Kent State finished a brutal first six games of its season with a Thanksgiving tournament championship.

The Flashes beat Southern Illinois 72-66 Sunday to win the Christmas City Classic in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

“If someone had told us at the beginning of the season that we’d be 4-2, the staff would have said, ‘We’ll take that right now,'” coach Todd Starkey said. “We were playing three Power 5s and three really good mid-majors. We could potentially have gone 0-6.”

Southern Illinois is 1-5 on the season. Quinnipiac, the team KSU beat 58-55 in the first game of the tournament, took third place with a 67-64 win over host Lehigh.

Five players played special roles in the victory.

LINDSEY THALL scored KSU’s first nine points on three 3-point baskets. She went on to score 20 points of 6-of-11 shooting and 4-of-7 three-pointers. Thall is the Flashes’ all-time leader in 3-point baskets with 231.

“Lindsey hasn’t been shooting the ball well until today,” Starkey said. “But with a player like that, you just keep going to them and let them shoot through it.”

Thall, who scored 18 points in KSU’s 58-55 win over Quinnipiac Saturday, was the tournament’s most valuable player.

CASEY SANTORO also made the all-tournament team. She scored 15 points and made 9-of-11 free throws, including eight in the fourth quarter.

“She played two really tough games,” Starkey said. “When you handle the ball as much as she does, you’re going to make some mistakes. But she did a really good job of playing through those mistakes. She did a really good job of handling pressure yesterday and today.”

Thall and Santoro drew 18 fouls between them against Quinnipiac. Against SIU, they drew 13 more.

CLARE KELLY played 37 minutes, a career high and the most for a Kent State player this season, and scored 12 points. She made 3-of-4 three-point shots.

“She was really dialed in today,’ Starkey said. “And her defensive effort was phenomenal.”

DIONNA GRAY had only played 16 minutes and scored six points through the first five games of her freshman year. On Sunday, she scored 10 points in 12 minutes.

“She gave us a big spark in the second quarter when Casey was in foul trouble and Corrynne Hauser rolled an ankle,” Starkey said.

HANNAH YOUNG had 10 rebounds, the most for any KSU player this season, and scored eight points.

Through the first 29 minutes, the Flashes held SIU to 24% shooting.

“We’ve learned that we can trust and rely on our defense,” Starkey said. “We’ve got a lot of players on the court with a lot of experience and who have played together. I think they have a lot more confidence in in each other.”

In the third period, Southern Illinois made only 1-of-14 shots as Kent State build a 49-29 lead.

But in the last minute of the quarter, in Starkey’s words, some “crazy things” happened.

“We got a no-call (of a foul) that I got an apology for,” Starkey said. “Then they scored on the next trip down. Then we had a missed shot, and they hit a 65- or 70-foot shot.

“I think it gave them just enough hope. Then they scored the first five in the fourth quarter.”

The run started the Salukis to their best — and Kent State’s worst — quarter of the year.

Southern outscored KSU 32-23 in the period and closed the margin to six points in the last minute.

Running the numbers

Better shooting: The Flashes made 10-of-22 three-point attempts. Their 45.5 percentage was 10 points higher than any other game this season.

Turnover trouble: Kent State committed nine turnovers in the first quarter and six more in the second against a high-pressure SIU defense. KSU was able to cut the number to seven in the second half.

Other statistical notes:

• Kent outrebounded a taller SIU team 40-39.
• The Flashes had eight steals, their most of the season. Hauser had three of them in the six minutes she played. SIU had 11 steals.
• Kent outscored the Salukis 20-8 on free throws.
• KSU’s bench was outscored for the first time this season (18-12).
• Southern Illinois outscored Kent off turnovers (20-17), in the paint (34-22) and on second changes (20-8).

Next: Home on Saturday

The Flashes are back in Kent for the first time in three weeks when they host St. Bonaventure at 2 p.m. Sunday. The Bonnies are 1-5 and lost three games at Cleveland State’s Thanksgiving tournament.

Box score

With 4.7 seconds left, freshman Corrynne Hauser made the biggest play of her young career to win Kent State’s game against Oklahoma State Sunday.

With 1.3 seconds left, graduate student Hannah Young made a critical defensive play to preserve the victory.

In two minutes around the beginning of the fourth quarter, grad student Lindsey Thall scored 10 straight points —the biggest scoring run of her five-year career — to keep Kent State in the game.

And for 34 minutes, senior Katie Shumate played big-time basketball against a big-time opponent, scoring 23 points to lead the Kent State women’s basketball team past Oklahoma State of the Big 12 59-56.

It was the Flashes’ third win against a Power 5 opponent in two years (they beat UCLA and Penn State last year) and evens their record at 2-2. Both of KSU’s losses this season have been to Power 5 teams — 80-71 to Florida State in this season’s opener in Kent and 80-59 at Arkansas on Thursday.

Oklahoma State is 4-1. Before the Kent State game, the Cowgirls had averaged 90 points a game.

“It’s a big, big win for our program,” coach Todd Starkey said. “These are the type of games we want to play. They prepare us for a tough conference schedule.

“It’s great for our players. These are memories that they’ll remember for their lifetimes.” 

Starkey said a key to the game was Kent State controlling the pace.

“We knew they wanted to run and they wanted to play fast,” he said. “We needed to try to control that. And we did a really good job of controlling the tempo, making them have to defend multiple sets.

“We wanted to execute an offense that made them guard multiple screening actions. So we were making them defend 20 or 25 seconds of a shot clock. If you do that enough times in a game, it reduces the number of possessions the other team gets.”

Hauser’s winning shot

Here is a look at Corynne Hauser’s game-winner.#GoFlashes⚡️ pic.twitter.com/qx0W9sDhEj

— Kent State Women’s Basketball (@KentStWBB) November 20, 2022

Oklahoma State had just missed two free throws when Kent State called timeout with 11 seconds to go and advanced the ball to its front court.

Hauser took the inbounds pass and moved to the left elbow, spun and drove to the basket. Leaning far to the left, she put the layup in with her left hand, and the Flashes were in the lead.

“We wanted the ball in her hands,” Starkey said. “We were trying to get a ball screen set with Lindsey involved, and Corynne saw a little opening there.

“She’s a player who likes the ball in her hands and wants big shots. She didn’t have a particularly great shooting day, but she made that one when counted. You want players who want to take the big shot. She’s certainly one of them.”

Young’s leaping defense

After Hauser scored, Oklahoma State called timeout and advanced the ball.

From the sideline, OSU’s Terryn Milton sent a looping pass to the right of the basket, where Taylen Collins was cutting toward the net. Young, who is 5-10, leaped into the air and batted the ball to Shumate, who was fouled. Shumate made both shots with a second to go.

“It was a great, great play,” Starkey said. “Hannah got banged around quite a bit in that game, but she kept playing tough. It’s great when a fifth-year senior can make a play like that down the stretch, when it really matters.”

Thall’s 10-point run

Thall, KSU’s second-leading scorer, hadn’t scored Sunday until she hit a short jump shot with four seconds to go in the third quarter.

Then she took over the game.

She scored on a layup 57 seconds into the fourth period, then made a jumper, a free throw and a 3-point basket in the next 90 seconds. She single-handedly had taken the Flashes from a six-point deficit to a 49-48 lead.

The first and last baskets of Thall’s streak:

10 straight for Lindsey Thall 🔥

KSU 48, OSU 47 pic.twitter.com/8o6wBi1AFt

— Kent State Women’s Basketball (@KentStWBB) November 20, 2022

From there on, the teams played within three points of each other.

“We started to play through Lindsey, and that was huge,” Starkey said. “I sometimes think that gets overshadowed in the box score. The timeliness of those 10 points was really big.”

Shumate’s big game

Shumate, 5-11 guard, has led Kent State in scoring in three of the team’s four games. (She was one behind the leader in the other.)

At Oklahoma State, she scored at least four points in every quarter, finishing with nine in the fourth. She led the Flashes with 23 points, eight rebounds and three steals.

“Katie was really good at being aggressive,” Starkey said, “and when she’s aggressive like that, she’s a tough matchup for anybody. 

“Early in the game, we felt we had a bit of a mismatch and were trying to play through her.”

Running the numbers

• In Oklahoma State’s four first games, the Cowgirls had averaged 49% shooting and 44% from 3-point distance. Against Kent State, OSU shot 31% and 22% on 3-pointers.
• Kent State made 36% of its shots and 21% of its 3-point attempts.
• The Flashes outrebounded Oklahoma State 43-41. Shumate led with eight. Thall, Young and sophomore Bridget Dunn had six.
• Kent State’s bench outscored OSU’s 17-9. KSU reserves have outscored their opponents in every game this season.
• The lead changed hands 17 times, and the score was tied seven times.
• Ten Flashes played at least eight minutes, with nine playing at least 10. Nine scored.

Next: A holiday tournament in Bethlehem

The Flashes play Quinnipiac, a consistently strong mid-major, at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in the first round of the Christmas City Classic in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Quinnipiac is 2-2, with 30-point losses to No. 10 North Carolina State and No. 12 Indiana. The Bobcats have beat Hartford by 55 and Central Connecticut by 28.

In the tournament’s second game on Sunday, the Flashes will play Leheigh (2-2) or Southern Illinois (0-3).

Box score

Senior guard Katie Shumate scored the 1,000th points of her career Thursday, but the Kent State women’s basketball team fell 80-59 at Arkansas.

The Flashes are 1-2 on the season. Arkansas, picked to finish fourth in the SEC, is 4-0.

Shumate led KSU with 12 points.

“Katie’s battled through a lot of injuries over the last few years, she’s worked really hard and I’m really proud of the body of work that she’s put together,” coach Todd Starkey said. “Anytime you’re a thousand-point scorer, you’re doing a lot of things right, and she’s done it through adversity. She’s meant a lot to our program and has a lot of big things yet to come.”

Shumate, a 5-11 senior guard from Newark, Ohio, has had trouble with her knees much of her time at KSU and had surgery after her freshman year. At one point, there was doubt whether she would play at all during her sophomore year. But she started 17 of 20 games that COVID season and averaged 28.9 minutes, third highest on the team

Last year Shumate led the Flashes in scoring; she had ranked second her first two years in Kent. She averaged 12 points a game each of those three years and leads the team at 14.3 points a game so far this season. She has twice been all-MAC honorable mention and made the league all-freshman team her first year.

In Thursday’s second half, Shumate scored 10 points on 4-of-6 shooting and made 2-of-2 three-point shots. She helped the Flashes play Arkansas almost evenly over the last 20 minutes.

But by halftime, Arkansas led KSU 46-29, having outshot the Flashes 54% to 43% and outrebounded them 21-15.

“Their size and athleticism were just too much for us to handle,” Starkey said. “They’re playing 6-3 to 6-6 out there at any given time. It’s hard to come up with rebounds against that kind of size.

“They’ve got two McDonalds all-Americans and the SEC freshman of the year returning, so they’re a very talented team.”

Freshman Corynne Hauser had 10 points, three assists and four rebounds. So far this season, she is tied for fourth on the team in scoring at 9.3 per game and leads the team in assists with nine. She’s averaged just 19 minutes a game.

Hauser, a two-time all-state player from Rochester, Pennsylvania, played most of her minutes against Arkansas at point guard.

“We’re going to move her around in different positions,” Starkey said. “Sometimes she’s going to play point, sometimes she’ll play off the ball. She’s a talented player.” 

Hauser made four of her first five shots, all on drives to the basket.

Running the numbers

• Graduate student Annie Pavlansky scored nine points in 15 minutes, both career highs against a Division I opponent. She had two assists and two rebounds.
• For the game, Kent State made 36.7% of its shots and 30.8% of its 3-pointers. Arkansas shot 4.5% from the field and 37.5% from long distance.
• The Flashes had only four offensive rebounds and were outrebounded 45-35. Bridget Dunn led KSU with six.
• Ten Flashes played at least 13 minutes, led by senior guard Clare Kelly’s 27.
• Kent State blocked a season-high four shots. Shumate blocked two.

Next: Sunday afternoon at Oklahoma State

The Flashes play at Oklahoma State, their second straight Power 5 opponent, at 3 p.m. Sunday.

The Cowgirls are 4-0, having beaten Missouri State 73-54 on Thursday. Five Oklahoma State layers average in double figures. Lior Garzon, a 6-1 forward, has made 13 of her 25 three-point attempts. Forward Taylen Collins averages 11.8 points and 8.5 rebounds.

Box score

For three quarters, things went as hoped as the Kent State women’s basketball team sought an upset victory against Florida State of the Atlantic Coast Conference

The Flashes led 62-51 with 2:04 to go in the third quarter. Then KSU didn’t manage a point for the next seven-and-a-half minutes. It made only 3-of-21 shots in the fourth quarter, finally losing to the Seminoles 80-71.

It was the season opener for Kent State. Florida State is now 2-0.

“At the end of the day, we really needed shots to fall,” coach Todd Starkey said. “We had some good looks and weren’t able to finish. 

“We make shots, we win today. It’s really as simple as that.” 

The Flashes outplayed Florida State through three quarters, shooting 44% to FSU’s 41%. Kent State was shooting 41% from 3-point distance; Florida State was making 25%.

But in the fourth quarter, the Flashes were 0-for-9 on 3-pointers and 3-for-24 shooting overall. Florida State was only 4-for-11 in the last period but was helped to a 21-9 advantage by 11 free throws.

“After that big run we had, I think we just were playing a little bit not to lose instead of just playing hard and keeping the momentum,” said grad student forward Lindsey Thall, who led KSU with 19 points. “If we would have just stayed aggressive and kept pushing it, maybe we could have stretched out more. I think we just got a little bit stagnant.”

Kent State missed a major opportunity when star FSU freshman Ta’Niya Latson fouled out with 4:30 to go. At that point, Latson had scored 34 points; no one else on the Florida State team had scored more than six.

Hannah Young made the two ensuing free throws, and the score was 66-64. But senior guard Sara Bejedi and grad student Taylor O’Brien combined for 11 of FSU’s last 14 points.

The teams played within four points of each other for the first half, with Florida State holding a 39-38 lead. The biggest thing holding Kent State back was 10 turnovers, which led to an astounding 22-1 margin in points off turnovers. In the second half, the Flashes had only six turnovers and outscored FSU 10-5 off of them.

“We talked about how we need to care of the ball better, slow down and just be patient,” said senior guard Clare kelly, who had five points, two assists and two steals.

“That was the only reason they were up on us,” Starkey said.

The coach said the team can learn a great deal from the loss.

“We know we can play with anybody,” he said. “Every game that we play, we can say, ‘You played the way you did against Florida State, then you can play that way all the time.

“This team knows that they’re capable of doing special things. If this team can stay consistent and make shots, we win.”

Notes

• Florida State had five physical players taller than 6-1 and outrebounded the Flashes 50-40. KSU did outrebound the Seminoles 22-21 in the first half.
• Young led the Flashes with eight rebounds. Shumate had seven and Bridget Dunn six. Young also had nine points.
• The Seminoles blocked seven shots to KSU’s one.
• Kent State outscored FSU 40-30 in the paint, but Florida State had 20 fast-break points to the Flashes’ five.
• Florida State had scored 112 points in its first game and more than 115 in two exhibitions.
• The KSU starting lineup was the same as in its exhibition last week: grad students Thall and Young, seniors Kelly and Shumate, and junior Casey Santoro, who had 11 points.
• Freshman Corynne Hauser played 22 minutes, about half of it at point guard. She had four assists, two steals and seven points but went 2-of-11 from the field.
• Dunn and grad student guard Abby Ogle also played more than 10 minutes.
• Attendance was 2,209, more than 700 fans higher than any game last season.

Next: Northern Kentucky on Sunday afternoon

The Flashes host Northern Kentucky at 2 p.m. Sunday. The Norse beat Lipscomb 101-95 in three overtimes on Thursday. Grad student Lindsey Duvall, a 5-8 guard, scored 36 points, had 17 rebounds and made 17-of-27 free throws.

Northern Kentucky was 21-8 overall and finished fourth in the Horizon League last season. Kent State beat the Norse 80-73 on the road in last season’s opener.

Box score

Graduate student Annie Pavlansky had scored only 26 points in her first four years with the Kent State women’s basketball team. Abby Ogle, also a grad student, played only six games last season before being sidelined with an injury. Freshman Corynne Hauser was playing her first college game.

The three helped lead the Flashes to a 72-40 exhibition game victory over Division II Mercyhurst Thursday at the M.A.C. Center.

The Flashes never trailed but looked lackluster for 20 minutes in the middle of the game. But they overpowered Mercyhurst 24-3 in the fourth quarter.

Pavlansky Power
In four years at Kent State, Pavlansky had averaged fewer than five minutes a game. Thursday she led KSU with 12 points and seven rebounds, both career highs. She didn’t miss a shot — 4-of-4 from the field, 1-of-1 from 3-point distance and 3-of-3 from the foul line.

“Annie has been playing really well lately in practice and got good results in the game,” coach Todd Starkey said. “She’s been working hard every day since she’s been here. She’s one of those players that just has been such a steady force for us for, four years going on five now. She does everything we ask her to do. She’s a straight-A student, a great teammate, and has developed a great voice.”

Pavlansky agreed that “number-wise,” it was her best game.

“I was taking what was given to me and made simple shots,” she said. “A lot of that came from my teammates finding me when I was open, and then I was just making simple plays.” 

Ogle’s return

Ogle was a third-team all-American at Hutchinson Junior College in Kansas. She spent the 2020-21 season at West Virginia, then transferred to Kent, where she was expected to be a spark off the bench.

When Kent State was floundering early in the third quarter, Ogle had two baskets, a free throw, and a steal. She finished with nine points.

“Abby can be a really a real spark plug for us, and that’s something I wish we would’ve had last year in conference play,” Starkey said. “She’s definitely an energy player — she kind of plays with her hair on fire a little bit sometimes.”

Hauser’s hello

Hauser is a two-time all-stater in Pennsylvania and averaged 25 points a game her senior year.

Starkey said she is a player “who’s got the ability to score 20 points a game for us.”

Hauser said she was generally happy with her first game.

“I came in with a lot of nerves, but once we started playing, I settled down,” she said. “Once I got the ball in my hand the first time and took one dribble, I felt everything around me just got quiet.

“The coaches expect me to be aggressive and get other people involved, So whether it was finding my shot or finding my teammates’ shots, I think I did pretty well.”

Hauser tied Lindsey Thall for second on the team with 11 points and tied Casey Santoro with four assists.

A first start and a fast finish

The Flashes led 18-3 seven minutes into the game, then went into a funk for the rest of the first half and the first seven minutes of the third quarter.

But after Mercyhurst pulled within six points, Kent State scored seven in a row, then held Mercyhurst to just a basket and a free throw in the fourth quarter.

“I think we all just decided that we were going to try and play our basketball — getting stops, not doing anything too complicated and really pushing the issue in transition.”

Running the numbers

Kent State had 21 turnovers — “way too much,” Starkey said, though the team had only three in the fourth quarter. “It had a lot to do with carelessness with the ball and other self-inflicted things that we have to get fixed,” he said.

The Flashes were 1-for-13 on 3-point shots in the first half and 5-for-26 (19.2%) for the game. Mercyhurst made three 3-point shots in the first quarter, then missed 21 straight for the rest of the game.

For the game, KSU made 40% of its shots; Mercyhurst made 26%. The Flashes outrebounded the Lakers 54-29, led by nine from sophomore Bridget Dunn.

All 14 KSU players got in the game, and 10 players more than 12 minutes. No one played more than 22 minutes.

The starting lineup was Thall, Santoro, Katie Shumate, Clare Kelly, and Hannah Young, though Starkey shuffled KSU’s on-court combinations all game.

A big-time opener next week

The Flashes’ first regular-season game is next Thursday against Florida State. The Seminoles are the first Power 5 team to visit the M.A.C. Center since Ohio State in 2020. The game is the second of a doubleheader with the men’s team, who play Baldwin Wallace at 5 p.m. The women’s game will start a half hour after that game, probably about 7:30.

Kent State women’s basketball fans will get their first chance to see the 2022-23 Golden Flashes in an exhibition game against Division II Mercyhurst Thursday.

Game time is 5:30 p.m. at the M.A.C. Center, and admission is free. The game will be streamed on KSU’s Boxcast Network.

The Flashes return 11 players from last year’s team, which went 19-12 and made the second round of the WNIT.

Among the returning players are three fifth-year seniors. Lindsey Thall, a 6-2 forward, has started every game in her career except for four she missed with COVID last season. Thall has made more 3-point shots than any player in Kent State history. 5-10 guard Hannah Young started all 30 games last season. Annie Pavlansky, a 6-foot guard-forward, has played sparingly in her career.

Fourth-year seniors returning are guards Katie Shumate, a three-year starter who led KSU in scoring last season, and Clare Kelly, who has been a key reserve for three years.

Also back are junior point guard Casey Santoro, who averaged 26 minutes a game last season and led the team in assists, and 6-3 sophomore forward Bridget Dunn, who tied Thall for the most 3-point baskets on the team.

Missing is 6-2 forward Nila Blackford, who transferred to Xavier after leading Kent State in rebounding all three years she played for the Flashes.

Freshmen include 5-4 point guard Dionna Gray, who was player of the year in West Virginia last season and averaged 22 points a game. Guard Corynne Hauser was another big high school scorer, averaging 25 points a game as an all-stater for Rochester High School in Rochester, Pennsylvania.

Mercyhurst returns its top three scorers from a team that went 9-19 last season.

The Flashes, who were ranked 20th in the Mid-Major Preseason Top 25 poll announced this week, open the regular season at 7 p.m. next Thursday when they host Florida State at the M.A.C.C.