Kent State made only 1-of-11 shots in the fourth quarter as it saw a seven-point lead slip away.

But the Flashes didn’t miss from the field in overtime as they beat Coppin State 72-69 in their last game before Mid-American Conference play starts on Wednesday.

Graduate student Lindsey Thall hit a 3-point shot with 40 seconds to go in overtime to give Kent State the lead. Casey Santoro, who had an assist on Thall’s basket, hit a free throw 26 seconds later for the final margin.

Lindsey Thall’s go-ahead 3-pointer in the final minute of overtime is today’s @IBEW 306 Electrifying Play of the Game, courtesy of #GFTV.#GoFlashes⚡️ pic.twitter.com/DCZ5yZxY6g

— Kent State Athletics (@KentStAthletics) December 31, 2022

Kent State finishes its non-conference season at 8-3, the same record as MAC opponents Eastern Michigan and Northern Illinois. Bowling Green had the league’s best record at 11-1. Akron and Toledo were 9-2 and Ball State was 10-3. Kent State’s non-conference schedule was by far the toughest in the league, ranking 36th in Division I by WarrenNolan.com, an analytics site.

The Flashes open conference play against Buffalo (5-4) at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the M.A.C. Center.

“That was a really good test for us going into conference play — though a little tighter than I wanted,” coach Todd Starkey said. “We shot the ball horribly in the fourth quarter. Nine percent is not going to do it, so we have to get that fixed and not get stagnant offensively. But I’m really proud of our resilience.”

Kent State got contributions from many players.

“Lindsey’s game winner was a huge shot, obviously,” Starkey said, “but we had hustle plays by other people. Clare Kelly had a dive to save the ball going out of bounds. That gets us another possession. Abby Ogle makes a mistake at one end. Then she sprints 94 feet, contests a shot at the other end, and they don’t score. It’s those little things that really helped us win this game.”

Five Flashes scored in double figures. Thall had 15, made four 3-pointers and blocked two shots. Corynne Hauser had 12 on 6-of-9 shooting and had five assists.. Santoro, Kelly and Katie Shumate all had 11 points. Shumate had a double-double with 10 rebounds.

Ogle had five points and six rebounds while Bridget Dunn’s one basket — a 3-pointer — gave Kent State the lead at the beginning of overtime.

The game had 14 lead changes and was tied eight times.

KSU’s Hannah Young, who had started every game this season and last, missed Saturday’s game with an illness. She is the Flashes’ leading rebounder.

Coppin State is 3-12 and was playing its 11th-straight road game. The overtime loss was its second in a row; the Eagles lost in overtime at Akron 85-76 on Thursday.

Box score

MAC non-conference standings

The score was overwhelming.

So was the noise.

As 2,000 Kent elementary school students screamed for almost two hours, the Kent State women’s basketball team routed Otterbein 97-36 in a Tuesday morning “Education Day” game. It was the Flashes’ second-straight overwhelming victory against a Division III team, which doesn’t give athletic scholarships. Ten days ago, KSU beat Hiram 105-33. The point difference against Hiram was the largest margin of victory in Kent State history. Tuesday’s margin tied for the third largest.

Kent State scheduled Otterbein and Hiram to balance its first six games against Division I opponents. That schedule, which included a win and two losses against Power Five teams, was ranked 12th in the country.

KSU’s record is now 7-3. Otterbein is 5-4. The game was technically an exhibition for Otterbein; Division III schools are limited to 25 regular-season games.

The story of the game was more about the crowd than about the score. Teachers who accompanied their students could barely hear themselves think. The players sometimes couldn’t hear each other on the court.

And they all had a grand time.

“My ears are still ringing,” graduate student Lindsey Thall said with a smile during the team’s postgame press conference. “It’s really fun. They bring a lot of energy for the game, so it kind of hypes us up.”

Fellow grad student Abby Ogle joined her teammates in signing autographs for the students after the game.

“You feel like a little celebrity,” she said.

The Education Day game is one of the highlights of the KSU season, coach Todd Starkey said.

“It’s so much fun for our players,” he said, “and so much fun for the kids in the community to see and be connected to Kent State.”

Otterbein scored first and led 5-2 two-and-a-half minutes into the game.

But that was it.

The Flashes reeled off 30 straight points over the next 13 minutes.

Every Kent State player scored at least two points and grabbed at least one rebound. All played at least seven minutes; 13 played at least 10 minutes. No starter played more than 18.

It gave the core of the roster a lot of time to support their teammates.

“I like to cheer for everybody,” Thall said. “I love hyping everybody up when they’re making shots. It’s still fun on the bench.”

Starkey said it’s wonderful to see.

“The number one responsibility of any of our players is to be a good teammate,” he said. “it’s neat to see them all support each other. And it’s genuine. They really care about each other, enjoy cheering for each other.”

Though the team scored 97 points, no individual scored more than 13. Freshman Corynne Hauser led the Flashes with that number. Thall, freshman Dionna Gray and Ogle all had 12, and senior Katie Shumate had 10. Junior Casey Santoro and sophomore Jenna Batsch each scored eight.

Grad student Hannah Young had seven rebounds, leading the team for the fourth time this season. Hauser and senior Clare Kelly each had three assists, and Shumate and Gray each had three steals.

The team headed home for Christmas after the game, will return on Dec. 26 and resume practice on Dec. 27. The Flashes will play Coppin State (3-9) in their final non-conference game at 1 p.m. Dec. 31 at the M.A.C. Center.

Running the numbers

• Kent State’s 45.8% shooting on 3-pointers was its highest of the season. So was the Flashes’ 50 rebounds and 24-rebound margin. Its 52.2 overall field-goal percentage was ./6 points behind its season-best against Hiram.
• KSU’s 13 steals and 16 assists were second highest of the season, again behind the Hiram game.
• The Flashes outscored Otterbein 22-8 off turnovers, 50-18 in the paint, 14-4 on second-chance points and 21-7 on fast breaks.
• Ogle’s 6-of-7 field goals, Hauser’s 5-of-7 and Gray’s 5-of-7 were the best of their careers.
• Six different players blocked a shot, eight had an assist and seven had a steal.

Family Christmases

Ogle, Thall and Starkey all said they were most looking forward to seeing family.

Starkey’s four adult children will be visiting him here. Thall has a short trip home to Strongsville.

Ogle has the longest trip of any player on the roster — 800-plus miles to Baldwin City, Kansas.

The temperature there was 11 degrees below zero on Tuesday morning, Ogle said.

Box score

The score says it all:

Kent State 105, Hiram 33.

It was the largest margin of victory in Kent State basketball history — men’s or women’s.

It was the most points the KSU women have scored since 2000, when they beat Bowling Green 106-94.

It was overwhelming from start to finish.

Kent State led 14-0, then 22-1, then 31-4 at the end of the first quarter. The score was 55-13 at halftime, then 79-22 after three quarters.

A free throw by graduate student Annie Pavlansky made the game 100-31 with 1:36 to go, and Pavlansky ended things with a 3-point basket with 24 seconds left.

Yes, it was Hiram, a Division III school that doesn’t give athletic scholarships. The game was technically an “exhibition” for the Terriers because Division III schoocan only to play 25 regular-season games. (In its seven regular-season games so far, Hiram is 4-3.)

Counting the Hiram game, Kent State is 6-3.

Why does KSU even play Hiram? “Schedule balance,” coach Todd Starkey said in a pre-season interview. The game was a break for the Flashes, who had played the 12th most difficult schedule in the country for its first eight games, according to Warren Nolan.com, a statistics site I follow.

Thirteen Kent State players got in the game (grad student Lindsey Thall sat out with an ankle injury), and all scored. Twelve played more than 12 minutes. Only one starter played more than 17 minut; thatat was sophomore forward Bridget Dunn. With Thall out, Dunn started her first game of the season.

“It was nice to get everybody some playing time,” Starkey said. “Everybody came in and contributed with great energy.

“Every single one of these players works really hard in the classroom and in practice every day.”

In the interview room after the game were a couple of players who haven’t been in the headlines this season.

“It was really fun,” said freshman point guard Dionna Gray, who scored 10 points and had four assists and two steals. “Everybody got to touch the ball, and everybody got to score.”

Gray averaged 22 points a game and was Gatorade player of the year in West Virginia last season. At Kent State, she’s competing for playing time at point guard with two other all-staters — junior Casey Santoro and fellow freshman Corynne Hauser. Before Gray played 19 minutes on Sunday, she had averaged seven minutes a game.

“It’s been a while, so it felt good to be able to feel more like a point guard today,” she said.

Grad student Abby Ogle, who has played 10 minutes a game as part of KSU’s main rotation, scored a career-high 13 points in 13 minutes. She had five steals, the most by any Kent State player this season, and three assists.

Ogle was a third-team junior college all-American but played sparingly at West Virginia, her first four-year school. After she transferred to Kent State, Ogle was injured early last season and played in only six games.

“It’s just really nice to get back to how I used to play before everything happened,” she said. Ogle is tied with Katie Shumate for the team lead in steals with 10, and she has played 40% of Shumate’s minutes. Her philosophy on steals:

“Gamble, but gamble well,” she said.

Other players who got far more minutes than usual:

Freshman wing Tatiana Thomaho led the team in rebounds with eight. She scored five points, had three assists, two steals and a blocked shot in 13 minutes.

“She’s a great athlete, a phenomenal finisher and rebounder,” Starkey said. “Like all the freshmen, she’s still on a learning curve. There’s a process you have to go through to understand how intense college basketball is, and they’re still learning that.”

Redshirt freshman Elena Maier, who had missed more than two years of basketball after a knee injury in high school, scored her first collegiate points and played 15 minutes.

“Go g through an ACL your senior year in high school is tough,” Starkey said. “Then she came here and had to have another surgery to repair some of that stuff. That was a long two years for her.”

Her points came on a 3-point shot for the corner, a spot where she shoots “as well as anybody on our team,” Starkey said.

The team chose Maier to ring the Victory Bell after the game.

Sophomore guard Lexi Linton stole the ball and went the length of the court for layups three times. The game was her second of the season, the steals were the first of her career, and her six points doubled her previous college output. “She can be a disrupter out there,” Starkey said.

The regulars

• Senior Katie Shumate, the Flashes’ leading scorer, led the team with 18 points in just 13 minutes. She was 7-of-9 shooting.
• Sophomore Bridget Dunn scored seven points, had five rebounds, two assists and two steals and blocked a shot.
• Freshman Corynne Hauser had four assists. She leads the team with 2.9 assists per game.
• Grad student Hannah Young, the team’s leading rebounder, had six in 12 minutes, blocked two shots and had three steals.
• Grad student Annie Pavlansky had 13 points on 5-of-9 shooting and five rebounds, both the best of her five-year career.
• Sophomore Jenna Batsch had nine points, her most of the season, on 4-of-8 shooting.

Running the numbers

Across the board, they were KSU’s best of the season.

• The Flashes had 25 steals, their most in at least 12 years
• They had 22 assists, one below their highest number since 2012-13.
• KSU’s 51.8% shooting was its best of the season.
• Hiram’s 18.4% shooting was the worst of any Kent opponent.
• Kent State outscored Hiram 52-4 off turnovers, 54-6 in the paint, 22-5 on second-chance points and 33-0 on fast breaks. Its bench outscored Hiram’s reserves 66-9/

Box score

Next: Exams, then Otterbein

The Flashes are off until Dec. 20 for final exams. Then they will play an 11 a.m. “Education Day” game against Otterbein in the M.A.C. Center in front of several thousand elementary school children. Like Hiram, Otterbein is a Division III school and is 4-3 on the season.

Around the MAC

Some big wins for Mid-American Conference Schools in the last week:

• Ball State (8-2) upset Pittsburgh (6-4) of the ACC 68-66 in overtime Sunday.
• Toledo (7-2) beat No. 14 Michigan (9-1) on Thursday in Ann Arbor 71-68.

Kent State is the only other MAC school to beat a Power Five team —58-55 at Oklahoma State (now 8-2) on Nov. 20.

MAC standings (just non-conference games so far)

Throughout Kent State’s 5-2 start to the season, its defense has carried the team.

On Wednesday, the defense couldn’t hold up.

Duquesne made 48.1% of its shots and 56.3% of its 3-point attempts on its way to a 73-67 victory over the Flashes in Pittsburgh. Both were the highest numbers put up by a Kent State opponent this season.

Kent State is now 5-3; Duquesne is 7-2.

The win broke KSU’s four-game winning streak.

“Our defense was subpar, for sure,” coach Todd Starkey said. “I thought Duquesne did a good job of executing their stuff, and we did a good job of letting them do it. Some of it was a collective lack of effort, but we just weren’t as connected physically and verbally as we’ve been recently.”

Kent State’s offense shot as well as it has all season in the first half but couldn’t keep it up the rest of the game.

In the first 20 minutes, the Flashes made 10-of-19 three-pointers (52.6%) and 16-of-31 total field goal attempts (51.6%). Both were well above KSU’s season numbers.

But in the second half, KSU made only eight baskets (23.5%) and four 3-pointers. In the fourth quarter, KSU made 3-of-15 shots and scored just nine points.

“We gave up way too many first-quarter points (21) and kind of were playing out of a hole,” Starkey said. “We shot well, and that’s what kept us in the game.

“We had opportunities in the second half but really struggled to score. Our execution offensively down the stretch wasn’t what it needed to be. They just outplayed us for a good portion of the game.”

A 26-18 second quarter put Kent State up by five at halftime, but Duquesne tied it halfway through the third quarter. The Dukes went ahead by as many as four, but Bridget Dunn tied the game with a 3-pointer with 12 seconds to go in the third quarter.

Duquesne scored the first six points of the fourth quarter and led the rest of the game. In the fourth quarter, Kent State twice went four minutes without scoring.

Hannah Young made her first four 3-point attempts but was shut out for the rest of the game. Duquesne point guard Tess Myers made her first 3-pointers and finished 6-of-8 from beyond the arc.

“They made the adjustment on our hot shooter,” Starkey said. “We did not make the adjustment on theirs.”

Down the lineup

• Carey Santoro led Kent State with 13 points and had seven assists, the most by a Kent State player this season. At 5-4, Santoro blocked a shot by Duquesne’s 6-4 Precious Johnson.
• Young had 12 points and three rebounds.
• Katie Shumate led the Flashes with 10 rebounds and scored eight points.
• Freshman Corynne Hauser started her first game and had seven points, five rebounds, four assists and a steal. She had a large group of fans from her hometown of Rochester, Pennsylvania, which is about 30 miles from Pittsburgh.
• Lindsay Thall, KSU’s leading scorer, made 2-of-13 shots and didn’t have a rebound for the first time this season. She blocked two shots.
• Bridget Dunn, Kent State’s 6-3 sophomore forward, had a season-high nine points and seven rebounds.
• Abby Ogle went 3-for-4 from the field and had two rebounds.

Kent State’s bench outscored Duquesne’s 20-0.

More numbers

• Kent State’s 14 three-point baskets are the fourth most in a game in school history.
• The last five games between Kent State and Duquesne have been decided by fewer than seven points. KSU had won three in a row before Wednesday.
• The Flashes scored 16 points off of 13 Duquesne turnovers. Kent had 12 turnovers, second lowest of the year.
• Duquesne outscored Kent State in the point (34-18), on second-chance pointers (17-13), and on fast breaks (10-5).
• Two Duquesne players had double-doubles: Amaya Hamilton with 22 points and 12 rebounds and Megan McConnell with 11 points and 12 rebounds. McConnell also had eight assists; she has already had two triple-doubles this season. Myers led Duquesne with 23 points.
• All five Duquesne starters played at least 38 minutes.

The MAC and the Mid-Majors

Five Mid-American Conference teams were ranked in this week’s Mid-Major Top 25. Toledo (6-2) was fifth, Kent State (then 5-2) was ninth, Northern Illinois (7-1) was 13th, Bowling Green (6-1) was 14th and Ball State (5-2) was 19th.

Next: Hiram on Sunday

The Flashes play Division III Hiram at 2 p.m. Sunday, then break for exams. They will play Otterbein, another Division III school, on Dec. 20.

Box score