Nila Blackford kept piling up the double-doubles in MAC play.
Hannah Young and Casey Santoro stepped up in reserve roles and played their best basketball of the season.
Associate head coach Fran Recchia won her first game as an acting head coach.
And Kent State is 4-0 in the Mid-American Conference and alone is second place after a 70-61 win over Ball State Saturday. The Flashes have won five in a row and are 5-2 on the season.
Blackford: Points and rebounds keep coming
3:07 4Q | Kent State 68, Ball State 52
Blackford finishes through contact and now has her second 20-point effort of season! 💪 pic.twitter.com/FnTWjnPiAs
— Kent State Women’s Basketball (@KentStWBB) January 9, 2021
Blackford had 20 points and 11 rebounds, her fourth time in fourth league games with double figures in both. She was a season-best 8-of-11 shooting, made a 3-point basket and had three steals. Blackford is averaging 13 rebounds a game in MAC play, best in the league in conference games only.
“When she puts complete games together — as she’s been doing — she gets really hard to guard,” said Recchia, who ran the team from the bench. Coach Todd Starkey was home after testing positive for COVID-19.
“She competes on every possession,” Recchia said, “and is an aggressive, instinctual player. She wants to win and really listens to coaching.”
Blackford talked about playing for her team.
“They need me to crash the boards really hard,” she said. “I feel like I just have a knack for the ball. I try to stay aggressive on offense, try to get mismatches and be strong to the basket — just strictly for my team.”
Santoro and Young: Big games from the bench
4:26 2Q | Kent State 28, Ball State 24
Santoro’s 3-pointer gives the Flashes their largest lead today at the media timeout. pic.twitter.com/6fOlrwEyaS
— Kent State Women’s Basketball (@KentStWBB) January 9, 2021
Freshman Santoro ran the KSU offense after starting point guard Mariah Modkins went out with an injury three-and-a-half minutes into the second quarter. The Flashes trailed 22-21.
Twenty-four seconds later Santoro fed Blackford for a layup to give Kent the lead, and a minute later Santoro hit a 3-point shot. Kent State never trailed again.
Santoro scored 12 points with two 3-point baskets and three assists. She played 33 minutes, the most of her short career.
“You have to step up when the opportunity presents itself,” Recchia said. “Casey took advantage of that opportunity. We see it in practice every day. Our team has a lot of trust in her with the ball in her hands.
“We’ve really been talking to her about staying aggressive offensively and defensively and listening to the scouting report. That’s always an adjustment for freshmen.”
Kent State outscored Ball State 49-39 with Santoro at the point.
Young came into the game in the second quarter. With 3:07 left in the half, she grabbed an offensive rebound and scored. Two minutes later, she did it the same thing.
For the game, Young had seven rebounds and 12 points in 23 minutes, all by far season highs.
“Hannah had a really good week of practice, and it translated to the game today,” Recchia said.
“Toward the end of last year, she was playing well,” Recchia said. “2020 has been crazy with the coronavirus, and some people lost a little bit of their rhythm. If Hannah continues like that, she can really contribute.”
Winning with rebounding
After being outrebounded 9-7 in the first quarter, the Flashes dominated the boards for the rest of the game. They outrebounded Ball State 14-6 in the second quarter, then outrebounded the Cardinals 22-18 in the second half. Game totals were 43-33 Kent State.
Kent State had 17 second-chance points. Ball State had two.
“Rebounding is a mindset,” Recchia said. “We talked about after the first quarter, but the girls just decided that we were going to win this game with defense and rebounding. So they kind of flipped the switch.”
The Modkins collision
Modkins went out after she and Ball State guard Essence Booker banged knees hard as Booker attacked the basket. Booker lay on the court for several minutes and could put no weight on her leg as she was helped off the court. Ball State’s second-leading scorer at 12.8 points a game, Booker was on crutches after the game.
Modkins was on the ground for a shorter time, then managed to get to the KSU bench. She sat in the front row of the socially distanced bench for the rest of the game.
Asked after the game how Modkins was doing, Recchia said: “She’s OK. She’ll be all right.“
Modkins was Kent State’s second-leading scorer at 10.8 points a game and leader in assists at 3.5.
Thall the floor leader
As point guard, Modkins is the team’s leader on the floor. After she went out, junior forward Lindsey Thall took on more of that role.
“She and Mariah have become leaders of this team,” Recchia said. “So when Ri when out, Lindsey really stepped up. She was really talking to the team in all the dead balls, repeating what we were saying on the sidelines and keeping the five on the floor together.”
Thall scored 11 points, had five rebounds, two assists and a blocked shot.
Recchia: 1-0 as a coach
It was the first game Starkey had missed as a coach in 21 years, he told told Allen Moff of the Record-Courier before the game.
He and Recchia had talked throughout the week as the team prepared for the game.
Leading the team was a new experience for Recchia, who has been an assistant at Radford College before coming to Kent State. She was head coach at William Byrd High School in Vinton, Virginia, from 2007-10.
“It’s a lot different when you’re the one making the decisions,” she said. “Until you’re actually in that position, you don’t really understand just how many decisions go into a game day — from shootaround to even writing on the board.
“As an assistant, you can suggest. Then coach gets to and decipher through all that and decide what to actually tell the team. I feel very fortunate because (Starkey) allows us to have a big voice in practice and games. So the girls have been used to hearing our voices.”
Starkey tweeted congratulations to Recchia and the team minutes after the game.
Blackford said the change in coaching was different but not that big of a deal.
“She’s always coaching us,” Blackford said. “We talk every day.”
The San Diego seniors
It was Senior Day, and forward Monique Smith and Margaux Eibel started for the Flashes. Smith is the last member of Starkey and Recchia’s first recruiting class. Eibel walked on the team her freshman year and earned a scholarship that summer.
Neither have ever played big minutes, though Smith had made a difference on defense and rebounding in some key games. She had five rebounds in six minutes in KSU’s win at Eastern Michigan last week. Smith had started one game her freshman year.
Eibel has played in 24 games over four years and scored 18 points.
Both she and Smith are from the San Diego suburbs but had never met before they arrived at Kent State. They’re the only two California players I can remember playing for the Flashes in 30+ years of following the team.
Smith and Eibel played two minutes at the beginning of the Ball State game and checked out with the Flashes leading 6-4. Smith scored a point on a free throw. Both returned for the last 39 seconds.
The second-place Flashes
Four teams went into Saturday undefeated in the MAC. Only Central Michigan and Kent State still are. Central (5-0 in the league, 7-2 overall) beat Buffalo (4-1 and 7-3) 79-63 in Buffalo. Bowling Green (4-1 and 8-2) lost its first league game to Northern Illinois (4-5 and 2-2) at BG.
Kent State is 4-0. It has played one fewer game than than the other leaders because the Flashes’ Wednesday game against NIU was canceled after Starkey’s positive COVID test.
In other MAC games Saturday, Akron (1-4 MAC, 4-4 overall) beat Miami (1-8 and 0-5) 84-77 at Akron. Ohio (3-2 and 5-3) beat Toledo (2-3 and 6-3) 85-66 in Athens. Link to MAC standings.
Notes
- Kent State made a season-high 45.8% of its shots. Ball State hit 37.1%. From 3-point distance, the Flashes were 7 of 20 for 35%; Ball State was 6 of 18 for 44%.
- The Flashes committed a season-low 12 turnovers; BSU was even lower at eight. Off those turnovers, the Cardinals outscored KSU 16-4.
- Sophomore guard Clare Kelly had a career-high four assists to lead the Flashes in that category. She also had seven points and two steals.
- The last time Kent State started the MAC season 4-0 was 2010-11, when the Flashes won their fifth game and went on to finish 11-5 and second in the MAC East and 20-10 overall.
- Oshlynn Brown, Ball State’s all-conference forward, led the Cardinals with 16 points and 13 rebounds. But she sat out eight minutes of the second quarter with two fouls. During that time, KSU took control of the game.
- The game is the only meeting between the two teams in the regular season.
Wednesday at Akron
The Flashes travel 13 miles to the James A. Rhodes Arena for a 6 p.m. game against the Zips. The game will be on ESPH+.