The winning basket went the way Kent State had practiced it.
With the Flashes trailing by a point and four seconds to go, senior guard Clare Kelly inbounded the ball from the sideline to graduate student Lindsey Thall, then cut to the basket.
Thall grabbed the ball and returned it to Kelly, who flipped her shot over a Buffalo player from two feet away.
Name a better duo than @kellyclare33 and @LindseyThall. https://t.co/nUqNed7xTO
— Jay Fiorello (@jay4lo) January 5, 2023
The final score was Kent State 64, Buffalo 63, in the Mid-American Conference opener for both teams at the M.A.C. Center. A last-second Buffalo shot at the buzzer sailed over the rim.
Kent is now 9-3 on the season. Buffalo, which lost almost its entire roster from last year when coach Felicia Jack moved to Syracuse, is 5-5. The game broke a four-game winning streak for the Bulls. Kent State now has won four in a row.
“Coach drew up an awesome play,” Kelly said. “I’m looking to Lindsey. I know she’s going to meet the ball and make the catch because she’s done it a million times before. Lindsey made an awesome catch and an awesome pass.”
Once Kelly got the ball back, “We didn’t have much — I just had to throw it up.”
When did she know it was good?
“Once it went through,” she said with a laugh.
“She knew,” Thall said.
Thall said the play was a familiar one.
“We’ve executed it a hundred times in practice,” she said.
Coach Todd Starkey said calling the play was his style.
“I’m a firm believer in not drawing up something they’ve never seen before,” he said. “At that point, everything is rushed. That play is familiar to them, and so they just have to have the guts to execute it.
“I was proud of Clare for making the pass because Lindsey was guarded fairly well. But she made a good pass high and away. I’m proud of Lindsey for going up in traffic and getting it, and then she had the wherewithal to remember what to do under pressure.
“Clare’s job is to make the pass and cut. A lot of times on the inbound, the player who’s guarding the inbounder doesn’t pay attention to their man. And Clare makes a tough floater finish.
“I can put in the play, but the players have to execute it, and they did a great job of it.”
The winning basket was a second attempt. Kelly couldn’t find the pass she wanted the first time she tried to pass inbounds. “We told Clare we had a timeout to burn,” Starkey said. “So we got into a different setup and a different formation.”
It was an exciting finish to what hadn’t been a very good game for the Flashes.
“We didn’t play with the focus and intensity that a veteran team needs to play with,” Starkey said. “Buffalo played really hard, and I thought they executed a great game plan.”
Buffalo guards Re’Shawena Stone, Jazmine Young and Zukiah Winfield seemed to able to drive to the basket almost at will. Buffalo outscored Kent State 44-28 in the paint, with most of those coming on layups.
“It’s unacceptable,” Starkey said. “We have to get better at that, and we’ll figure out that piece of it out. Give credit to Buffalo. They did a good job of attacking us, but that’s a team that should not be able to put up 44 points in the paint against us.
Thall said the Bulls “were just getting downhill.”
“We weren’t really helping each other out and were on island, guarding people one-on-one,” she said.
In the fourth quarter, Kent State played as much zone defense as it has all season.
“If it’s broke, you better do something like it,” Starkey said. “We weren’t great in the zone, but it threw their rhythm off. We played a little bit more connected, and they didn’t score quite as quickly or as frequently.”
In the fourth quarter, KSU outscored Buffalo 20-13, outshot the Bulls 53% to 49%, and outrebounded them 12-4. The teams were even at 12-12 in points in the paint.
Kent trailed by four points with 3:03 to go when grad student Hannah Young hit a 3-point shot to bring the Flashes within one point. Freshman Corynne Hauser tied the game a minute later. then another 3-pointer by Young gave Kent State its first lead since the first half.
The players
- Thall led the Flashes with 15 points, seven rebounds, two assists and two steals. She blocked two shots and made three 3-point baskets.
- Katie Shumate, playing on her 22nd birthday, led Kent State with nine rebounds, four assists and three steals.
- Hauser also had four assists
- Sophomore Bridget Dunn had a season-best 11 points to go with six rebounds.
- Sophomore Jenna Batsch hit a 3-point shot at the halftime buzzer to tie the game at 32.
Running the numbers
- Buffalo made 50% of its shots, the highest for any KSU opponent this season.
- Kent State shot 43.3% from the field and 26.7% from 3-point distance, both above its season averages. KSU’s 11 three-pointers tied for the second most in 2022-23.
- Kent State had 15 assists, its highest of the season against Division I opposition.
- The Flashes outrebounded Buffalo 35-29. They had 12 offensive rebounds and 22 second-chance points, their highest total against a Division I opponent.
- Buffalo scored 16 points off of 18 KSU turnovers. Kent scored 10 from 13 Buffalo turnovers.
- Kent State shot only two fouls shots, making one. The Bulls were 6-of-12.
- Buffalo’s Stone scored 21 points and had five assists. Winfield had 13 points, 11 rebounds, seven assists and three steals. Both were all-Americans in Division II last season.
Other MAC scores
- Ball State (11-3) 81, Bowling Green (11-2) 73 at Ball State.
- Central Michigan (3-9) 79, Northern Illinois (8-4) 62 at Central.
- Eastern Michigan (9-3), Miami (5-9) 67 at Eastern.
- Toledo (10-2) 71, Western Michigan (5-7) 53 at Toledo.
- Akron (10-2) 73, Ohio (2-10) 64 at Akron.
Next: Saturday at Ohio
Kent State plays the Bobcats in Athens at 1 p.m. Saturday. At 2-10, Ohio is off to one of its worst starts in more than a decade. The Bobcats lost their two all-MAC guards, Cece Hooks and Erica Johnson, along with starter Gabby Burris, to graduation.