Buffalo’s Dayaisha Fair shoots over Kent State’s Lindsey Thall. Fair, the seventh leading scorer in Division I, had 30 points and six steals. (Photo from Buffalo website.)
It took three quarters for the Kent State women’s basketball team to get its offense scoring. But by then, it was too late.
The Flashes scored the game’s first basket, then missed three straight shots and committed three turnovers. Suddenly Buffalo led 12-2.
It didn’t get much closer until the fourth quarter, when the Flashes cut the lead to three twice. But Buffalo answered both times.
The 73-66 loss in the Mid-American Conference Tournament quarterfinals ends Kent State’s season with an 11-9 record. Buffalo (15-8) advances to face regular-season champion Bowling Green Friday in the semifinals.
In the first quarter, coach Todd Starkey said, it seems as if the Flashes “were trying to feel our way into the game.”
“Against the team like Buffalo, you can’t do that,” he said. “You have come out of the gate a hundred miles an hour — just like them.”
Sophomore forward Nila Blackford said the team lost its focus early on.
“We put ourselves in a really difficult position, especially against a team like Buffalo,” she said. “They got us scrambling, and we lost our composure. When you have so many live-ball turnovers, it’s going to lead to layup after layup. It’s hard to come back from that.”
For the game, Kent State committed 19 turnovers. Buffalo scored 24 points from them. Buffalo had just nine turnovers, which led to only five KSU points.
The fourth-quarter comeback
Trailing by 12 going into the quarter, Mariah Modkins hit a layup, then fed Katie Shumate for a 3-point basket a minute later. The lead was down to seven, and Hannah Young hit a short jump shot to make it 56-53 with 4:35 to go.
Buffalo then made two free throws. A minute later, Dayaisha Fair, Buffalo’s star 5-5 guard, missed a layup but got her own rebound in heavy traffic. She passed the ball out to Jessika Schiffer, who hit a 3-point basket to push the lead back to 61-53.
Kent State had one last-minute push in it. With 1:06 to go, Modkins passed to Lindsey Thall, who hit a long 3-pointer. Twelve seconds later, Modkins hit her own 3, then hit another 20 seconds later. All three shots came from well behind the NBA 3-point line at Rocket Mortgage Arena, and the score was 69-66.
That was as far as Kent State could go. Buffalo made four free throws (and missed three more) in the last 22 seconds to clinch the win.
“We couldn’t quite get over the hump,” Starkey said. “We fought so hard, and we needed some good fortune down the stretch. We didn’t get it on a few key plays in the last couple minutes. But I’m really proud of our team for not giving in.”
For three quarters, shooting woes for the Flashes
Kent State made 10 of its 19 shots (52.6%) in the fourth quarter. But before then, KSU shot only 31.6%.
“We really struggled to shoot the ball for the last eight or nine games,” Starkey said. “I just think everything this season just wore them down, and it really showed in our field goal percentage.
“If we just shoot the ball better, we’re winning a lot of those games. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to put the ball in the basket.“
Buffalo’s shooting was the reverse of Kent’s. The Bulls made 57.1% of their shots ion the first half but 33.3% of their shots in the second.
Big games for Young and Blackford
Young, who has started three straight games in place of injured guard Clare Kelly, had a career-high 15 points to lead the Flashes. She made 3-of-5 three-point shots, had five rebounds and drew two offensive fouls on Fair.
“She is making a ton of effort plays,” Starkey said. “And we always talk about scoring as kind of a by-product of playing really hard. We were really struggling to score, and she was able to hit some key shots. It really kept us in the game.”
Blackford had a career-high 18 rebounds. That ties for the ninth most in KSU history and fourth most in the MAC this season.
“I can’t say enough about Nila,” Starkey said. “To get 18 rebounds against this team was phenomenal.”
Buffalo leads the MAC and ranks 15th in the nation in rebounding. Blackford had 10 offensive rebounds — the same number as the entire Buffalo team, which leads the MAC on the offensive boards.
Blackford also had 12 points for her 12th double-double of the season. That’s second in the conference to 13 for Ball State’s Oshlynn Brown, a senior who has been first-team all-MAC for two years.
A much more than Fair performance
Fair is Division I’s seventh-leading scorer, averaging 24.1 points a game. She had 30 against Kent State, making 8-of-19 field goals, 3-of-4 three-pointers and 11-of-14 free throws. She had six steals and four assists. (She’s among MAC leaders in those categories, too.)
Kent’s walking wounded
KSU starting guard Clare Kelly, who missed the last two games because of a foot injury, and 6-4 freshman reserve center Lexi Jackson, fighting a high ankle sprain, both played. Kelly had no points in 16 minutes. Jackson had a basket and three rebounds in nine minutes. Both were “weren’t even close to 100%,” Starkey said.
Wait ’til next year
Kent State returns all starters and 11 of its top 12 players.
“We’re excited about the future,” Starkey said. “We built the program around these two recruiting classes, who are coming through as juniors and sophomores. They’ve been really big so far, and we expect even bigger things in the future.”
Blackford said she was “super optimistic.“
“We have learned a lot about ourselves and our team this year,” she said. “I think some of the adversity we have gone through is only going to make us better in the future.“
The rest of the tournament
All four top seeds won.
No. 1 seed BOWLING GREEN trailed No. 8 Eastern Michigan by 10 at halftime but held the Eagles to 16 points in the second half and won 63-47. BG’s Lexi Fleming, the conference player of the year, left the game with a shoulder injury in the second half and scored only four points. Kenzie Lewis, another freshman guard, led the Falcons with 14 points and 11 rebounds.
No. 2 CENTRAL MICHIGAN broke a close game open with an 12-1 run in the second quarter and beat No. 7 Northern Illinois 83-69. Sophomore guard Molly Davis had 24 points and senior guard Micaela Kelly had 23 for CMU. Both had been named first-team all-MAC Tuesday.
No. 3 OHIO edged No. 6 Ball State 61-59. Cece Hooks, the MAC player of the year, had 21 points, and Erica Johnson had 19. Both players suffered severe cramps in the last minute. Johnson had to leave the game; Hooks fought through pain as Ball State had to foul four times in the last 15 seconds to try (and never succeed) to force Ohio to shoot fouls shots.
Bowling Green and Buffalo will play in the semifinals at 10 a.m. Friday. Ohio and Central Michigan will play a half-hour after that game ends, probably about 12:30. Both games are on ESPN+. Finals are at 11 a.m. Saturday on the CBS Sports Network.
The view from Buffalo
Coach Felisha Legette-Jack in her postgame press conference
“What a great team win. Our story is not about Kent State or whoever else we’re playing, but it’s about how good we can be if we rely on each other, see each other, trust each other and play for each other. Today we did that, and we beat a pretty good team.“
Notes
- Three other Kent State players scored in double figures. Thall had 13 points and Modkins and Shumate 12. No one besides Blackford and Young had more than four rebounds.
- The game was the fourth straight year Kent State and Buffalo have met in the quarterfinals. Buffalo has won three times. The better seed has won each season.
- In the regular season, Buffalo beat No. 1 seed Bowling Green, its opponent Friday, twice.