Senior guard Larissa Lurken is likely to become the 20th player in Kent State women’s history to score 1,000 points today.

Lurken has 992 points going into the Flashes’ road game at Detroit Mercy. So far this season’s, she’s averaging 27 points a game, tied with Hannah Plybon of Akron for best in the MAC in the early season.

She would become the first KSU player to hit 1,000 since Jamilah Humes, who reached that level in 2011. If Lurken averaged 15 points a game for the rest of the season, she’d end up with about 1,400 points, which would end her career in 13th place among all Kent State scorers.

Lurken almost certainly will become the Flashes’ leading three-point scorer within the team’s next few games. She has 155 three-point baskets; the record is 160, set by Kathy Carroll from 1991 to 1994. Lurken also is 26 shots behind Carroll’s record for three-point attempts with 484.

Lurken has started 82 of the 89 games she’s played since arriving on campus from Park High School in Cottage Grove, Minnesota. She was third on the team in scoring as a freshman, averaging 7.8 points a game, first as a sophomore at 11.1 and second as a junior with 13.9.

I can’t find the number in the record book, but she’s certainly in the top 10 in school history in number of games started. I think she is the team’s first four-year starter starter since Lindsay Shearer, the three-time all-MAC player who graduated in 2006. Humes, I think, was more of a spot starter and first player off the bench her freshman and sophomore years.

Lurken has evolved from a player who was almost entirely an outside shooter her freshman year. She added shot fakes her sophomore year and became a strong driver to the basket last season. At 5-foot-9, she has developed into one of the team’s better rebounders. She leads the team with 9 rebounds a game so far this season; last season she was tied for second on the team with a 4.4 average.

Lurken is a nursing major with a GPA of about 3.7. For the last two seasons, she’s worked games and practices around nursing clinicals, in which she spends one 12-hour shift a week at an area hospital. She worked one of those shifts last season the day before she scored 37 points against Northern Illinois, which tied for the eighth highest total in school history. Lurken was an academic all-MAC selection her sophomore and junior years.

Here’s link to Lurken’s profile page on the team website

(Photo is from the Kent State team website.)

For coach Todd Starkey, Kent State’s schedule this semester has been like a countdown.

Robert Morris, which beat the 2-1 Flashes in overtime Saturday, was better than Eastern Kentucky, which KSU beat by 13 Monday, Starkey says.

Eastern Kentucky was better than Bradley, routed by Kent State by 25 in its opener, he argues.

And Detroit Mercy, the coach says, is the best so far.

The Flashes play in Detroit at 7 p.m. Monday in the first road game for the Flashes, who were 0-13 away from Kent last season.

Detroit Mercy returns five starters and its top reserve from a team that was 15-15 and fourth in the Horizon League last semester. The Titans were picked second in the league this season and have the Horizon preseason player of the year in 5-10 senior guard Rosanna Reynolds. She was one of two Division I players to average at least 15.0 points, 5.0 rebounds, and 5.0 assists last season.

Detroit Mercy also has second-team preseason forward Brianne Cohen, who averaged 15.6 points and  5.7 rebounds as the Horizon Sixth Player of the Year last season.

Add to that 6-foot forward Kelsey Mitchell, a graduate transfer from Michigan who had 12 points and 16 rebounds in the Titans’ game Saturday.

Yet Detroit Mercy is only 1-2 on the season, with Saturday’s game being an 70-60 loss to Bradley, the team Kent State dominated in its first game. Its other loss came to 3-0 East Carolina in overtime, 83-81. All three of the Titans’ games so far have been on the road.

A big reason Detroit Mercy lost at Bradley was that it made only 3 of 24 three-point shots, and the three-pointer was the Titans’ major weapon last season. They set a school record of 234 and were second in the league in three-point percentage. Reynolds, Nicole Urbanick and Haleigh Ristovski all have made more than 115 three-pointers in their careers.

But so far this season Detroit Mercy is shooting 29.8 percent from three-point distance, 4 percentage points worse than a year ago. The Titans are averaging 28 three-point shots per game.

In its first three games, Kent State has defended the three-point shot fairly well, holding teams to 30.8 percent. That’s 4 points better than a year ago, when the Flashes were a distant last in the MAC in three-point defense.

But Robert Morris made 6 of its first 8 three-point shots before Kent State adjusted its defense Saturday. The Colonials made only 1 of 12 after that.

Overall Kent State’s defense has been substantially better than last season. The Flashes are allowing 62.3 points, seven fewer than last season. Opponents are shooting 41 percent, compared with 43 percent a year ago. The competition has been comparable; Robert Morris and Eastern Kentucky are first-division teams in their conferences.

The defense will be key as KSU tries to win on the road.

“Defense travels,” Starkey likes to say. If the offense struggles on an unfamiliar court, the defense has to make up the difference.

Notes:

• Kent State will take the bus to Detroit Monday morning and head home after the game. “I don’t like to wait around on the road,” Starkey says.
• In case you’re confused about the name of the opponent (as I was): I grew up in Michigan hearing about the University of Detroit and its basketball program. Men’s star in those days was Dave DeBusschere, later an NBA all of fame player who also played baseball for the Chicago White Sox. The University of Detroit, a private Catholic school, merged with Mercy College of Detroit in 1990 to form the University of Detroit Mercy. (ESPN analyst Dick Vitale also coached at Detroit in the 1970s.)

To follow the game

• Video stream starts at 7 p.m. on ESPN3. You have to subscribe to ESPN to see it on a computer or portable device.
• Audio at about 6:45 on Golden Flash iHeart radio and 640 AM WHLO.
• Live statistics through the Detroit Mercy website.
• In-game updates on Twitter at @KentStatwbb.

KSU statistics through three games.

Preview from Detroit Mercy’s website, including links to its roster and statistics.

Preview from Kent State website.

Sunday MAC scores

• Wake Forest (3-1) 89, Eastern Michigan (2-2) 61 at Wake Forest.
• Akron (2-1) 73, Canisius (0-2) 64 at Canisius.
• Chattanooga (3-2) 54, Bowling Green (0-4) 49 at Chattanooga.

Here’s link to MAC standings and some team statistics. Unbeaten teams in the league are Buffalo and Toledo (both 3-0) and Ohio and Ball State (both 2-0).

Game stories from the MAC website.

Kent State could have been blown out.

Robert Morris made six of its first eight three-point shots. The Colonials were pressuring and battering the Flashes on defense. They led KSU 26-16 after the first quarter.

But KSU battled back, especially in the fourth quarter, to send the game into overtime before falling, 68-65, to a team that went to the NCAA tournament last season.

“I’m not really sure I believe in moral victories,” first-year coach Todd Starkey said. “We lost the game, and that stings, and it should hurt to fight that hard for something and still come up on the short end. But we learned some things about ourselves.

“It was good for me as a coach to see that they were going to fight. A couple of times in the huddle early in the game, I was wondering if they were going to kind of give in, and they decided not to. I was really proud of them for the effort.”

Kent State is 2-1 on the season. Robert Morris, which won the Northeastern Conference tournament last year and is picked second in the league this season, is 3-1.

Senior Larissa Lurken had 32 points and 12 rebounds for the Flashes and had a good look at a three-point shot that would have sent the game into double overtime.

“They executed that play very well,” Starkey said. “We can run it for four different options. Obviously we want to go to Larissa. Obviously she’s down about missing it, but we’re not even in that situation if she doesn’t play the way she did today.”

Lurken played 43 of the game’s 45 minutes. She had 14 points in the fourth quarter when KSU came back from 11 points down. She had two steals and three foul shots in the last 27 seconds as KSU scored the last five points of the quarter.

“She showed incredible toughness,” Starkey said. “And her teammates followed that. They were trying to match that effort. And that’s leadership. Leadership isn’t always the person making the most noise. It’s usually the person doing the right things, and she did a lot of the right things today.”

In three games, Lurken is averaging 27 points and 9 rebounds. Last year she averaged 15  points a game.

Lurken helped lead a defensive effort that held Anna Niki Stamolamprou, Robert Morris’s leading scorer, to 5 of 16 shooting and 2 of 11 after the first quarter. Almost every KSU guard took a turn at defending Stamolamprou.

KSU held the Colonials to 1 of 12 three-point shots after the first quarter.

“They didn’t listen to the scouting report at the beginning of the game,” Starkey said. “We talked about them having five really good shooters that are quick-trigger kids, and we gave them open looks. I encouraged them strongly in the huddles to make sure we’re closing out of their shooters and keeping our hands high and being there on the catch, which is what our game plan was.”

For the game, Robert Morris made 46 percent of its shots, though only 37 percent in the second half.

Kent State shot 13 percentage points worse at 33 percent and only 27 percent in the second and third quarters combined.

Robert Morris’s very physical play often kept Kent State from running its offense, but it also put the Colonials in foul trouble for most of the game.

Four Robert Morris players had three fouls at halftime and three, including Stamolamprou and leading rebounder Megan Smith, fouled out. Smith had 18 points on 7 of 8 shooting but played only 22 minutes.

KSU went to the foul line 34 times, making 24. Robert Morris was 9 of 19.

The Colonials’ physical play kept KSU from getting the ball inside to Jordan Korinek, last year’s leading scorer. Korinek had 7 points on three-of-nine shooting. She also had seven rebounds and four steals. 

Junior point guard Naddiyah Cross had the play of the game with 18 seconds to go when she tapped away an inbounds pass on the sideline, beat Stamolamprou to the ball near the KSU basket and was fouled. She made both shots to tie the game.

Cross had 13 points, equalling the second highest in her career. She also made a half-court shot at the buzzer  to get Kent State within seven at the end of the first half.

After Robert Morris scored 26 points in the first quarter (by far the highest against KSU this season), KSU held the Colonials to 13 in each of the second and third quarters and eight in the fourth.

“We kept trying different things to throw them off, and it started to to work,” Starkey said. “We started playing a little bit of zone, a little zone press, back to zone, come out in zone, jump into man after the first pass  — just trying to change the tempo of the game. It  kind of turned things in our favor a little bit.”

Starkey said the team used three different presses in the comeback in the fourth quarter to keep the Colonials from knowing where to put the ball.

Notes:

• Kent State outscored Robert Morris 24-14 in points off turnovers. The Flashes had a season-high 20 turnovers, but Robert Morris had 22.
• Though the Flashes were outrebounded for the first time this season (38-34), they had nine second-chance points to Robert Morris’s one. Lurken had four offensive rebounds, Korinek three and senior forward Chelsi Watson, playing extended minutes for the second game in a row, had two.
• 6-4 sophomore Merissa Barber-Smith played 10 minutes, highest in her career.
• KSU’s full marching band performed and cheered very loudly as the game’s pep band, then played a concern from the court after the game.
• Attendance was 364, lowest of the season.

Kent State plays its first road game of the season at Detroit Mercy on Monday. Detroit is 1-2 and lost to Bradley by 10 points at Bradley Saturday. Kent State beat Bradley by 25 in its opener in Kent. Still Starkey calls Detroit as good as any team KSU has played this season. The Titans return all five starters from a team that went 15-15 a year ago and finished fourth in the Horizon League.

Box score

KSU website story, including video highlights and Starkey interview.

The story from the Robert Morris website, including quotes of the Colonels’ coach.

Other Saturday MAC scores

• No. 5 Louisville (4-0) 83, Bowling Green (0-3) 58 at Louisville.
• Morehead State (3-1) 77, Miami (2-1) 43 at Morehead State.
• Toledo (3-0) 92, Cleveland State (1-2) 59 at Cleveland State.
• Buffalo (3-0) 73, Manhattan (2-1) 39 at Buffalo.
• Western Illinois (3-1) 83, Northern Illinois (2-1) 79 at Western.
• Elon (3-1) 71, Central Michigan (1-2) 57 at Central.

Game stories from the MAC website.

MAC standings and team statistics.

Kent State’s women’s basketball team came back from 15 points down and scored five points in the last 1:13 to force overtime.

But the Flashes lost their first game of the season to Robert Morris, 68-65.  KSU now is 2-1; Robert Morris is 3-1

Larissa Lurken had 32 points and 12 rebounds for the Flashes.

Detailed story will follow soon.

Box score

Kent State coach Todd Starkey looks at Saturday’s opponent, Robert Morris, as a better team than the Eastern Kentucky, the team KSU beat Monday.

It’s close. Robert Morris was 20-13 a year ago, Eastern Kentucky 18-12. Robert Morris is picked second in the Northeastern Conference this season, Eastern Kentucky third in the Ohio Valley Conference. The teams were four places apart in RPI and five apart in strength of schedule last season.

Robert Morris features a preseason all-league pick in guard Anna Niki Stamolamprou. Eastern Kentucky had the OVC preseason player of the year in forward Jalen O’Bannon.

No matter what, it will be another test for the 2-0 Flashes, who are off to their best start since 2010.

Robert Morris is 2-1, with a 69-52 home win over NAIA school Point Par, a 62-51 road win over Division I Lafayette and a 69-56 home loss to Division I Monmouth. Lafayette was 6-23 a year ago; Monmouth was 14-17.

The Colonials, who are based in Pittsburgh, return four starters from last year’s team. Stamolamprou is a 5-9 senior who averaged 13.7 points, 5.5 rebounds and 3.3 assists in earning second team all-NEC honors last year. She was the league tournament’s MVP as Robert Morris upset No. 1 seed Sacred Hart in the finals to earn an NCAA bid. There the Colonels were routed in the first round by eventual national champion Connecticut.

Stamolamprou is averaging 16.9 in Robert Morris’s three games this season. 6-1 junior forward Megan Smith is averaging 10 rebounds and 13.7 points.

Over the last 11 years, Robert Morris is 202-144 and has won four conference titles. New coach this year is Charlie Buscaglia, who had been associate head coach to his father, Sal, for eight years.

“They’ll be a significant test,” Starkey said. “We’ll have to play well.”

Kent State was 6-23 a year ago but is playing like a different team under Starkey, who became coach in April. The Flashes beat Bradley, a team it had lost to by eight a year ago, 77-52 in their opener and Eastern Kentucky, which ranked 140 places higher than Kent in RPI ratings last season, by 13 at home.

The Flashes are averaging 17 more points and 14 more rebounds than than they did a year ago.

After his Thursday appearance on KSU’s Flash Talk radio program, Starkey had nice things to say about point guard Naddiyah Cross and senior guard Larissa Lurken.

Cross has 15 assists, three turnovers and four steals in two games.

“She’s off to a great start,” Starkey said. “I’m proud of the way she has focused. She’s watched a lot of film, and I think Morgan Toles has been able to help her a lot.”

Toles, an assistant coach, was a starting point guard at Auburn and Florida State, where she led the ACC is assist-to-turnover ratio.

Lurken has 49 points and 15 rebounds in two games, but Starkey also praised her defense.

“She’s bought in on what we’re trying to do,” the coach said. “Her whole life, people have been telling her she wasn’t a good defensive player.

“I have to tell her I disagree. She has the size (5-9) to defend the perimeter and a good basketball IQ. She’s becoming more vocal. She’s doing well.”

Saturday’s game is at 2 p.m. in the M.A.C. Center.

Kent State website preview, including links to roster and statistics.

Robert Morris website preview, including links.

If you can’t go

• Video stream starts at 2 p.m. at kentstatesports.com/watch.
• Audio at about 1:55 on Golden Flash iHeart radio at http://www.iheart.com/live/golden-flashes-radio-6068/ and 640 AM WHLO.
• Live stats at sidearmstats.com/kent/wbball.
• In-game updates on Twitter at @KentStatwbb.

Friday MAC scores

• No. 21 Michigan State (4-0) 68, Western Michigan (1-1) 64 in overtime at Western.
• Ohio (2-0) 72, Tennessee-Martin (1-3) 55 at Ohio.
• Central Michigan (1-1) 81, Furman (0-2) 71 at Central.

Link to MAC webpage with details on each game.

As I did last season, I waited for a week into the season before I wrote my “keys to the season” post in order to get a look at the Flashes’ new style of play.

(Remember they had one last year, too — a dribble-drive offense and a match-up zone defense.)

Once again, it is, as new coach Todd Starkey often tells us, an entirely different offensive and defensive system.

So far, it’s working great. The Flashes are 2-0 with a win over a below-average team (Bradley) by 25 and an above-average team (Eastern Kentucky) by 13.

But we were encouraged after the first two games last season, too, when KSU beat Colgate by 5 and lost to Wright State by 5. Colgate finished the season 7-23. Wright State was 24-11.

The giveaway last season came in the third game, in which KSU was pounded 86-68 at IPFW. The Flashes never did win a game on the road.

So, as Starkey says, the team is still a work in progress, and we’ll revisit these keys after the non-conference season.

The flip answer to the the strategy for the season is simple: Keep doing what they’ve been doing. 

Scoring? KSU has averaged 78.5 points a game — 17 more than they did last year and actually more than any team in the league last season (though two other teams right now average more than Kent).

Defense? The Flashes’ have allowed 59.5 points a game — 12 fewer than last season.

Rebounding? A plus 14.5 margin —16 better and double of any 2015-16 MAC team.

Field goal percentage, three-point shooting, foul shooting? All better. Way better. Same for field goal and three-point defense.

Turnover total is down about three, turnover margin up two. Steals are up one. (Stats through two games.)

But it’s just two games. Those numbers can’t possible last. This is not Connecticut.

“It’s nice that a lot of people are excited, but I have to be quick to say that we have a lot of things to get better,” Starkey said Thursday. “We’ve played well in spots. But we’re still learning a lot of things.”

Starkey said the team’s level of offensive execution has been better than he might have expected this early in the season. But, he said, “the power of the scouting report” could make things harder as opponents have video of the Flashes to prepare.

So what do they really need to do to be a .500 or better team this season. Here are my keys:

1. HOLD TEAMS UNDER 67 POINTS A GAME. We’ll start with defense because that’s where Starkey starts, pushing his man-to-man base in every practice. 67 was average in the MAC last season. It’s also 4 points better than Kent State did. Doing that means:

• Keeping opponents’ shooting percentage under 40. It was 43.4 last season, a distant last in the conference.

• Controlling opponents’ three-point shooting, which was 34.4 percent in 2015-16. Other teams made almost eight per game last season, which put KSU close to the bottom of the MAC in both those categories.

So far Kent State has held its two opponents to 38.5 percent shooting, 27.3 percent from three-point range.

• Slowing down transition points. My biggest concern from the first two games came in the third quarter of the Eastern Kentucky game, when the Colonels put a lot of pressure on the ball. Kent State was outscored 10-0 on fast break points and 11-1 on points off turnovers that quarter. The Flashes steadied and the fourth quarter was even, but there’s no doubt in my mind that teams will harass Kent ball handlers until they prove they can handle it. 

2. SCORE AT LEAST 67 POINTS PER GAME. The offense has looked very good at times. The 80 and 77 points the Flashes have scored are the second and third most the team has put up in five years. They averaged 61 a year ago. To be better, they have to:

• Get a total of 30 to 35 points a night from senior guard Larissa Lurken and junior forward Jordan Korinek, the teams’ leading scorers a year ago.

• Get steady contributions from at least four other players. That probably starts with junior forward McKenna Stephens and freshman guard Ali Poole. So a couple of people needs to average seven points a game or so from this group: redshirt freshman Megan Carter, sophomore Alexa Golden, junior forward Zenobia Bess and senior forward Chelsi Watson. Point guard Naddiyah Cross is a special case; she scored 9 points in the opener and 2 in the second game. She’s also had 15 assists in two games. She has to be enough of a threat to score so opponents can’t back off guarding her and pack the center.

• Make enough three-point baskets to keep the other team honest. Kent State has been close to dead last in three-point goals per game and in three-point field goal percentage for five years. That’s mostly because their only really threat was Lurken, who’s likely to become the team’s career leader in three-point shots this season. So teams tried to smother her and let anyone else try to shoot. Now the Flashes have Poole, who looks like a good outside shooter. In Starkey’s offense, you can expect Korinek and Stephens to shoot the three-point shot, too, and so far they look pretty good at it. KSU has averaged about four three-point baskets a game for three years. That has to get up to close to six. (It’s five-and-a-half through two games.)

3. KEEP TURNOVERS UNDER CONTROL. The Flashes have made more turnovers than every team in the league in what seems like forever. Getting it down just three from last season — from 18 to 15 a game — would make a big difference.

4. WIN SOME ON THE ROAD. All six games KSU won last season came at the M.A.C. Center. Their first two games (and wins) this season have been at home. Obviously that can’t happen for a season and approach .500. “Defense travels,” Starkey likes to say. Shooters may struggle on an unfamiliar basket, but the defensive system and effort doesn’t have to change.

5. BELIVE IN THEMSELVES, their system and their coaches. Listen to Lurken, who’s played on teams that won only 18 of 71 games in four years.

“I think we’re a lot better than sometimes we think we are,” she said in a preseason interview. “We have to believe that. If we push ourselves, we can actually get there.”

And after their first win: “What we worked on in practice translated to the game.”

Confidence can mean two or three extra victories.

The bottom line

Prediction? If these first two games mean anything, a .500 season isn’t impossible.

The team plays a murderous non-conference schedule — No. 2 Baylor, two Big Ten teams, two more teams in the Gulf Coast Showcase that won at least 26 games last season. Robert Morris, Wright State and Youngstown State all won more than 20 games last season. Detroit was 15-15, fourth in the Horizon League and has all five starters back.  IPFW ought to be beatable at Kent if the Flashes’ first two games were real.

So KSU has to win four of those non-conference games and break even in the MAC to reach .500 for the year. If the Flashes can win four more in the non-conference, they’ll have proven to me that they have a solid chance of winning at least half of their league games.

Could they be better than that? If, as Starkey said after Monday’s game, Eastern Kentucky is equivalent to a good MAC team, the answer is yes — assuming Kent State can keep improving. Starkey says he thinks Robert Morris and Detroit, the Flashes’ next two opponents, are better than Eastern. If they could win both, we may have a surprise team on our hands.

But right now my guess would be 11 to 13 wins (out of 30 games), with a .500 season within reach. Considering they haven’t won more than seven in five years, I’d take that.

Final MAC standings and statistics from 2015-16

Thinking about the amazing outpouring of support and approval of the men’s basketball team inviting fans of all races to join them on the court for the National Anthem:

How about making it a Kent State tradition? Do it for every sport, every game, starting with the women vs. Robert Morris Saturday afternoon.

Some quick women’s basketball notes:

IN HER FIRST TWO GAMES, senior guard Larissa Lurken had 22 points and five rebounds and 27 points and 10 rebounds. The Eastern Kentucky game was the third double-double of her career. The 27 points were second highest to the 37 she scored against Northern Illinois last season, when she also had a career-high 11 rebounds. The 10 rebounds equals her second highest. For her career, Lurken had 960 points and 53 three-point baskets, which is second highest in school history.

THE LAST TIME KENT STATE WAS 2-0 was 2010-11, when the team started 6-0 under coach Bob Lindsay. The Flashes went on to a 20-11 season and second place in the MAC East. The team had five senior starters, and after they graduated, things started to fall apart. The next season was by far Lindsay’s least experienced team, and the recruiting class was pretty much a bust. Kent State went 6-21 and Lindsay’s contract wasn’t renewed. Coach Danny O’Banion took over the next season and went 21-98 over four seasons before her contract wasn’t renewed.

COACH TODD STARKEY HAS HIS TEAM STAYING ON THE COURT to talk to fans for 15 minutes after every home game, win or lose. “We did that at Indiana (where he was an assistant) last season,” Starkey said. “It’s good to build a connection with the community.”

AFTER THE FLASHES BEAT EASTERN KENTUCKY 80-67,  the team stood in a line in front of the pep band and sang the school song. Starkey saluted the band and a noisy group of about 25 fans sitting next to it. Forward Jordan Korinek said in a radio interview after the game how nice it was to have a noisy gym behind the team. Attendance at the Eastern game was 489 and 562 for the Bradley opener. Average attendance last season was 490, second to last in the MAC behind Miami (482).

STARKEY GREETED two potential high school recruits after the game — both sophomore guards from Ohio.

IN THE MAC, Kent State, Buffalo, Miami, Ball State, Toledo and Northern Illinois are 2-0. (Standings are here.) Closest thing to marquee wins are three wins over second-division Atlantic 10 schools: Buffalo over Massachusetts, Toledo over the  Rhode Island and Western Michigan over Davidson.

MOST INTERESTING MAC TEAM is Northern Illinois, which has scored 204 points in two games, including a 114-104 overtime win against Milwaukee. NIU was 4-14 (11-18 overall) and last in the MAC West last season. Senior Ali Lehman had 48 points and 21 rebounds in the Milwaukee game.

THE FLASHES host 1-1 Robert Morris at 2 p.m. Saturday at the MACC.

MAC scores this week

Tuesday

• Cincinnati (2-0) 68, Bowling Green (0-2) 58 at BG.
• Toledo (2-0) 65, Rhode Island (1-2) 50 at Toledo.
• Miami (2-0) 60, Northern Kentucky (0-2) 50 at Northern.

Wednesday

• Eastern Michigan (2-1) 68, Division II Ferris State 50 at Eastern.
• Northern Illinois (2-0) 114, Milwaukee (1-1) 104 at Northern.
• Ball State (2-0) 84, Evansville (0-2) 49 at Ball State.
• Buffalo (2-0) 73, Niagara (1-2) 63 at Buffalo.
• Penn State (2-1) 84, Akron (1-1) 71 at Penn State.

Game stories are on MAC website.

After Kent State women’s basketball team routed a mediocre Bradley team Friday, we wondered how good this group really was.

After the Flashes beat a very solid Eastern Kentucky team — a team with two very good players — by 13 points Monday, the answer is that so far, things look pretty darn good.

Kent State ran to a 21-point first-half lead and held back a second-half Eastern rally to earn an 80-67 victory. 

It is the first time KSU has won its first two games since 2010, the Flashes’ last winning season. It’s only the second time in five years they’ve won two games in a row at all. Eastern Kentucky — if you count its 18-12 record last season or 1-0 record this year — is only the third team with a winning record Kent State has beaten since 2012.

So far things are different under new head coach Todd Starkey.

“Obviously I’m really pleased with the win,” Starkey said in his postgame radio interview on Golden Flash iHeart Radio after he first pointed out two things the team needed to do better. “I thought we did a really good job on the offensive and defensive end in the first half. We did a good job of keeping our composure and of executing down the stretch.”

The Flashes’ first half was even better than the excellent first half they played against Bradley.

They made 65 percent of their shots, including five of six three-pointers. They outrebounded Eastern Kentucky 22-10. They had 12 assists on 17 baskets and just five turnovers. 

The Flashes held Eastern to 32 percent shooting and forward Jalen O’Bannon — the preseason player of the year in Ohio Valley Conference — to zero points and one rebound. She averaged a double-double last season. O’Bannon finished with 10 points and three rebounds.

“We did really execute the game plan on her,” Starkey said. “She’s a very tough player, especially on the high post. We really did a good jump of crowding the paint so she didn’t have driving lanes.”

Eastern Kentucky came out in the second half much more aggressive on offense and defense. The Colonels cut Kent State’s lede from 51-32 to 57-50 over seven minutes in the third quarter. Over that time, they forced five KSU turnovers and held the Flashes to 2 of 10 shooting. Points off turnovers went from 16-6 Kent at halftime to 17-17 at the end of the third quarter.

“We’ve got to get that cleaned up,” Starkey said. “Our scrimmage and two games in a row now that we’ve struggled in the third quarter. We’re going to spend a lot of time on that as a coaching staff and in practice so that when we come of the locker room (in the second half) we’re not sluggish.”

The only quarter in which Bradley played Kent State even was the third (18-18). In a closed scrimmage against Cleveland State, KSU had a big lead at halftime and lost it. And Eastern Kentucky outscored the Flashes 25-18 in the third quarter Monday.

What steadied Kent State Monday was getting the ball to Jordan Korinek inside to stop EKU scoring runs and a big swing on a technical foul against Eastern in the last minute of the quarter.

Larissa Lurken was fouled after she grabbed a defensive rebound, then the player who fouled her was called for a technical. (I couldn’t tell whether she pushed Lurken after the play or said something the referees didn’t like.)

Lurken made all four free throws. KSU took the ball, missed two shots, got two offensive rebounds, and Ali Poole made a shot with one second to go in the quarter.

Lurken, Korinek and reserve forward Chelsi Watson were the players of the game.

Lurken had 27 points on top of the 22 she had in KSU’s opener agains Bradley. She made three of five three-point shots, which took her into second place  in three-point baskets in KSU history with 153. The record is 160 by Kathy Carroll from 1990 to 1994.

Lurken made 12 of 12 free throws and had 10 rebounds and two steals. She now has 960 points in her career. Barring something really crazy, she’ll soon become the 20th player in school history to score 1,000 points in her career and the first for the Flashes since 2011.

Korinek had 20 points and 9 rebounds after struggling with just 7 and 3 in the opener in Bradley. She also did the primary guarding of EKU’s O’Bannon. And she stayed out of foul trouble, which cost her minutes against Bradley and in many games last season.

Watson came off the bench to score 11 points and have 8 rebounds in 15 minutes.

“What a great effort,” Starkey said in the biggest superlative I’ve heard him say since he came to Kent State. “If Chelsi doesn’t show up today, we may not win that game. She gave us really big minutes on key possessions. She got some great hustle points on offensive rebound putbacks and came up with a couple of loose balls. And then she had two charges. Those two charges were huge on a team that drives it as much as Eastern Kentucky.”

Notes:

• Poole had 9 points after scoring 11 in her first college game Friday. She was the first player off the bench for the second game in a row.
• Point guard Naddiyah Cross had 9 assists to 1 turnover to go with two points, two rebounds and a steal.
• KSU outrebounded Eastern 42-21. After Lurken, Korinek and Watson came McKenna Stephens with seven. KSU had 12 second-chance points to the Colonels’ two.
• Kent State had 12 assists and five turnovers in the first half and 12 turnovers and four assists in the second.
• For the game, Kent State made 27 of 54 shots. But for the second game in a row, second half shooting was much worse — just 35 percent. Eastern Kentucky made 27 of its 59 shots for 45.8 percent.
• Kent State’s 80 points were its second highest in five seasons. Friday’s 77 were third highest.
• Kent State made 21 of 30 foul shots, Eastern Kentucky 7 of 9.
• Shavontae Naylor, Eastern’s 5-11 transfer guard from the University of South Florida, led the Colonels in scoring for the second straight game with 21 and led them with six rebounds.
• Eastern Kentucky is 1-1 on the season. It beat Bowling Green 57-55 at home Friday.

Kent State plays its third straight home game Saturday against Robert Morris, which is 1-1 with a 69-52 victory over NAIA school Point Park and a 69-56 loss to Division I Monmouth. Last year Robert Morris was 20-13 and third in the Northeast Conference and won the conference tournament. The Colonials lost to Connecticut 101-49 in the first round of the NCAA tournament. They return four starters, including leading scorer Anna Niki Stamolamprou, a 5-9 guard who averaged 13.7 points a game, was NEC tournament MVP and a second-team all-conference player.

The game is at 2 p.m. in the M.A.C. Center.

KSU team website story, including video highlights and interviews.

Coming off a heady 25-point victory in its season opener, Kent State’s women’s basketball team will have a much tougher test against Eastern Kentucky Monday.

The game starts at 7 p.m. in the MAC Center.

KSU’s victory came by its biggest margin in six years. The Flashes dominated every statistical category and never were threatened after the first few moments of the second quarter.

But Bradley was 9-22 last season (though it did beat the Flashes 68-60). They were picked seventh in the Missouri Valley Conference. The Braves’ leading scorer averaged 9.5 points per game.

Eastern Kentucky was 18-12 last season. The team is picked third in the Ohio Valley Conference. Its leading scorer averaged 18 points and 10 rebounds last season and is her  league’s preseason player of the year.

The Colonels beat MAC foe B0wling Green 57-55 Friday at home. BG was picked fifth in the MAC East in the coaches’ preseason poll (KSU was picked sixth) and beat the Flashes twice last season.

To win, the first player Kent State needs to slow down is Jalen O’Bannon, a 6-1 senior forward who had 15 double-doubles last season and was a first-team all conference selection. She had 13 points and 10 rebounds against Bowling Green. O’Bannon is a transfer from Arkansas State, where, as a sophomore, she led a team that went to the WNIT in rebounding.

To counter her, Kent State will need a much better game out of its top post player, Jordan Korinek. Korinek, Kent State’s leading scorer a year ago at 15.5 points a game, had 7 points and 3 rebounds against Bradley. In only one game last year — actually against Bradley — did Korinek score fewer points (6). (She also had four rebounds and four fouls in that game.) Korinek only had fewer than 10 points three times in 29 games. In a scrimmage last weekend against Cleveland State, she had 24 points and 13 rebounds. 

She picked three what I would call minor fouls in the third quarter and sat out a big chunk of the second half. Korinek struggled with foul trouble much of last year, fouling out of  five games and having four fouls in 13 others. A significant number of those fouls were offensive as KSU played an offense based on getting Korinek the ball in the post. None of her fouls Friday were on offensive. New coach Todd Starkey’s offense moves Korinek around more; the 6-2 forward made one of two three-point shots Friday; she took only 20 all last season, making five.

Starkey said Korinek’s foul trouble is “something that we’re going to have to get solved, because she’s such a talented offensive post player.”

“Obviously their game plan was to take her away,” the coach told the Record-Courier after the game. “They double-teamed her early, and she got a little frustrated.”

The second person the Flashes need to slow down is 5-11 redshirt senior guard Shavantae Naylor, who had 15 points and 12 rebounds against BG. Naylor is a transfer from the University of South Florida who sat out last season because of NCAA rules.

Despite the O’Bannon-Naylor rebounds (and 12 more from 5-5 point guard Mariah Massengill) Eastern Kentucky was outrebounded by Bowling Green, 47-40.

KSU outrebounded Bradley 46-38 with two players having six rebounds and four more having five.

Eastern Kentucky is not a big team — O’Bannon is the only player taller than 5-11 of the six Colonels who played more than nine minutes against BG.

Eastern shot just 36 percent from the field and 25 percent from three-point distance against Bowling Green, about 5 percentage points lower in both categories than its 2015-16 statistics. The Colonels held BG to 32 percent shooting, 27 percent in the second half, when they went on a 20-3 run to overcome a nine-point BG lead.

Kent State’s aggressive man-to-man defense — something Starkey has emphasized hard in practice — looked very good at times Friday. The Flashes held Bradley to 31 percent shooting and 3 of 17 three-point shots. That was about 5 percentage points below the Braves’ shooting last season.

Here’s the preview from the KSU Sports website, which includes links to KSU statistics, roster, schedule and more.

Here’s the preview from the Eastern Kentucky site, which includes the same kind of links.

If you can’t go

• Video stream starts at 7 p.m. at kentstatesports.com/watch.
• Audio at about 6:45  on Golden Flash iHeart radio at http://www.iheart.com/live/golden-flashes-radio-6068/ and 640 AM WHLO.
• Live stats at sidearmstats.com/kent/wbball.
• In-game updates on Twitter at @KentStatwbb. .

MAC women’s scores from Saturday

Akron 63, Malone 52 at Akron
Eastern Michigan 69, Georgia State 59 at Eastern
Toledo 76, Texas A&M – Corpus Christi 60 at Corpus Christi

Link to MAC webpage with stories on each game.

MAC scores from Sunday

Morehead State 78, Eastern Michigan 73 at Morehead State
Ohio 76, High Point 48 at Ohio
Western Michigan 76, Davidson 63 at Western

Link to stories on Sunday’s games.

An earlier version of the preview said in a few places that it was Miami that lost Eastern Kentucky. It was Bowling Green. A bit of a brain freeze on my part.