists (but six turnovers).

Kent State blocked five shots, all in the first half. WKU blocked one. KSU had seven fast-break points to western Kentucky’s two but Western had 30 points in the paint to Kent State’s 20. 

The two teams combined to make 57 of 65 foul shots or 88 percent. Kent State was 31 of 37. Western Kentucky was 26 of 28 and didn’t miss a foul shot until late in the fourth quarter.

Baylor (6-1) will face Ohio State (5-1) in the tournament finals at 7:30 p.m. Sunday. No. 5 Baylor beat No. 18 DePaul 104-72 Saturday while No. 8 Ohio State beat No. 11 Syracuse 77-72.

Western Kentucky box score

To follow Sunday’s game:

Video starts at 11 on the tournament YouTube channel.

Audio pregame starts at 10:45 on 640 AM WHLO and Golden Flash iHeart Radio.

The specific link for live statistics hasn’t been posted yet. The general link for the tournament has been http://www.statbroadcast.com.

Live Twitter feed is @kentstatewbb.
MAC scores from Saturday

LaSalle (2-3) 79, Miami (2-3) 70 at UNC-Wilmington Thanksgiving Classic.

Buffalo (4-1) 76, Sacred Heart (3-2) 55 at Buffalo.

Central Michigan (4-2) 77, North Dakota State (1-5) 55 at Cal Poly Thanksgiving Tournament. 

Ohio (4-0) 79, Murray State (4-2) 70 at Ohioi.

Western Michigan (3-2) 74, Eastern Kentucky (2-3) 59 at Plaza Light Classic in Kansas City.

Northern Illinois (4-1) 108, Illinois State (2-3) 66 at Northern.

Larissa Lurken played about as well as any Kent State player has ever done.

For two and a half quarters, her team played about as well as it has in her four yearsas a starter.

But the Flashes had trouble with defense and turnovers in the last quarter and in overtime and fell to Western Kentucky, 79-73, in the second round of the Gulf Coast Showcase tournament in Estero, Florida.

Lurken had 39 points, fourth highest in Kent State history. She made 22 of 25 free throws, both school records. She made three three-point baskets, which gave her the 161, the most in a KSU career.

The Flashes led Western Kentucky, the preseason favorite to win the Conference USA title, by 14 points with about four minutes to go in the third quarter. At that point, the Hilltoppers had made only 21 percent of their shots.

But for the rest of the way, Western Kentucky made 16 of 26.

Kent State turned the ball over four times in the fourth quarter and on four of its first six possessions of overtime.

And for the game, WKU outrebounded the Flashes 43-31, including 19 offensive rebounds that led to 21 second-chance points.

“A tough game,” coach Todd Starkey said in his postgame radio interview. “We played well against Robert Morris and got them to overtime and couldn’t close them out. We played a really tough basketball game against a really good Western Kentucky team and couldn’t close it out. We’e got to be able to learn from these situations. We had too many costly turnovers down the stretch. We gave up two many offensive rebounds. 

“We got really silent at the end of the game, which is when we need to talk defensively the most. We really build our program on great communication on the defensive end of the floor. And the most important possessions that we had, we didn’t do that.

“Then we had a lot of missed boxouts (on rebounding) down the stretch. If you’re going to beat good teams, you can’t have any lapses in those two things.”

Western Kentucky was not a bigger team than the Flashes; its tallest starter is a 6-2 freshman, who wasn’t a factor in the KSU game. The Hilltoppers actually had been outrebounded by 1.6 a game through their first four games. Kent State’s biggest starter is 6-2 Jordan Korinek, and the Flashes had averaged 0.4 rebounds more than their opponents even after being outrebounds 49-23 by Baylor on Friday.

But on Saturday WKU’s 6-1 Ivy Brown had 13 rebounds, six of them offensive. 5-11 Kendall Nobile had four offensive and three defensive rebounds to go with 28 points and 6-1 Tashia Brown had four offensive and two defensive rebounds to go with 21 points.

Lurken, Jordan Korinek and Chelsi Watson led KSU with five rebounds each. Watson had two offensive rebounds.

In reaching her 39 points, Lurken made 7 of 19 field goals,3 of 5 three-pointers and 22 of 25 foul shots.

“That’s a great game for Ris, and I’m really proud of her for the way she’s playing right now,” Starkey said. “Ris has done a great job of really buying into what we’re trying to do. She did a good job of attacking the whole game, getting to the free throw line and defending. She’s going to have a lot of career highs this year. She’s just a very talented player.”

On Friday, Lurken had become the 20th player in KSU history to go over 1,000 points.

Korinek equaled her season high with 19 points on 7 of 13 shooting.

But no other KSU player scored more than five.

Kent State is 2-4 on the season and will play the loser of the George Washington-Florida Gulf Coast game at 11 a.m. Sunday. Western Kentucky is 3-2.

Box score

I’ll add notes and a little more information later this afternoon.

Records are as of the game reported.

Tuesday

Cincinnati (3-1) 49, Miami (1-3) 43 at Miami.

Buffalo (4-0) 71, Duquesne (3-2) 69 at Duquesne.

Auburn (4-0) 54, Ball State (2-1) 40 at Savannah Invitational.

Central Michigan (2-2), Oakland (2-2) 67 at in overtime at Central.

Northern Illinois (3-1) 94, Chicago State (0-4) 85 at Northern.

Wednesday

Ball State (3-1) 76, North Carolina A&T 59 at Savannah Invitational.

Thursday

Toledo (4-0) 76, Davidson (0-5) 41 at Cancun Challenge.

East Carolina (5-2) 82, Ball State (3-2) 69 in overtime at Savannah Invitational.

Friday

Western Michigan (2-2) 66, Missouri-Kansas City (1-3) 54 at Plaza Lights Classic in Kansas City.

Tulane (3-1) 62, Eastern Michigan (2-3) 50 at San Antonio Thanksgiving Classic.

Central Michigan (3-2) 71, Utah Valley (1-3) 62 at Cal Poly Thanksgiving Tournament.

No. 9 UCLA (4-1), Toledo (4-1) 73 at Cancun Challenge.

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The score certainly wasn’t unexpected; in fact, it was closer than we might have thought.

It was No. 5 Baylor 84, Kent State 42, in the first game of the Gulf Coast Showcase. The Flashes came the closest any non-ranked team had come to the Bears in their first five games and at least as close as eight teams did last season, when Baylor was 36-2. The previous two teams Baylor played this season didn’t score 40 while the Bears scored more than 100.

The Flashes scored only 10 more points against Detroit Mercy in Monday’s 73-52 loss.

It also wasn’t unexpected that Larissa Lurken scored the 1,000th point of her career; she had 997 going into the game. But when Lurken accepted her scholarship offer from the Flashes four years ago, she couldn’t have predicted she’d score her 1,000th against the best team she would ever play.

Lurken had 15 points, bouncing back from a five-point game against Detroit Mercy. Her 1,000th came on a three-point shot less than two minutes into the game and gave the Flashes a 5-2 lead. 

On the other end of the KSU bench, senior Lacey Miller scored the first basket of her career and blocked her first shot against the No. 5 team in the country.

“These are the things these kids are going to remember for the rest of their lives,” Kent coach Todd Starkey said in his post game radio show. “It’s a great opportunity — to compete against a nationally ranked program that’s won national championships,  to score your 1000th point or your first point or get aa rebound or even be on the court with them.”

“I was proud of the way our players played. They fought from start to finish. We played with focus and intensity.”

The Bears are one of the tallest teams in the nation, and their three tallest players — 6-7 Kalami Brown, 6-4 Beatrice Mompremier and 6-4 Lauren Cox combined for 47 points on 19 of 25 shooting. They had 19 rebounds among them. Baylor outrebounded KSU 49-23, had 22 second-chance points to the Flashes’ four and outscored Kent in the paint 50-14.

KSU did hold Baylor all-American Nina Davis to three points, though she played only 15 minutes. 

 After Kent State’s 5-2 early lead, Baylor scored 12 straight points and outscored the Flashes 30-15 in the second quarter. The teams each scored 13 in the third quarter, and Baylor hold 24 to KSU’s 6 in the fourth. The Bears never really let up; they were working on their full-court press with seven minutes to go in the game.

Point guards Naddiyah Cross and Megan Carter each had six points for Kent State.  Cross also had four assists and three rebounds. Zenobia Bess and Merissa Barber-Smith also had three rebounds.

Kent State is 2-3 on the season. Baylor is 5-1 with its only loss coming to No.1 Connecticut.

Notes:

• Lurken is the 20th player in KSU history to score 1,000 points. Most recent was Jamilah Humes, who graduated in 2011.
• All 15 Kent State players got into the game. Only Cross, Lurken and McKenna Stephens played more than 20 minutes. 
• Miller, who scored her first basket in the game’s last two minutes, walked on to the team her sophomore year and earned a scholarship last season. Friday was just the fifth game she’s played in.
• Kent State had 20 turnovers, which led to 23 Baylor points. Baylor had 13 turnovers. KSU scored six points off of them.
• If Baylor has a weakness, it’s foul shooting. The Bears were 8 of 15. Going into the game, they were averaging just 66 percent.

Kent State plays again at 11 a.m. Saturday against Weatern Kentucky, which lost its first-round game to No. 18 DePaul, 77-69. Western Kentucky is 2-2 and is favored to win the Conference USA championship. The Hilltoppers were 27-7 last season.  

Box score

To follow Saturday’s Western Kentucky game:

Video starts at 11 on the tournament YouTube channel at https://m.youtube.com/bdglobalsportsnetwork.

Audio pregame starts at 10:45 on  640 AM WHLO and Golden Flash iHeart Radio at http://www.iheart.com/live/golden-flashes-radio-6068/.

Live statistics are at http://www.statbroadcast.com/events/tournament.php?tid=438.

Live Twitter feed is @kentstatewbb.

The women start play Friday in the toughest tournament in the country outside of the NCAA championship.

They start with the No. 5 team in the country, 4-1 Baylor, which was 36-2 a year ago and has won two national championships.

Why play a team like Baylor?

Why play in a tournament like the Gulf Coast Classic, which features four teams in the top 18 in the country and seven other teams that won at least 26 games a year ago.

Why do it when you’re a new coach who’s inherited a team that was 6-23 a year ago?

Here is coach Todd Starkey’s reasoning, gleaned from multiple interviews and press conferences since he was named to the job in April.

• He wanted to set a tone for the program as one that wanted to complete with the best.
• After playing in a field the one in Florida — and playing two Big Ten teams on the road in December, “Nobody in the conference is going to throw anything at us that we haven’t seen.”
• Games like these will help Kent’s RPI, which was 318 of 349 Division I teams a year ago, and the Mid-American Conference RPI, which has been so low for decades that the league hasn’t had two teams in the NCAA tournament since 1996. (RPI is a way of ranking teams based on their own record (25 percent), their opponents’ record (50 percent) and opponents’ opponents’ record (25 percent). The NCAA selection committee uses it as a factor in deciding who makes the 64-team tournament field.
• It’s provides something that players will always be able to remember — that they played against the best.

The dangers — one that Starkey admits — is that losing to such teams can damage his players’ confidence. He says it’s up to him and his assistants to make sure that doesn’t happen — that the Flashes learn the right lessons. 

Kent State and Baylor open the tournament at 11 a.m. Friday. All the teams will play three games in three days, with winners and loser playing.

Baylor has it all. It has four starters back from a team that was 36-2 last season. It has a two-time all-American in 5-11 forward Nina Davis. It has senior guard Alexis Jones, a transfer from Duke, who is making 55 percent of her three-point shots. It has 6-7 sophomore Kanani Davis, who averages a double-double (16 points, 11 rebounds) off the bench. It has last year’s No. 1 high school recruit in 6-4 forward Lauren Cox.

The Bears own two national championships (2005 and 2012), both under current head coach Kim Mulkey. She’s second among the nation’s active women’s coaches with with a 83.7 winnning percentage. (First is Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma at 87.7.)

In five games this season, they’ve scored more than 100 points three times. The game they lost was to defending national champion Connecticut — at Connecticut. Score was 72-61.

Best I can tell, Baylor will be the highest-ranked team a Kent State women’s team has ever played. Bowling Green and Toledo in the MAC have been ranked several times when KSU played them. They’ve played Iowa State, Penn State and Texas A@M in three of their NCAA appearances. (They beat A&M, then ranked No. 25, in the first round of the 1996 tournament

Other teams in the tournament:

No. 8 Ohio State (3-1 and 26-8 last season).

No. 11 Syracuse (3-1 and national NCAA runner-up last season with a 30-8 record).

No. 18 DePaul (3-0 and 27-9 a year ago).

Western Kentucky ((2-1 and 27-7).

George Washington (3-1 and 26-7)

Florida Gulf Coast, the host team (2-2 and 33-6).

Kent State is also 2-2.

The lowest RPI last season of the field was Florida Gulf Coast. Its was 71. Second lowest was Western Kentucky, which was 38). RPI numbers so far this season are pretty meaningless so early.

The winner of the KSU-Baylor game will play DePaul or Western Kentucky Saturday; the two losers will play.

Sunday’s opponent can be any of the other four teams, depending on results of their games.

Kent State has lost two games in a row after winning its first two. It fell to Robert Morris 68-64 in overtime at KSU and lost its first road game at Detroit Mercy Monday, 73-52.

Larissa Lurken is leading the Flashes in scoring at 21.5 points a game despite a five-point game at Detroit Mercy. She also leads in rebounding at 7.5 a game. Chelsi Watson is second in rebounding at 7.3 after a 12 rebound game in Detroit. Jordan Korinek, last year’s leading scorer at 15.5 points a game, is averaging 10.3 but scored just 7 points in each of the games against Bradley, and Detroit Mercy. She had 20 against Eastern Kentucky. Naddiyah Cross has 21 total assists in the three games.

Notes:

Baylor’s Davis is the Big 12’s preseason player of the year, the third such opponent for the Flashes. Kent State also faced the Ohio Valley Conference’s Jalen O’Bannion (Eastern Kentucky) and the Horizon’s League’s Anna Niki Stamolaprou.

Kent State is the only school that had teams in both the men’s and women’s Gulf Coast tournaments. It wasn’t planned that way. The men’s tournament was set when Starkey was putting together his schedule, and the Florida tournament had an opening in  the time frame he was trying to fill.

The KSU men’s and women’s teams separately served Thanksgiving dinners at homeless shelters in Florida.i think they were to have dinner together later in the day. 

Baylor and Kent State have played once before. And try this:

Kent State won 81-75 in the 1997 Borden’s Lobo Classic in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

That team went on to go 23-7 and 18-0 in the MAC. Players on that team included Carrie Templin, Dawn Zerman and Julie Studer.

 To follow the game:

Video is on the tournament YouTube channel at https://m.youtube.com/bdglobalsportsnetwork.

Audio is on 1350 AM WARF at http://sportsradio1350.iheart.com.  (The Kent State football game will be on WHLO and Golden Flash iHeart Radio, which usually broadcast the women’s games.)

Live statistics are at http://www.statbroadcast.com/events/tournament.php?tid=438.

Live Twitter feed is @kentstatewbb.

The excitement of three good home games evaporated for the Kent State women’s basketball team in Detroit as the Flashes lost to Detroit Mercy, 73-52.

It was by far the Flashes’ worst game of the season. The Detroit Mercy broadcast announcer called it clearly the Titans’ best.

Mercy, which has all five of last season’s starters back and two new players who have worked their way into the first string, is 2-2 on the season. The Titans are picked second in the Horizon League.

Kent State is also 2-2, having lost two in a row after winning its first two.

It was KSU’s 16th straight loss on the road, dating back three seasons. The Flashes were 0-13 away from Kent last season.

“It was our first time on the road, and we didn’t know how to react when we got punched in the mouth,” first-year coach Todd Starkey said in his postgame interview on Golden Flash iHeart Radio. “We kind of acted like we liked it, and we just kind of took whatever they were going to give us.

“We tried to respond a few times, and every single time we put a little run together, we kind of shot ourselves in the foot with a missed layup or some missed free throws or a turnover or an offensive rebound put back.”

KSU’s shooting was its worst of the season. The Flashes made only 26 percent of their shots — 17 of 65 and 3 of 17 from three-point distance.

Larissa Lurken, who had averaged 27 points in Kent’s first three games, had just 5, and none in the first half. She made 1 of 12 shots and two free throws.

Her game left her three points short of 1,000 for her career.

“It was no secret they were going to have a game plan on Larissa,” Starkey said. “But I really don’t think that was the reason we struggled so much. We got open looks. I don’t know how many layups we missed. I don’t know how many open three-point shots we missed.

“We can’t shoot 26 percent in any basketball game no matter who we’re playing.

“Our shots weren’t falling, and we weren’t playing very well, and then defensively we certainly got away from our principles.”

Detroit Mercy made 43 percent of its shots and 30 percent of its three-pointers, including 5 of 12 in the first half.

Detroit pretty much put the game away in the first three minutes of the second quarter. The Flashes had cut an early Detroit lead to five with five points in the last minute of the first quarter.

Then the Titans made their first five shots of the second quarter. Kent State missed its first four shots and had a turnover. That made the score 33-18, and the Flashes never got within 12 points the rest of the way.

Senior forward Chelsi Watson was the only bright spot for Kent State. She had 11 points and 12 rebounds (eight of them offensive) for the first double-double of her career. She also had four steals and an assist in 22 minutes.

“Chelsi played her tail off,” Starkey said. “I only wish everybody else had matched her intensity.”

Forward Jordan Korinek, KSU’s leading scorer last season, had 7 points, her third game in single digits. She only had four games below 10 all last year.

“She’s just kind of kind of pressing right now and forcing some things,” Starkey said. “She just has to slow down a little. She’s a very capable finisher. She’s going to be fine.”

Kent State heads to Florida Wednesday for the Gulf Coast Showcase in Estero, outside Fort Myers.

“Our next opponent is Baylor,” Starkey said. “If we thought tonight was tough, we’re going to play one of the top teams in the country.

“We’ve just got to regroup and find a way to continue to get better as a team.”

Notes

• Starkey cleared the bench when Kent State fell far behind in the fourth quarter. Sophomore guard Taylor Parker and senior forward Lacey Miller saw their first action of the season. Parker, who is from Detroit, had 3 points, 5 rebounds and a steal.
• Redshirt freshman Megan Carter, also from the Detroit area, played a season-high 15 minutes and had 7 points.  Merissa Barber-Smith, the Flashes’ 6-4 sophomore forward, had a career-high 6 rebounds and a steal in 10 minutes. Reserve point guard Paige Salisbury got her first basket of the season.
• Kent State’s bench had more points (31) that its starters (21).
• KSU had 21 offensive rebounds and outrebounded Detroit Mercy 46-43. But Detroit had two more second-chance points.
• Both teams had 15 turnovers. Kent State scored 16 off of them, the Titans 9.
• Detroit Mercy outscored KSU 20-3 on fastbreak points.

Box score

Story from Detroit Mercy website, which includes a links to video highlights and interview with its coach.

Story from KSU website.

Other Monday MAC scores

Bowling Green (1-4) 69, Lafayette (1-5) 42 at Bowling Green.

Michigan (4-0) 66, Western Michigan (1-2) 40 at Michigan.

Ohio (3-0) 58, Northern Kentucky (1-3) 41 at Ohio.

Stories on games at MAC website.

MAC standings and some team statistics.