Bridget Dunn with KSU coaches on a pre-COVID 19 recruiting visit to Kent State. (Photo from her AAU team’s Twitter feed.)

Kent State’s first recruit from the class of 2021 is one of the best junior forwards in Indiana.

She is 6-1 Bridget Dunn, who averaged 12.3 points and 9.9 rebounds for Carmel High School last season. The Indianapolis Star’s top prep writer listed her as one of 10 candidates for next season’s Miss Basketball in Indiana. Dunn made the state basketball coaches association’s 15-member all-junior team in 2020. (Indiana names a senior all-state team and a junior all-state team. Above each is a “Supreme 15.”)

Dunn announced though her high school team’a  Twitter feed earlier this month that she had verbally committed to Kent State, which had offered her a scholarship last summer. KSU coaches can’t comment on recruits until they sign a national letter of intent in November.

Here’s what Matthew VanTryon, who writers an “insider” column for the Star, said about Dunn in his list of Miss Basketball candidates:

“Dunn took a big step forward for Carmel during her junior season, averaging 12.3 points and 9.9 rebounds per game while shooting 47% from the floor and 90% from the line. The Greyhounds have a wealth of young talent returning, meaning Dunn figures to have a chance to have strong numbers and plenty of wins on her résumé.”

Dunn’s Carmel team was ranked 14th in the state and finished last season at 15-8 against what the Star described as one of the toughest schedules in the state. Carmel, a consistent power in Indiana basketball, started at 3-6 but won 12 of its last 14.

Dunn averaged 12.3 points, 9.9 rebounds, 1.4 assists, 1.4 steals and 1.8 blocks last season. according to MaxPreps, a recurring service.

Counting Dunn, the Flashes will have as many as five scholarships available for the 2021-22 season. They have three open now; reserve forward Monique Smith and reserve guard Margaux Eibel will graduate after next season.

No transfer rule change this season

A month ago, the NCAA looked on the verge of approving a rule that would allow football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and hockey players to transfer once without having to sit out a season.

The NCAA’s transfer waiver working group, chaired by MAC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher, had been expected to bring the proposal to the Division I Council in May.

Instead, the council pushed any decision on transfer changes to January, saying that the COVID-19 pandemic had made things too unsettled for such a major change at this time. It asked for suggestions from members for suggestions

Currently athletes in every sport except basketball. football, baseball and hockey are allowed to transfer and play immediately. The exception was to prevent the rosters of the most prestigious sports being shuffled every season.

But still athletes still transferred. Currently there are more than 800 men’s basketball players and more than 400 women in the NCAA’s transfer portal, which notifies coaches a player is seeking a transfer. A portion of those are “graduate transfers,” players who have finished their undergraduate degrees. They are eligible immediately while they work on a masters degree (which many athletes never finish).

Athletes are also eligible to play immediately if they received a “hardship” waiver, often based on a perceived need to move closer to home. Asiah Dingle, who transferred from Kent State to Stony Brook, said a large part of her decision was based on a desire to be closer to her father in Boston. He has had several strokes. Dingle has said she would seek a hardship waiver.

But some coaches have argued that hardship transfer rules has been applied unevenly, especially in the case of high-profile players and programs. 

Steinbrecher acknowledged that in February in discussing his working group’s charge.

““The current system is unsustainable,” he said. “Working group members believe it’s time to bring our transfer rules more in line with today’s college landscape. More than a third of all college students transfer at least once, and the Division I rule prohibiting immediate competition for students who play five sports hasn’t discouraged them from transferring.

“This dynamic has strained the waiver process, which was designed to handle extenuating and extraordinary circumstances.”

Student-athletes in truth

A record-tying six Kent State players made the MAC all-academic team announced earlier this spring. Here’s the list and their cumulative GPAs and majors, according to the MAC release announcing the team.

• Senior Sydney Brinlee, 3.449, Communication Studies.
• Sophomore Asiah Dingle, 3.319, Criminal Justice. (Dingle has since transferred to Stony Brook.)
• Sophomore Mariah Modkins, 3.557, Fashion Merchandising.
• Sophomore Annie Pavlansky, 4.00, Middle Childhood Education. (She was one of four players among the 56 on the team to have a perfect GPA.)
• Sophomore Lindsey Thall, 3.422, Biology/Pre-Med.
• Sophomore Hannah Young, 3.799, Physical Education.

The group includes Kent State’s entire recruiting class of 2018, which also was one of the best group of athletes ever to enter in the same year.

Only eight KSU players were eligible for all-academic honors. Freshmen (the Flashes had three) aren’t eligible. Senior Ali Poole, a biology major who was an all-MAC academic selection in 2018 and 2019, was injured and didn’t play enough games to qualify. Neither did junior Margaux Eibel, a fashion design major who played sparingly.

To qualify for the team, a player needs to have a 3.2 cumulative GPA and play in at least half a team’s games.

Northern Illinois had eight players on the team. Ball State, Bowling Green, Central Michigan and Miami joined Kent State with six.

The Mid-American conference announced Tuesday that it was going to a 20-game conference basketball schedule. It also is eliminating the first round of the MAC tournament, which had been played on campus sites.

The league had been playing an 18-game schedules in men’s and women’s basketball.  At the end of the regular season, the top four teams got byes to the quarterfinals of the league tournaments. The other eight teams played first-round games on the home floor of the lower seed. (The 12th seed played at the fifth seed, 11th seed at the sixth seed. etc.)

Other changes announced by the MAC included elimination of postseason tournaments in eight sports. Postseason events would be reduced in seven other sports.

The new schedules would go into effect in the 2020-21 seasons and would last for at least four years. The league said that could change based on changes in school and league finances.

The changes, a MAC press release said, were designed to save money lost because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Almost every MAC school has announced cuts in athletic budgets, ranging from 10% to 20%. Other than salary reductions, few teams have released details of the cuts.

The new plan was created by a working group including athletic directors, other sports administrators, faculty and students. League athletic directors approved the final version.

The first report of the changes, based on an interview with MAC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher with Toledo television statement WTOL, also said the conference was eliminating divisions in men’s and women’s basketball. But the MAC press release made no mention of that.

The MAC was the last conference in the country to have divisions in basketball. Its divisions were for scheduling convenience as much as anything.

MAC basketball had been split into East and West divisions of six teams, based on geography. Teams played two games against divisional opponents, one game against four teams in the other division, and two games against two teams in the other division. The home-and-home cross-division opponents were based on team’s previous year’s conference record.

Details of a 20-game schedule weren’t released. If saving on travel is the main purpose, it’s logical that teams on the edges of the conference — Buffalo, Kent State, Akron and Ohio in the East and Northern Illinois, Western Michigan, Central Michigan and Ball State in the West — would play less.

Elimination of divisions won’t have much practical effect on conference standings. Except in rare instances, divisional records mean nothing in seedings for the conference tournament, which are based on overall conference record.

Two more league games means that non-conference games played at a greater distance — like Ohio’s two-game road trip to Texas last season — could be eliminated. So might holiday tournaments like Kent State and Toledo’s trip to Las Vegas last Christmas and Bowling Green’s trip to a California tournament.

Teams had been playing 10 or 11 non-conference games. Now that will be nine or 10. 

The conference schedule is usually is announced in early fall. Non-conference games usually were announced in mid-to-late summer.

This is all assuming universities and sports go ahead with relatively normal seasons next year. Most universities hope to reopen in fall. A major second wave of Covid-19 in summer or fall could shut down campuses again. And most schools have said that if the full student body isn’t on campus, there will be no sports.

Changes in other sports

The MAC said that postseason tournaments in baseball, softball field hockey, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s tennis and women’s lacrosse would be eliminated for up to four years, depending on finances. Regular-season champions would advance to NCAA tournaments.

Baseball and softball teams would play a 30-game schedules. They had been playing 26.

The league volleyball tournament would be cut from eight to four teams. The length of postseason tournaments and meets in swimming, track and golf would be cut, mostly by one day.

Wrestling and gymnastics will continue to hold postseason championships. The MAC football championship, which matches divisional winners, won’t change.

“It’s a lot to unpack,” KSU athletics director Joel Nielsen said in an interview with the Record-Courier’s Allen Moff. “The changes affect every program in the MAC equally.

“There are too many (changes) to comment specifically, but our student-athletes and fans will see more games being played between MAC schools in almost every program, with more home games in some sports. The regular season conference finish will now be the goal in several sports due to the championship event being removed.”