Kent State coach Todd Starkey first heard of Massachusetts recruit Asiah Dingle at an AAU tournament. Assistant coach Fran Recchia first watched Hannah Young in eight grade.

Yesterday we told their recruiting stories. Kent’s three Ohio recruits took their own paths to become members of the 2018 recruiting class. Starkey calls it “a very good class.” I call it perhaps the best class in KSU history.

You’re getting so much detail because it’s a group we could still be talking about in 15 years. And their stories also are a window on the style of Starkey and his staff, and a look at what Division I recruiting is like in 2017.

Annie Pavlansky, 5-11 wing, Lakeview High School, Cortland

Starkey had barely moved into his office when he started to hear about Pavlansky.

“I played J.V. basketball for her uncle in Canfield,” Starkey said. “Her dad is the head football coach over in Lakeview in Cortland. I knew the Pavlanskys before I even knew that Annie could play.”

Starkey was named head coach in mid-April. Within a month, Pavlansky was the first recruit to sit in his office, there on an unofficial visit she initiated.

“My high school coach — who’s still coaching — knew of her and told me, ‘Hey, you’ve got to get your eyes on Annie Pavlansky. She’s got a chance to be a heckuva player.‘ His opinion means a lot to me.”

Pavlansky verbally committed to Kent State that summer.

Her senior year was cut short by a leg injury. Starkey called her the next day.

“He told me not to worry, to keep my head up and come back better than ever,” she told the Youngstown Vindicator this week. “That meant a lot.” (Here’s that story on her signing.)

Pavlansky’s stat line from 2016-17: 18.6 points, 9.1 rebounds, 3.4 steals and 3.2 assists per game. She was second-team all-state as a sophomore, honorable mention in her injury-shortened junior season. She’s played every position — from point to post.

Lindsey Thall, 6-2 forward, Strongsville High School

Thall is an archetype mid-major player. Kent State outbattled six other MAC schools, plus a couple of similar schools in Indiana and Ohio, to get her commitment.

“She can really shoot the ball,” Starkey said. “She’s 6-2 and has range to 24 to 25 feet. She’s a better shooter than any post player we have. And we have some very good post players.”

One — McKenna Stephens — led the MAC in three-point percentage in conference games (44 percent on 20 of 45).

“Lindsey’s a very effective, skilled post player,” Starkey said. “She’s not a rough and tumble five-foot-and-under post. But she can rebound. She’s a smart player and just going to keep getting better.”

Thall fills a critical need for the Flashes; three senior forwards after this season — Stephens, all-MAC player Jordan Korinek, and reserve Zenobia Bess.

Thall’s stat line: 15 points, 8.3 rebounds and 3.1 blocks per game. She once blocked 14 shots in a game. Rated three-star recruit by ESPN HoopGurlz Basketball. Thall’s mother is one of the top scorers in Strongsville history; Lindsey is chasing some of her records. (Here’s a feature on her and her mother.)

Mariah “Ri” Modkins, 5-foot point guard, Solon High School

Modkins is the shortest player I can remember in 25 years of following Kent State women’s basketball, and her statistics don’t bowl you over (5.4 points a game).

But Kent State coaches say her intangibles are terrific.

“She’s so steady,” Starkey said. “She always makes the right pass at the right time. You can’t sag help defense off of her because she’ll step back and bury the three. She’s quick enough to drive by you.

“On defense, when the ball hits the floor off the dribble, she’s there waiting for it. She’s already a really solid, steady leader.”

Modkins’ father, Curtis, is an assistant coach with the Chicago Bears and former offensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers and Buffalo Bills.

“She’s been around big-time athletics all her life and carries herself with that kind of confidence,” Starkey said.

Modkins’ stat line: 5.4 points, 2.8 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 2.1 steals. Her Solon team was 24-3 and lost in the regional finals by two points. That team’s lineup had five future Division I players. Modkins first played on a high school varsity team as a seventh grader when her family lived in Buffalo. (Here’s a feature from her hometown newspaper.)

***

In my first real interview with Starkey in September 2016, he gave me her early impressions of the team — a team that would go on to unexpectedly win the MAC East title.

It would be nice, he said,  to have “more elite talent.”.

This week, I asked him if his 2018 recruiting class had it.

“Yeah,” he said with a slow smile. “They do.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

2018 Kent State recruits Asiah Dingle (left) and Hannah Young. (Photos from women’s basketball Twitter feed.)

At breakfast at an April AAU tournament in Raleigh, the coach of the MCW Starz  asked Kent State coach Todd Starkey what he was looking for in recruiting.

A playmaking point guard, Starkey told him.

The coach had a name to give Starkey — Asiah Dingle, a 5-3 player from suburban Boston.

Conversations like that happen a hundred times a year in recruiting, Starkey said. Most lead nowhere.

But this one started Starkey on the trail of a key member of his 2018 recruiting class — a class that may be the best in school history.

Later that weekend, Starkey saw Dingle play for the first time. Five minutes into the game, Starkey said, he knew he wanted her in a Kent State uniform.

***

KSU recruiting coordinator Fran Recchia first saw Hannah Young play as an eighth grader on a junior varsity team in Brookville, Virginia. Recchia saw her again at summer camps when she was an assistant at Radford University in Virginia.

Young was good at age 14 and got even better. In March, she was named player of the year in Virginia Class 3A.

Recchia told Starkey about Young after the coach had joined the Kent State staff in April 2016. Young sounded like a terrific player. But would she want to come to Ohio for college? Would a mid-major like Kent State have any chance of landing her?

Starkey decided he at least ought to see Young play in person.

When he came back to Kent, he told Recchia: “I don’t know if we have a shot. But we need to try.”

In August, Young was the last one of the five-member class to say she was coming  to Kent State in fall 2018 to play basketball.

***

That class, as announced Wednesday, is:

DINGLE, a 5-3 point guard who helped lead Archbishop Williams to the Massachusetts state championship last season. She was a second-team USA Today all-state selection and the only junior among the top five on the Boston Globe’s all-scholastic team. Last season she averaged 20 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists, and 5 steals per game.

YOUNG, a 5-10 guard whose Brookville High School team lost by two points in the state semifinals. Last season she averaged 19.2 points and 7.9 rebounds, and led her team in blocks and steals. As a sophomore, she was a first-team all-state selection, averaging 18.8 points and 7.3 rebounds.

LINDSEY THALL, a 6-2 post player from Strongsville High School. She was honorable mention all-Ohio last season and is listed as a three-star recruit by ESPN. Thall averaged 15 points, 8.3 rebounds and 3.1 blocks per game last season. She’s an excellent three-point shooter and once blocked 14 shots during a game.

ANNIE PAVLANSKY, a 5-11 shooting guard from Lakeview High School in Cortland. Pavlansky averaged 19 points and 9 rebounds before an ankle injury ended her 2016-17 season after 15 games. Pavlansky was second-team all-state as a sophomore and special mention this season.

MARIAH “RI” MODKINS, a 5-foot point guard from Solon High School. She averaged 5.4 points, 2.8 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 2.1 steals a game on a team that went 24-3 and included the state player of the year.

Link to KSU press release on class

Why do I call this potentially the best class in KSU history? I’ve followed women’s basketball for more than 25 years here. I can not remember a class with three all-staters as juniors. Dingle and Young aren’t just all-staters. They’re among the elite in their states.

Some links to previous recruiting stories:

Young’s verbal commitment

A roundup the includes Dingle, Thall, Modkins and Pavlansky.

What I want to do in this and subsequent posts is talk about the process that brought the class together and what it tells us about college recruiting in 2017.

***

Starkey’s first personal contact with Dingle and Young came by phone shortly after he saw them play. (NCAA rules allow in-person contact only at certain times of the year.) Dingle’s AAU coach Starkey had filled in key details  — her grades, her character, her recruiting experience elsewhere to date. Just as important, the coach had told Dingle that Kent State was very interested and relayed what Starkey had told him about KSU, its program and its needs and how Dingle could fit there. And the two coaches agreed that she could be a very good fit indeed.

Before last summer, Dingle had never heard of Kent State. Starkey talked to her about KSU and his philosophy, and he told her about how the Flashes had unexpectedly gone from a 6-23 in 2015-16 to a MAC East title and a 19-13 record in his first year as coach. (“Without that success last year,” Starkey said, “I don’t think we get Asiah or Hannah or Lindsey.”)

So how do you recruit the best point guard in Massachusetts? You make sure she knows she is wanted. New assistant Mike McKee was with Starkey in Raleigh on his first recruiting trip as a women’s assistant (he had previous worked with the KSU men’s team). He was equally impressed with Dingle. And that weekend, Starkey called Recchia and had her fly in to see Dingle play.

A Kent State coach was at every game Dingle played on the AAU circuit last summer, Starkey said. (The Flashes never missed one of Young’s or Thall’s games, either.)

And coaches recruit parents as much as they recruit players. “They need to know that she is going to be in good hands and taken care of,” Starkey said. “It’s important to get a comfort level with mom and dad so they understood who we were as people.”

***

Kent State knew a great deal more about Young because of Recchia’s experience in Virginia, and Young knew Recchia. Starkey said the Flashes knew Kent State was in the mix when after several contacts, Young’s father — a high school boys coach — called him to tell him that the family was impressed with KSU’s coaches and program. (“That’s always a great sign,” Starkey said, “when they reach back out to you.”)

Dingle and Young visited Kent State last summer. Those visits, Starkey said, “are everything.” A bad trip can erase two years of recruiting. Parents are watching everything, especially how current players and coaches interact, Starkey said. And absolutely crucial, he said, is the time recruits spend with current players without coaches present. At Kent State last summer, that was a major plus. Besides being very successful on the court, last year’s team was close to each other and the coaching staff.

***

To keep the length of the post under control, I’ll follow it with a separate story on Thall, Pavlansky and Modkins.

***

Starkey allows that it’s “a very good class.”

“I think three players have a chance to start for us right away,” he said. (That’s on a team that will return at least two starters from this year, probably three.) “And the other two have a chance to be in the top eight or nine of our rotation.”

Current players know that; Starkey tells them that his goal is always to recruit better talent than he currently has. The competition makes everyone better, he says.

We won’t really know how good the class is for two years. All coaches and fans know that.

But, Starkey says, “If this group continues to improve and comes together, we’re hopeful we can do historic things with them.”

Notes on 21st century recruiting

COACHES MOST OFTEN FIRST SEE PLAYERS in AAU tournaments, not in high school. That’s partly because the AAU season and the college season don’t conflict with college games the way high school basketball does. And at a weekend AAU tournament, coaches see dozens of games and hundreds of players of all ages and levels.

RECRUITING STARTS YOUNGER AND YOUNGER. Over the last year Kent State talked to two players who had initially committed (and later decommitted) to Big Ten schools as eighth graders. (Both eventually went elsewhere.) The Flashes currently have an offer out to a high school freshman, who, Starkey said, could contribute to and learn from a Kent State practice today. The problem with such players, the coach said, is if they’re too good, the power conference schools will move in. rA a mid-major school like Kent State rarely can complete with the Michigans and Virginia Techs on the recruiting trail.

KENT STATE FOUGHT OFF SOME BIGGER SCHOOLS for this year’s recruiting class. Dingle and Young had offers from Big East and ACC schools. Some even tried to move in after KSU had received their verbal commitments. And some bigger-name schools waffled on making a commitment. Kent State went all-in with both from the first contact. “We would tell them, ‘You could go there and be a reserve,'” Starkey said, “or come here and make an immediate impact.”

STARKEY HAS NEVER PROMISED A RECRUIT that she would start as a freshman. “That’s something that’s earned,” he said. The best players respond well to that, he said. “They want to hear that they’re going to have to prove themselves.”

THERE ARE TIMES, Starkey said, that a coach will offer a player a scholarship before he’s even met her. He’ll see her play, probably at an AAU game, and talk in detail to her coaches about her. Through the coach, he’ll send word that he’ll be making an offer when NCAA rules allow him to make contact. “If they’re really good, you can’t wait,” Starkey said. “If you do, one of your competitors gets in before you, and it can put you behind.”

NCAA RULES ALLOW PLAYERS OF ANY AGE to contact coaches any time, and they often do — especially when a college coach has expressed an interest. But coaches are very restricted about how and when they can contact a player.

 

When I asked coach Todd Starkey what he thought the key to this season was, I expected an answer like “replacing the scoring of Larissa Lurken,” the MAC player of the year who graduated in May.

Instead, he said, with almost no hesitation:

“Getting Megan Carter back.”

Carter, a redshirt sophomore guard who a major role on the team at the end of last season, is academically ineligible until second semester. Carter was a pre-med major last year, and some tough lab classes in spring sank her GPA. She’s now a public health major.

So Carter will lead off the last of our series on key players for the 2017-18 season.

Megan Carter, 5-6 sophomore guard

Carter has never started a game for the Flashes. She blew out a knee in the third game of her first year and came off the bench last season. But by March, she was playing more minutes than starting point guard Naddiyah Cross.

“She’s our most dynamic perimeter player,” Starkey said. And when she’s in the lineup, he said, “it puts everybody where they need to be as opposed to being a little out of their element.”

Carter was Kent State’s fourth leading scorer last season at 5.8 points a game (7.0 in MAC games). She scored in double figures seven times and hit the game-winning basket in Kent’s 80-78 victory over Bowling Green in January.

“She showed moments of really good basketball last year, and that picked up right where it left off and got better,” he said.

Carter’s spirits and work ethic are good despite not being able to play, Starkey said, and her grades are back on track.

Ali Poole, 5-11 sophomore guard

Poole was a big scorer at Carrollton High School and showed flashes of that in her first year, especially when she hit 5 of 5 three-point shots against Wright State. Her playing time dropped off as Carter’s increased in the conference season. She averaged 4.3 points in 14 minutes a game.

Starkey said Poole was one of the team’s top players in scrimmages against Xavier and Cleveland State over the weekend.

“Her strengths are solid, and she has confidence in her strengths” Starkey said. “And she has strengthened her weaknesses. Her work ethic and willingness to be coached has been good.”

Naddiyah Cross, 5-5 senior point guard

Cross has started 63 games in her three years at Kent State, including 31 of 32 last season. Starkey said that she is in great playing shape and a steady influence at the point.

The one thing Cross doesn’t do is score. She has averaged fewer than 4 points a game in her three years, and that’s unlikely to change.

As the Flashes look to replace the 24 points a game they lost with Lurken’s graduation, the scorers are most likely to be the key to this season.

The rest of the roster

The fourth senior on the roster is Zenobia Bess, a 6-foot post player who transferred from Illinois State before her junior year. Bess played only 7 minutes a game last season and averaged fewer than 2 points. I would think she’ll see more action as a reserve this year, but I doubt she’ll be a big factor.

Besides Monique Smith (featured yesterday), the Flashes have five other freshmen on the roster.

Most likely to contribute is point guard Erin Thames, because of the Flashes’ not having Carter until December. At press day, Starkey said Thames shoots well off the dribble, Starkey said, and her defense has improved markedly.

Guard Kasey Toles (sister of assistant coach Morgan Toles) has shown an excellent three-point release in practice but is still learning college-level defense, Starkey said.

Two freshman post players — 6-3 Amanda Sape and 6-2 Kennedy Roberts-Rosser — probably will contribute more next year than this year. Sape, who averaged a double-double her last two years in high school, had shoulder surgery over the summer and is still getting into game shape. Roberts-Rosser was a late addition to the recruiting class and will need time to develop. Both are playing behind seniors Bess, Jordan Korinek, McKenna Stephens and 6-4 junior Merissa Barber-Smith. The freshmen will struggle to crack that rotation.

The Flashes added a walk-on wing guard just before practice started. She is Margaux Eibel, a 5-11 all-league player from San Diego. Eibel averaged 9 points and 5 rebounds a game her senior year in high school. She came to Kent State for its fashion design program, which is ranked among the top five in the country.

Here’s the full Kent State roster, which has biographical links to each player

On the recruiting class

Signing day for 2018 freshmen is Wednesday. (I incorrectly had it a day earlier in my last post.) All five players who have committed verbally to Kent State still list themselves as KSU recruits on their Twitter pages. The class includes all-state players from Ohio, Massachusetts and Virginia and may well be the best recruiting class in Kent State history. Here’s a link to my last recruiting post. I’ll have an interview with Starkey and recruiting coordinator Fran Recchia on how it all came together once the paperwork is signed.

On the scrimmages

The Flashes scrimmaged with Xavier on Saturday and Cleveland State on Sunday — partly, Starkey said, in preparation for back-to-back games they’ll be playing the Akron Classic in two weeks and the Play4Kay Showcase in Las Vegas at Thanksgiving.

The Flashes split the scrimmages. The NCAA doesn’t let coaches talk much about them, but Starkey said the team did not play at all well against Xavier but substantially better against Cleveland State. Jordan Korinek and Ali Poole led the team against Cleveland State.

Tyra James, counted on to play a key role on the perimeter this season, missed the weekend action with a concussion.

She should be back for Saturday’s season opener at Northern Kentucky, Starkey said.

Where they are now

Point guards Taylor Parker and Paige Salisbury, sophomore reserves last season,  transferred over the summer. Salisbury, a walk-on who started 12 games as a freshman, is now at Ursuline, a strong Division II program in Pepper Pike. (“She just wanted to play,” Starkey said.) Parker is at Glenville State College, a Division II school in Glenville, West Virginia. She was the fastest player on Kent State’s team but never clicked during either Danny O’Banion’s last season or Starkey’s first.

Former Kent State assistant Pat Mashuda is back at Chowan University in Murfeesboro, North Carolina, as vice president for athletics. Mashuda had been head  women’s basketball coach at Chowan before Starkey hired him as an assistant at Kent State.

 

Tyra James watched from the bench as she rehabbed an injured knee last season. Merissa Barber-Smith averaged just seven minutes a game. Monique Smith was playing high school basketball in San Diego.

This season the three of them will have a big impact on whether the Flashes approach the 19-win season they had last season.

They’re the second set of players I see as key to the 2017-18 season.

Tyra James, 5-11 sophomore wing/guard

Tyra James first season at Kent State ended with a blown-out knee before she played in a game.

Her third season ended with a blowout of her other knee before an official practice.

In between, she was the Flashes’ third-leading scorer.

Her role on this year’s team could have a lot to say about how well her team defends its MAC East title.

Before James injury in 2016, former coach Danny O’Banion would mention her in the same breath as Jordan Korinek, now a three-year starter with more than 1,000 points. In her one year on the court (O’Banion’s last season), James showed she could do many things well. She could score from the outside and inside, she could help bring the ball up against a press, she could rebound. In two games that went down to the last seconds, it was James who took the last shot for the Flashes.

What James didn’t show was consistency. At times she tried so hard to make a play that unhappy things happened. She led the team in turnovers, splitting her time between starting and being the first player off the bench.

Before this fall, second-year coach Todd Starkey really didn’t know where James fit into his plans and system. He’s still working on that. James is a natural wing guard — and that spot is open with the graduation of Larissa Lurken, last year’s MAC player of the year. But Starkey also has had James working at other positions, including a point guard/forward spot. “She can do a lot of things for us,” he said.

Monique Smith, 5-10 freshman guard

One reason James may not play exclusively at the wing is the presence of Monique Smith, who looks to be the top freshman in Starkey’s first recruiting class.

In every interview I’ve had with Starkey so far, he’s mentioned Smith as possibly the best rebounder on the team — high praise on a team with two returning senior forward and a 6-4 junior center.

“The best rebounders can rebound outside of their airspace,” Starkey said at press day. “Monique does that better than anyone on our team. She can rebound the ball all over the floor.” That, Starkey said, will mean more possessions on the offensive end and more fast breaks from the defensive end.

He also said Smith can be the best finisher on the team on drives to the basket and is big enough and quick enough to defend almost every position. Starkey also agrees that Smith is still adjusting to the college game — she played mostly at the post in high school in San Diego, where she averaged a double-double for three years.

Merissa Barber-Smith, 6-4 junior center

Starkey credits Barber-Smith, who averaged just 7 minutes a game last season, with making the difference in four Kent State victories last season.

If Barber-Smith doesn’t average at least double that number of minutes, there are likely going to be a lot more than four games the Flashes don’t win. I can easily imagine her averaging more than 20 minutes a game.

At 6-4, Barber-Smith is the tallest player on the Kent State roster. She seems to play her best against tall, physical post players. She had 11 rebounds in 15 minutes at Western Michigan, one of the MAC’s best rebounding teams. She had 13 rebounds in 19 minutes against Michigan and its all-Big Ten center. Those are the kind of teams forward Jordan Korinek, Kent’s best returning player, struggles against. I strongly suspect Starkey will find a way to put both Korinek and Barber-Smith on the floor against teams like that, and that will be a tough match-up for the other side.

(There’s a very nice story on Barber-Smith’s rugged road to her place on the Kent State roster on KentWired, the website of the Kent Stater.)

Tomorrow: Megan Carter, Ali Poole and Naddiyah Cross: two guards who can put up points and one who can get them the ball.

The recruiting front

The Flashes have added their second verbal commitment for the 2019 recruiting class — current high school juniors.

The newest is Katie Shumate of Newark High School, who tweeted  that she would join the Flashes. Shumate, a 5-10 guard, was a first-team all-Ohio last season on a high school school team that was rated No. 1 on the state for much of the season. (Newark lost its only game in the state semifinals.) Her father is her coach and was Division I coach of the year.

Earlier guard Clare Kelly of Olmstead, a second-team all-stater, had announced earlier that she had committed to the KSU class of 2019.

The Flashes 2018 recruiting class should be announced today. The Flashes have verbal commitments from five players, including all-staters from Ohio, Massachusetts and Virginia.

Coaches aren’t allowed by the NCAA to comment on recruits until they sign formal letters of intent.

 

 

Merissa Barber-Smith, Kent State’s tallest player at 6-foot-4 , is going into her junior season. (Stater photo by Austin Mariasy)

By Henry Palattella

Kent Stater sports editor

First published in the Kent Stater Nov. 6, 2017

It was a hazy afternoon in June 2007 when Merissa Barber-Smith’s mother sat her four children down in the living room of their house on the South Side of Chicago.

“Kids,” she told them, “we’re going to be moving to Madison.”

“What?” Merissa asked, stunned. While Chicago had its rough parts, Merissa hadn’t known anywhere else in her 11 years.

“What about my friends? What about my school?” she asked.

But Anita Barber didn’t budge.

And, she told them, they would begin their life there without her. They’d stay with their grandmother for a few months while Anita stayed in Chicago to tie up the loose ends of their life.

“I don’t want to move,” Merissa said one last time.

 

But three weeks later, the family sat in their car on the three-hour ride to Madison, Wisconsin. Merissa thought about her friends at school, the basketball team they had tried to start and the hours she spent with her sister, Macrista, in the room they shared.

But she also remembered the night police officers showed up, shouting at her mom, demanding to know where her dad was.

On the afternoon they drove to Madison, he was sitting a jail cell.

Their grandmother’s place was a one-bedroom apartment in a senior citizens’ building. Merissa slept on the couch while everyone else slept on the floor in blankets and pillows. They ate what their grandmother cooked. They watched the soap operas their grandmother watched. They rarely saw a person younger than 50.

During the day, their grandmother sent them to a park half a mile away, and for most of the day, the park was their babysitter.

Her brothers and sister played on the slides and jungle gym. But Merissa — already 5-foot-9 at 11 years old — was too tall for most parts of the playground. She often sat on the swings, rocking back and forth, somehow at ease. But then she’d jump off and head back to a place she didn’t want to be and a life she didn’t understand.

In August, Anita joined them. There was no way she’d fit in the apartment too.

So the family moved to a homeless shelter in Madison. For three weeks, all five lived in a dorm-style room, jammed with beds and their possessions.

On school mornings, they bumped each other as they rushed to join the rest of the “shelter kids” on the bus headed to Akira Toki Middle School.

But for Merissa, school was anything but fun. Her height meant that wherever she went, eyes followed. Talk followed, too. “You look like a man,” kids would say, sometimes behind her back, sometimes to her face. It was worse at lunch, where she could never find a place to sit.

Most days she ate in the bathroom. Sometimes she ate in the office of Stephen Harrison, the school psychiatrist. “How’s your day going, Merissa?” he’d ask. Often, it was bad. One day, Harrison handed her a card with a phone number scribbled on it.

“I want you to have this,” he said.

It was the number for Roger Blue, who coached a local AAU basketball team, the Spartans.

Not really thinking about it, Merissa told him, “I’ll give it to my mom.”

That night Anita called coach Blue from the three-room trailer where the family now lived.

A few days later, Merissa climbed into the car of one of her teammate’s parents. They were halfway to practice when she realized she forgot her green and black Nike high-tops. “It’s OK,” she told the driver. “I’ll just wear my boots.”

The driver turned around, and they went back for the shoes.

Coach Blue figured, incorrectly, Merissa had played basketball before because of her height.

Her shots clanked off the rim, and she knew more about the X’s and O’s of math than of a playbook.

But she did hustle. And she did have her height. Merissa had earned a spot on the Spartans’ “B” team.

She began to learn the nuances of basketball. Her layups began to find the hoop more often than the rim. The ball stayed in her hand on the dribble more than on the floor. Merissa’s play now left her opponent more disoriented than herself.

But she never felt quite like she belonged. When her teammates hung out after games, Merissa wasn’t invited. Some days, she didn’t even want to go to practice.

One weekend, Merissa told her mom she wanted to skip a tournament to work her job selling newspaper subscriptions.

“No,” Anita said. “You need to go. God is telling me you need to go.”

This time things were different. When Merissa got in the game, no one could contend with her height. She grabbed nearly every rebound and passed it to a point guard, Ebony, who couldn’t miss.

“Awesome, Merissa!” her teammates shouted from the bench.

By the end of the game, Merissa had more than 20 rebounds. Her teammates swarmed her, offering hugs and high-fives.

Merissa’s basketball skills became more refined through her time with the Spartans, and she was playing on the varsity team halfway through freshman year.

It was about that time her dad, Fredrick Smith, came back into her life after five years in jail. It was for the better.

The 6-foot-2-inch Smith helped Merissa with her post game, and soon, she was beating him one on one. He also helped Anita and the family around the house.

But Monday, Jan. 19, 2015, Merissa woke in the middle of the night to screaming. She stumbled into the living room just as her brother punched a wall.

“He’s gone,” Macrista said between sobs. “He’s gone.”

Her father was dead, killed in a drunk-driving accident.

At the funeral a few days later, she sat in the front, surrounded by her team and family. Macrista gave a moving speech, but Merissa just stared straight ahead, waiting for tears that couldn’t come.

Her mom kept her home from school and practice for two weeks. Merissa chafed, but her mom wouldn’t relent.

But once she got came back to basketball, life was better.

When the first letter came from a college coach, she put it on the refrigerator. Soon, there had been an influx of those letters.

Merissa’s list narrowed. Then one day. the phone rang.

“Hi, Merissa,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “I’m Danielle O’Banion, the women’s basketball coach at Kent State. I think that you’d be a great fit here.”

At this point, Kent State wasn’t a top choice; Merissa wanted to stay closer to home, perhaps at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“I think you’d be perfect here,” O’Banion reiterated.

That summer, two of her AAU coaches drove her to Kent.

“Wow,” Merissa said as she first stepped out of the car. The visit was her first college experience. O’Banion took her to the M.A.C. Center, the Student Center and other facilities for student athletes.

Merissa knew she was hooked when she walked through the M.A.C Center halls, adorned with pictures of famous Kent State alumni. She committed to Kent State that day, hoping to one day see herself among those pictures.

But her college basketball career didn’t start well.

In the team’s first practice, O’Banion called out, “Hey Riss, come over here.”

Merissa, whose nickname has been Riss throughout high school, ran to the coach. But she instead found herself looking at junior guard Larissa Lurken, whose nickname was also Riss.

So Merissa became “Mer.” She didn’t like the nickname at first, but that soon became the least of her problems.

Almost every day, O’Banion’s whistle stopped practice. That meant someone had done something wrong, and the team was going to run. Often the whistle blew because of Merissa, who was struggling to figure out the college game.

Merissa grew to hate that whistle. She played only 69 minutes that season, and the team went 6-23.

The mood in the locker room was dismal.

“Coach has been here four years and hasn’t won anything,” she would hear her teammates say. “She’ll be gone by the end of the year.”

O’Banion was. Shortly after the season, she called the team into a meeting and told them her contract hadn’t been renewed.

For more than a month, coaching candidates paraded before the team. Finally, Athletic Director Joel Nielsen told them the new coach was an assistant from Indiana University named Todd Starkey.

When he first met the team after being named coach, Starkey told them, “We’re doing tryouts again.” He told them about how the culture would change, and how things would be different. And they were.

When Merissa messed up in a drill and the whistle blew, she expected to take her place on the baseline with the rest of her team for sprints. Instead, Starkey walked onto the court and showed her what she had done wrong and what she could do to correct it.

Starkey and the team won six games in their non-conference schedule — as many as they had won the entire previous season. But Merissa still wasn’t playing much. She wanted to make an impact.

Finally, at Western Michigan in January 2017, she got her chance.

The Flashes were down 43-29 with 6:35 left in the third quarter when Merissa checked in. On her first play, she scored and was fouled. Six possessions later, she had pulled down two offensive rebounds.

In the fourth quarter, she grabbed an offensive rebound and made a foul shot to tie the game at 55. Two minutes later, she grabbed an offensive rebound and got the ball to Lurken, who knocked down two free throws to give the Flashes a five-point lead.

Merissa had 10 rebounds in the second half of the 71-67 victory.

“We couldn’t have done this without you,” her teammates told her as they hugged her after the game. “Where’d this come from?”

Starkey would say the team wouldn’t have won at least four games without Merissa’s play off the bench. The team’s last game was a 67-60 loss to Michigan in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament, but Merissa had 13 rebounds and eight points against a team with an all-Big Ten center.

After the season, Merissa shared the team’s “most improved” award.

This fall, Merissa has worked to become a leader. At practice, she’s quick to call out defensive assignments to her teammates as well as offer words of praise to teammates after a good drill. Her time running with O’Banion has helped too. She can let her teammates know what they did wrong in a way she wishes had been used with her.

Off the court, life has come together. She’s found a major that she loves in social work. She lives with teammate Naddiyah Cross, whose outgoing yin complements Merissa’s quieter yang.

And most importantly, she’s found her place. She’s there for the freshmen when they need it, even if she’s sometimes a little jealous of their joining a winning team compared to her awful first season.

And for the first time in a season, Merissa has what she’s always wanted: stability.

 

Junior guard Alexa Golden and the team’s MAC East championship ring from the 2017-17 season. Photo from the Kent State Twitter feed, taken at a September football game.)

Jordan Korinek, McKenna Stephens and Alexa Golden have started just about every game they’ve been healthy enough to play for Kent State’s women’s basketball team.

Merissa Barber-Smith, Monique Smith and Megan Carter have never started.

Tyra James started about half the games in the one healthy year she’s had in the three she’s spent on campus.

They are the seven players I think will make or break the Flashes’ 2017-18 season as they defend their MAC East title.

Today and tomorrow I’ll talk about why.

JORDAN KORINEK, 6-2 senior forward

It’s hard to imagine Kent State having a good year without Korinek having an excellent one. Fortunately, she’s about as good a bet as fans could ask for.

Korinek goes into her senior season as the 21st player in school history to score 1,000 points. She was a second-team all-MAC player last season and a preseason all-MAC East selection this year. She is a returning academic All-American with a 4.0 average.

Coach Todd Starkey’s strategy to make her even better? 

Get her mad.

“She can be such a kind-hearted person,” Starkey said at the women’s press day. “”When she plays with a little bit of a chip on her shoulder, she plays her best.

Korinek’s best is very good indeed. It took her most of the non-conference season last year to figure out her place in Starkey’s system. But during MAC play, she averaged 18.2 points per game — eighth in the conference.

McKENNA STEPHENS, 6-0 senior forward

For a while, it looked as if Stephens wouldn’t return for her redshirt senior season. But she’s back as a graduate student in criminology.

Stephens had her sixth surgery in March after injuring her hip in the first minutes of the Flashes’ WNIT game at Michigan (she still played 37 minutes and scored 11 points).

“The injuries were getting to me,” she said, “and I was wondering whether I was ready to move forward. And I decided I wasn’t ready to close the chapter and needed to come back.”

Stephens was Kent’s third-leading scorer the last two seasons and had the highest three-point field goal percentage (44 parent on 20 for 45 shooting) in the MAC during conference play.

“She brings back serious experience,” Korinek said. “And the ability to score. And she’s a great friend.”

ALEXA GOLDEN, 5-9 junior guard

Since she arrived on campus, Golden has been one of Kent State’s best defensive players.

That isn’t enough for Starkey this season

With the loss MAC leading scorer Larissa Lurken to graduation, “Players like Alexa are going to have to play some different roles this season,” Starkey said,. “She always was a really good voice defensively. And then late in the second half of the season, she was one of our highest percentage three-point shooters, really knocking down big shots for us.

“And her confidence grew so now Alexa’s taken some more leadership on her shoulders. She’s getting more aggressive offensively, and we’re asking her to do more.”

 

Tomorrow: Merissa Barber-Smith, Monique Smith, Tyra James

Notes

Some other items to we need to catch up on.

BONNIE BEACHY, the only Kent State women’s basketball player ever to have her jersey number retired, died on Oct. 13 after a 12-year battle with ovarian cancer. Beachy graduated in 1982 and is the school’s all-time leading scorer of either gender with 2,071 points. Her single-season scoring record stood until last season, when Larissa Lurken broke it in her second to last game (an event Beachy marked with a Retweet of KSU announcement). What makes her scoring records even more amazing is that she did it before the three–point shot.

Beachy was a 5-8 forward in the early days of women’s varsity basketball and later coached, taught and was an administrator at Houston-area schools She was a loyal KSU alum; she was a guest coach at at least three home games (Kent won all of them), once drove to New Orleans to meet with the team at an away game and was the featured speaker at the Starner Distinguished Speaker Series in 2013. Here’s a detailed obituary.

***

The Flashes have added Farrah Young as a graduate assistant.

Young was a two-sport athlete at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, North, Carolina. She played for KSU head coach Todd Starke  during his last season at Lenoir-Rhyne before he went to Indiana as an assistant. During her sophomore and junior years, she was coached by Alison Seberger, current KSU director of basketball operations. Young was on record-setting relay teams on Lenoir-Ryne track team and a point guard the basketball team. At 5-3, she’s the only person in the Kent State locker room shorter than current point guard Naddiyah Cross, who is listed at 5-5.

 

Seniors McKenna Stephens, Jordan Korinek and Zenobia Bess at press day. Naddiyah Cross, the team’s fourth senior, was at class. (Photo from KSU team website)

We have a lot to catch up on the Kent State women’s basketball team.

The Flashes’ first game is next Saturday at Northern Kentucky, a team that was 9-22 a year ago.

This weekend KSU has closed scrimmages against Cleveland State (14-16 last season) and Xavier (12-18). Kent State was 19-13 last season and won the MAC East.

MAC coaches picked Kent State to finish second in the MAC East in the league’s preseason poll. Buffalo was chosen first.

That’s about what I’d expect. KSU finished a game ahead of Buffalo a year ago, and both teams lost only one starter. But Kent’s was Larissa Lurken, the MAC player of the year. Buffalo’s loss was also an all-MAC player, guard JoAnna Smith, but the Bulls had a much deeper roster last season.

It’s still amazing to write that Kent State was expected to be picked second in the East. A year ago the Flashes were picked a distant last. But new coach Todd Starkey guided KSU to one of the biggest and most unexpected turnarounds in Division I.

The full poll for the MAC East:

1. Buffalo (10 first places votes) 69 points overall.
2. Kent State (1) 52 points.
3. Ohio (1) 47.
4. Miami 40.
5. Bowling Green 23.
6. Akron 21.

Ohio had dominated the league for the two seasons before last year but had considerable graduation losses. Miami has a new coach (former Michigan assistant Megan Duffy) and its entire roster returning.

Central Michigan, which had the best record in the conference last season, was picked to win the West Division again. The full poll:

1. Central Michigan (10 first place votes) 70 points total.
2. Toledo (1) 60 points.
3. Ball State (1) 46.
4. Western Michigan 32.
5. Northern Illinois 29.
6. Eastern Michigan 15.

The West is loaded. Toledo won last year’s MAC tournament. Eastern Michigan, which had the worst record in the league last season, probably has the MAC’s best freshman class, along with the Eagles’ top recruit from 2016. She missed last season with an injury.

Coaches overwhelmingly picked Central to win the overall season title and the conference tournament. Only three other teams (buffalo, Ball State, Western) got a vote.

Kent State’s Jordan Korinek is a member of the preseason all-MAC East team. Korinek was a preseason MAC East selection last season, too, and second-team all-league at the end of the season. The full team:

• Jordan Korinek, Kent State senior forward.
• Carly Santoro, Bowling Green junior guard.
• Stephanie Reid, Buffalo senior guard.
• Lauren Dickerson, Miami sophomore guard.
• Taylor Agler, Ohio senior guard.

The preseason all-MAC West team:

• Moriah Monaco, Ball state senior forward.
• Presley Hudson, Central Michigan junior guard.
• Tinara Moore, Central Michigan senior forward.
• Mikaela Boyd, Toledo junior guard.
• Breanna Mobley, Western Michigan junior forward.

I want to get this posted and hope to have something almost every day leading up to Saturday’s first game.