Blackford’s birthday double-double leads Flashes past Toledo and into 1st place

Kent State’s Nila Blackford had 21 points and 15 rebounds, her second-straight double-double. (File photo by Scott Galvin from KSU team website.)

It was Nila Blackford’s birthday. And wow, did she celebrate.

Blackford had 21 points and 15 rebounds to lead the Kent State women to a 61-57 victory at Toledo Sunday. The win moves Kent State into early-season first place in the Mid-American Conference at 2-0. Overall the Flashes are 2-2. Toledo is 3-1 and 1-1 in the MAC.

Blackford’s double-double was her second in two games. She had 12 points and 13 rebounds in KSU’s 84-80 win over Ohio Friday.

“She was being herself — playing with energy and effort,” coach Todd Starkey said from the team bus on the way home. “A lot of the rebounds she got were just toughness rebounds. They were in traffic; she had to really get gritty in there and pull them out.

“We’ve been talking about how she’s really got to just treat every shot like a miss and pursue the basketball.“

Blackford’s 9.5 rebounding average now leads the MAC.

Kent State built an 18-point lead with 37 seconds to go in the third quarter. But the Flashes had to hold on to beat the Rockets, who hit a 3-point basket at the end of the third quarter, then outscored KSU 14-2 to start the fourth quarter.

“We fell asleep some down the stretch,” Starkey said on ESPN+ after the game.

“We made some boneheaded plays,” the coach said in his interview. “We also missed three wide-open 3s and missed three layups. If we make a couple of those, it’s a different situation.”

The Flashes had some big runs of their own earlier. They started the second quarter 12-0 and the third quarter 12-1.

“The two key numbers in that aren’t 12 points,” Starkey said. “It’s the zero and the one. You have to continue to get stops on defense. That’s really what fueled us when we were playing well — we really were making things difficult on them to score the ball.” 

Toledo’s 57 points were the fewest Kent State has allowed this year and well below their defensive average last season. Toledo has a solid offensive; it had averaged 76 points in its first three games.

The Flashes held Toledo sophomore Sofia Wiard, who had tied a school record with 42 points against Northern Illinois last week, to 14 points on 6-of-15 shooting. She was 16 of 25 against NIU.

Modkins keeps on scoring and leading

Point guard Mariah Modkins had her third straight game in double figures with 10 points. She has three assists and three steals and disrupted the Toledo offense all afternoon.

Modkins is listed generously at 5-foot-1, but she attacks and defends much taller players.

“She’s out there trying to prove people wrong,” Starkey said. “People have underestimated her her whole life, and that’s one of the reasons why I love her as player — she’s out there playing with a little bit of a chip on her shoulder.

“She’s been making a lot of tough gritty plays and has embraced her leadership role on the team.”

Modkins averages 10.5 points a game, not far from the averages of Asiah Dingle and Megan Carter, who players in the backcourt the last two years. Carter graduated and Dingle transferred to Stony Brook.

Modkins is seventh in the MAC in 3-point percentage (50%), eighth in assists per game (3.5), sixth in assist-turnover ratio (1.8 to 1) and 16th in steals per game (1.5).

Santoro is ahead of the curve

Freshman Casey Santoro played her second good game in a row, scoring nine points.

“She’s a tough, aggressive, smart player,” Starkey said. “She makes some natural freshman mistakes, but she understands the game and is ahead of the curve.”

Flashes big on the boards

Kent State’s rebounding was dominant against a smaller Toledo team. Kent outrebounded the Rockets 48-28 with 15 offensive rebounds and 13 second-chance points. Toledo had two offensive rebounds and no points on second chances. After Blackford’s 15 rebounds, Lindsey Thall had seven, Linsey Marchese six, and Santoro and Hannah Young four.

The end game

Toledo made 56% of its shots in the fourth quarter and got within three points twice, the last with 17 seconds to go.

But free throws by Blackford and Modkins and a strong defensive rebound by Blackford preserved the victory.

First place

The Flashes have the MAC’s only 2-0 conference record. Buffalo, Bowling Green and Central Michigan are 1-0 and have another league game before Christmas. Teams will then restart the conference season after New Year’s.

Four days ago Kent State was 0-2 after a disappointing loss at 1-4 Saint Francis.

Before that, the Flashes had lost 10 days of practice to COVID-19, then lost their opener 103-47 at No. 19 Ohio State.

Box score

Notes

• After making a school-record with 16 3-point baskets on Friday, Kent State made only four of its 20 3-point attempts. Ohio was also 4 of 20.
• Lindsey Thall had a career-high six assists to go with seven points and seven rebounds. “She is doing a good job of letting the game come to her and did what she needed to help us win,” Starkey said.
• The last KSU player to score at least 20 points and have 15 rebounds was Anna Kowalska, who had 27 and 16 in 2007. Kowalska is now head coach at West Virginia Tech, an NAIA school in Beckley.
• The Flashes had 19 turnovers for the second straight game; Toledo scored 14 points off of them. KSU scored 13 points from the Rockets’ 13 turnovers.
• The NCAA decided last week to allow all transfers to be eligible this season. (Usually they have to sit out a year.) But days before the decision, Kent State’s Bexley Wallace was injured in practice. Starkey said she is out for the season. Wallace is a 6-3 junior transfer from Penn State.
• Sophomore guard Katie Shumate’s father, JR, was at the game with her brother JT, a junior on the Toledo men’s team. JR Shumate was the coach of Katie’s Newark High School team.

Next Sunday vs. Duquesne

The Flashes have this week off for final exams and are schedule to play Duquesne at the M.A.C. Center at 2 p.m. Sunday. Duquesne is 2-1 and plays at Toledo Friday.

Starkey said it probably would be the team’s last game in 2020 unless an opponent “comes up that makes sense for us.” Without another game, the Flashes will have played just three non-conference opponents. A number of other games were canceled because of COVID-19.