Freshman Casey Santoro, starting her second game of the season, scored a career-high 16 points. She also had five assists and five rebounds. (File photo by Hayley Steffy of KSU Athletic Communications.)
Sometimes, coach Todd Starkey decided, a healthy and rested team in next week’s MAC Tournament is more important than a game in the last week of the season.
With starting guards Katie Shumate and Clare Kelly sitting on the bench, Kent State lost at first-place Bowling Green 82-65.
Kelly was resting an injured foot; Shumate was resting a surgically repaired knee she’s been playing on all season. Both should be ready for the tournament quarterfinals next Wednesday. It’s unclear whether they’ll play in the last game of the regular season Saturday against Akron in Kent.
The Flashes had already qualified for the quarterfinals at Rocket Mortgage Arena in Cleveland. The league is so balanced — the second-through-eighth place teams have all lost at least six games — that first-round seeding isn’t that significant.
Kent State could finish anywhere between third and eighth. (MAC wrap-up and standings are at end of this post.)
“I’m not saying this was a meaningless game,” Starkey said in an interview from the team bus on the way home. “But there’s a risk-reward factor. You have to balance whether it is more important to try and go all out at BG at the expense of wearing your players down even more.”
Kent State played 11 games in February, more than any other MAC team. Twice it played three games in a week. KSU was the only team in the league not to have a scheduled day off as it tried to make up for seven games postponed in January because of COVID-19.
Bowling Green, on the other hand, hasn’t had any COVID problems on its team. It has played only three games total in the last three weeks because of a bye and COVID problems on other teams.
In the first quarter, Bowling Green made 67% of its shots and 56% of its 3-pointers. The Falcons kept making baskets all night. They finished 13-of-23 from 3-point distance for 56.5%, more than 21 points above their season average.
“We’ve got our two best perimeter defenders out,” Starkey said, “and BG is a really perimeter-oriented team. And they shot the lights out. Even the ones that were contested were going in.”
Kent State kept it to about a 10- or 12-point game until about five minutes to go, but the Flashes never had a scoring run in them.
Freshman Casey Santoro scored a career-high 16 points in her second start of the season. She also had five assists, five rebounds and a steal.
Fellow freshman Lexi Jackson, a 6-4 center, also had her career high in scoring with 10 points, including two 3-point baskets.
“The freshmen did some nice things,” Starkey said, “and we’re looking for them to continue to develop. This has been a really tough year for freshmen. They haven’t been able to get nearly as much social interaction as freshmen usually do. So they’ve been trying to figure things out through all this. I’m proud of both of them, fighting through that mental grind.”
Junior Hannah Young got her first start of the year and carried the Flashes through the first half, scoring all 10 of her points and getting six of her seven rebounds. She was in and out of the second half as she fought severe leg cramping.
Nila Blackford, Kent State’s leading scorer and rebounder, had only four points. She had never scored fewer than nine this season.
Blackford had scored 23 points when BG beat Kent 80-79 in overtime in February. This time the Falcons concentrated on her.
“Every time she touched the ball, she had two or three players on her,” Starkey said. “She would admit she didn’t play her best game, but she played her least minutes, too.
“We were resting her by design. She’s been tired, and her legs have been bothering her, too. We were just trying to look at the big picture.”
Blackford still led Kent State with seven rebounds.
Lindsey Thall had 12 points. She had two 3-point baskets, four rebounds, a steal and a blocked shot.
Help from the bench
Besides Young, Santoro and Jackson, who are normally the first players off the bench, Kent State got a lot of minutes from its reserves.
Junior wing Annie Pavlansky played 19 minutes, second-most in her career, and had six points. She hit two 3-point baskets in three attempts and had four rebounds, an assist and a steal.
Junior Linsey Marchese, a 6-4 transfer from Indiana, played 12 minutes. That was her most action in two months She had two rebounds and an assist.
Margeaux Eibel, a former walk-on who earned a scholarship, played five minutes and had an offensive rebound and two steals.
Notes
- Four Bowling Green players scored in double figures, led by sophomore guard Elissa Brett with 19. Angela Perry and Clare Glowniak, both post players who come off the bench, combined for 23 points on 9-of-16 shooting.
- Kent State made 22-of-60 shots for 36.75%, about 3 points below its average. Its 10-for-28 (35.7%) on 3-pointers was right at its average.
- The Flashes outrebounded BG 39-28. They had 14 offensive rebounds and scored 12 second-chance points. BG had only two offensive rebounds.
- But BG outscored KSU 32-20 in the paint. Bowling Green bench players outscored Kent’s reserves 43-16.
- Turnovers were almost even. BG scored 14 points off of 14 Kent turnovers. The Flashes scored 12 off if 13 Bowling Green turnovers.
- Bowling Green was picked to finished 11th by MAC coaches in their preseason poll. Instead, the Falcons won their first title in seven years and the 15th in school history. That’s the most of any MAC school.
- Even though they had clinched the MAC title with a win at Akron Saturday, Falcon players cut down the nets after the game in front of family members and few friends allowed in the game.
The MAC race
The loss drops Kent State (9-6 and 10-8 overall) into fifth place in the conference.
But depending on Saturday’s results, they still could finish as high as third or as low as eighth.
Central Michigan moved into second place with an 87-81 double-overtime win at seventh-place Ball State. CMU started the game with eight players because of COVID protocols. It ended with only the five on the floor. The other three players had fouled out.
Third-place Ohio lost 71-67 at 11th-place Akron in the Bobcats’ first game after three COVID cancellations. Kent State plays Akron at home Saturday.
Buffalo moved past KSU into fourth place with a 75-70 home win over Miami.
Northern Illinois moved past Eastern Michigan into seventh with a 75-66 win over the Eagles in DeKalb.
Ninth-place Toledo won 82-73 at 10th-place Western Michigan.
MAC Standings
Through games of Wednesday, March 3
| MAC W-L | Pct. | MAC Home | MAC Away | All games | |
| BGSU | 14-3 | .824 | 8-1 | 6-2 | 18-4 |
| CMU | 12-6 | .667 | 6-3 | 6-3 | 14-8 |
| Ohio | 10-6 | .625 | 4-4 | 7-3 | 12-7 |
| Buffalo | 10-6 | .625 | 6-2 | 4-4 | 13-8 |
| Kent St | 9-6 | .600 | 5-1 | 4-5 | 10-8 |
| NIU | 10-7 | .588 | 5-3 | 5-4 | 12-10 |
| Ball St | 11-8 | .579 | 3-5 | 8-1 | 13-10 |
| EMU | 7-6 | .538 | 3-4 | 4-2 | 10-8 |
| Toledo | 7-12 | .368 | 4-6 | 3-6 | 11-12 |
| WMU | 5-13 | .278 | 4-5 | 1-8 | 6-14 |
| Akron | 4-13 | .235 | 2-6 | 2-7 | 7-13 |
| Miami | 3-16 | .158 | 2-9 | 1-7 | 4-19 |