Flashes beat Ohio 59-50 but lose MAC Tournament bid on tiebreaker rules

Kent State won a game it had to tin on Saturday, but it still wasn’t enough to qualify the Flashes for next week’s Mid-American Conference Tournament.

Despite KSU’s 59-50 win over Ohio at the M.A.C. Center, the Flashes lost the last spot in the tournament field due to conference tiebreaker rules.

Kent State finished the MAC regular season 10-10, the same record as Bowling Green and Western Michigan. Ohio was 9-10.

So according to the MAC’s complicated tiebreaker rules, seedings for the tournament needed two steps.

The first was among Kent State, Western MIchigan and Bowling Green, all of which finished 10-10. In games among those three teams, Bowling Green had a 3-1 record (1-1 vs. Western and 2-0 vs. Kent State) and WMU was 2-1 (1-0 against KSU and 1-1 vs. BG.) That resolution gave Bowling Green the sixth seed and Western the seventh.

That left KSU (10-10) and Ohio (9-10). But during the Omricon outbreak in December and January, the conference decided that a game canceled due of COVID shouldn’t penalize a team. So league rules for this season said that if teams played an uneven number of games and had an equal of wins or losses, they would be considered tied. The regular tiebreaker rules the MAC uses every season would then be in effct.

The teams split their regular-season games. The next tiebreaker compares the team’s record against ranked conference teams, starting with the first-place team.

Ohio was the only team to beat MAC champion Toledo. The Flashes lost to Toledo in the first game of the MAC season. So Ohio got the eighth seed.

(That explanation is slightly different than the one I first reported, but the result was the same.)

The MAC finally did post the reasoning behind all of the tiebreakers.

So Kent State’s season is likely over. The Flashes’ overall record of 18-11 could qualify them for the Women’s National Invitational Tournament, but the Flashes’ ninth-place finish in their conference will weigh against them. NIT bids will come out next Monday, March 13.

“We did what was in our control,” coach Todd Starkey in his postgame press conference, which was held before the tournament field was officially announced. “But at the same time, we also put ourselves in this situation.”

The Flashes lost four of their last six games, all against teams ahead of them in the standings. One win in those games, and they would have been in the tournament.

Three milestones to note before the story of the game:

• Senior forward Lindsey Thall made three 3-point baskets to set a Kent State record for most 3s in a career wtih 215. She had been tied with 2017 graduate Larissa Lurken at 212 going into the game.
• The win was Starkey’s 100th as the Flashes’ head coach. He ranks third all-time in wins at Kent State with a 100-76 record in six seasons.
• Junior forward Nila Blackford moved into 10th place on KSU’s all-time rebounding lists. She now has 690. If she rebounds as the same pace next year, she could reach at least third place.

Winning with defense

Ohio came into the game with the second-best scoring average in the MAC and 24th best in the country. Kent State held the Bobcats almost 25 points below its average and 10 points lower than any other game this season. The Bobcats made 26.9% of their shots, 13 percentage points below their average and their lowest this season by 4.5 percentage points.

OU’s Cece Hooks, who is the MAC’s all-time leading scorer with 2,803 points over five seasons, scored a season-low eight points. She made only 4-of-21 shots, 0-of-6 three-point shots, and, astonishingly, 0-of-11 free throws in 39 minutes. (She was a 60% foul shooter going into the game.)

“We threw different looks at her,” associate head coach Fran Recchia said in a postgame radio interview with announcer David Wilson. “We threw height at her. We threw speed at her and just tried to keep her out of rhythm. We were being physical through the paint, just not giving her just any easy layups.”

Starkey said that toward the end of the game, the Flashes were deliberately fouling Hooks on drives. “She finishes at such a high rate, we wanted to make sure she wasn’t getting easy buckets,” the coach said.

Starkey was still highly complimentary of Hooks.

“I told their staff before the game that no matter what happens, I still win — because I don’t have to coach against her anymore,” he said. “She’s been a phenomenal player and at times, unguardable.”

Kent State held Erica Johnson, Ohio’s second-leading scorer at 16.3 points per game, to 5-of-21 shooting and 1-of-11 on 3s in 39 minutes. Gabby Burris, the Bobcat’s third-leading scorer at 14.5 points per game, scored just five points in 38 minutes.

“I thought our defense was phenomenal,” Starkey said. “Our players really did a great job of listening to the game plan and making Ohio take tough shots.”

Ohio’s own defense was very good. Kent State shot only slightly better than the Bobcats —27.1% from the field and 27% from 3-point distance.

But some of Kent’s 3-pointers were key

Kent State led for all but 52 seconds of the game, but Ohio kept it close throughout and cut the score to 45-44 with 4:28 to go.

But on the next possession, freshman forward Bridget Dunn took a pass from senior guard Mariah Modkins and hit a 3-point basket from the right corner. A minute later, Modkins herself hit a 3 from the top of the key to give Kent State a seven-point lead and control of the game.

Modkins, who is barely 5 feet tall, made the 3-pointer over Ohio’s 5-11 Johnson.

“The shot clock was winding down, and she put her hands down,” Modkins said. “So I pulled back, shot it, and it went in — the nail in the coffin.”

Kent State had 10 three-pointers to OU’s seven. That and KSU’s 17-to-7 margin at the free-throw line were the difference in the game.

Lindsey Thall’s 3-point record

Thall’s record-breaking basket came from the top of the arc just two minutes into the game.

Here’s a 👀 at the record 213th career 3-pointer by Lindsey Thall in the early minutes of today’s game, courtesy of #GFTV! #GoFlashes ⚡ pic.twitter.com/dnNTCris2Q

— Kent State Women’s Basketball (@KentStWBB) March 5, 2022

“Amazing accomplishment, Lindsey!!” Starkey tweeted after the game. “The thousands of hours in the gym shooting 10s of thousands of shots led to this…”

“It means a lot,” Thall said in the postgame press conference. “All that working hard at shooting in the gym over the years paid off. But it’s all due to my teammates, getting me open and getting assists to put me in position.”

Thall finished with nine points, nine rebounds, two assists, two steals and a blocked shot in a team-high 35 minutes.

Though she started every game while she was healthy in her four years, Thall said after the game that she plans to return for another season. An NCAA rule because of COVID granted players who participated last season an extra year of eligibility if they want it.

Thall is from Strongsville. She had a large group of family members, all wearing special T-shirts, sitting behind the KSU bench.

“They’ve always got my back, always yelling in my ear,” she said.

Running the numbers

• Kent State had a season-high 51 rebounds to Ohio’s 41. Thall and Hannah Young had eight, Dunn seven and Blackford, Katie Shumate and Clare Kelly five. The Flashes had 15 offensive rebounds and 10 second-chance points. Five of Dunn’s rebounds were on the offensive end.
• Shumate led the Flashes with 12 points. Casey Santoro had 11 points, Thall and Dunn nine and Kelly eight. Young led the team with three assists.
• Ohio scored 17 points off 17 KSU turnovers. Hooks and freshman YaYa Felder had four steals. Felder led the OU with a career-high 20 points on 6-of-12 shooting and 4-of-4 on 3-pointers. She also had eight rebounds. No other Bobcat made even a third of her shots.

Box score