Celebration: (From left) Abby Ogle, Mikala Morris, Dionna Gray, and Janae Tyler cheer on their teammates in KSU’s 109-31 rout of La Roche. (Photo by David Dermer for Kent State Athletics.)
As Kent State prepares for its Mid-American Conference opener at Buffalo on Wednesday, the Flashes are still a hard team to figure out.
Picked by league coaches to finish third in MAC, the Flashes are 6-4 after pre-conference play (4-4 against Division I teams). Playing all but one game away from home, the Flashes:
- Lost to nationally ranked Louisiana State and Florida State, playing quite competitively at times.
- Beat Missouri (9-4) of the Southeastern Conference 67-64.
- Lost to two solid mid-majors — Chattanooga (9-3) 64-54 and Duquesne (7-6) 89-82 in overtime. They’re the kind of team KSU will have to beat to win the MAC.
- Beat three below-average Division I teams, Louisiana (2-6), Xavier (1-10) and Coppin State (3-11).
- Destroyed non-Division I teams Lake Erie and La Roche by a combined score of 193-51.
So where does that leave the Flashes?
THIRD IN THE MID-AMERICAN
- Their 6-4 record ties for third in the MAC. Their NET ranking is 125th out of 360 teams in the country and is third in the MAC. The NET is a statistical measure the NCAA uses to help rank teams and determine seeds for tournaments. It includes things like game results, strength of schedule, road wins and home losses, scoring margin, net offensive and defensive efficiency, and the quality of wins and losses.
- Ball State and Toledo, the two teams ranked above Kent, had very good preseasons. KSU needs to be a better team than it is now to overtake them.
- If the Flashes play as well as they did against Missouri or in their good streaks against LSU and FSU, they’ll be major contenders for the MAC title.
- If they play as they did against Chattanooga and Duquesne, they’ll struggle to contend for a fourth seed in the league tournament in March.
“POTENTIAL TO GROW QUITE A BIT”
“I think we have some nice pieces,” coach Todd Starkey said. “This team’s a work in progress. We need to continue to get better, but we have the potential to grow quite a bit.
“A lot of people still fail to remember that we lost basically four people (forward Lindsey Thall and guards Hannah Young, Clare Kelley and Casey Santoro) who played starter minutes for us and were fourth- or fifth-year kids.
“It takes a while to kind of regroup from that. In essence, this team is still pretty young as far as minutes played together. “
Starkey replaced the losses with a transfer, an all-freshman point guard, a freshman post and a most-improved junior. Here’s a look at key players:
THE LINEUP
League coaches picked KATIE SHUMATE, a 5-11 junior guard, as a preseason first-team all-MAC player. Over KSU’s final 12 games last season, she averaged 17.7 points and 9.6 over her last 12 games.
But aside from an outstanding game against defending national champion LSU (22 points, 11 rebounds), she didn’t play at that level in the non-conference season. She averaged 11.3 points per game and scored fewer than 10 points in four games.
If she doesn’t return to last year’s form, it’s going to be hard for Kent State to compete for a title.
Grad student transfer MIKALA MORRIS and freshman JANAE TYLER give the Flashes a low-post punch they haven’t had in a number of years. Between them, they average 17.5 points and 8.5 rebounds a game. Morris, who is 6-2, was all-conference in four years she spent at Qunnipiac, a good mid-major in Connecticut. Tyler was a record-breaking all-stater her senior year in Michigan. She’s 6-foot but plays at least three inches taller.
The surprise of the season is junior JENNA BATSCH, a 6-1 wing-forward. She’s second on the team in scoring, averaging 10.3 points a game and leading the Flashes in scoring three times. She has played more minutes than anyone on the team. Her 108 points so far are approaching her productivity in her entire first two years (125 points in 47 games).
5-foot-7 CORYNNE HAUSER made the MAC all-freshman team last season and has moved into the starting point guard role. She has scored in double figures in six games and is third on the team in scoring at 10.2 points per game. Hauser is second in the MAC in assist-turnover ratio at 1.8 and tied for fourth in assists per game at 4.6. Hauser is backed up by 5-4 sophomore DIONNA GRAY, who has played at least 15 minutes in six of 10 games and at least 10 in all but one game.
Rounding out the starting lineup is 6-3 BRIDGET DUNN, the tallest player on the team. Dunn is tied for seventh in the MAC at 6.4 rebounds per game. She leads thee team in 3-point baskets with 19 and is tied with freshman MYA BABBITT for the team in 3-point percentage at 34.5%.
FOUR KEY FACTORS
SHOOTING: Against Division I competition, Kent State has made 37.8% of its shots. That’s not remotely championship caliber. Ball State, last season’s field-goal leaders, shot 46.9%. Last year, Kent State was right in the middle of the league in seventh place at 41.9% — four full points below its percentage so far this season.
KSU’s 3-point shooting is even worse. Against Division I teams, the Flashes are shooting 28.2%. Average in the MAC last season was 33%. Kent made 34.6% of its 3-pointers in 2022-23.
Kent State’s defense may make up for some of that. So far, Division I opponents are making 39.6% of their shots and 28.5% of their 3-pointers.
FREE THROWS: In Starkey’s eight years in Kent, the Flashes have been among the nation’s best at scoring from the foul line. But not in non-conference play this season. Kent State ranks seventh in free-throw attempts a game. League leaders Ball State and Buffalo average 21 trips to the line. KSU manages 16.
USING ITS DEPTH: Twelve players averaged more than eight minutes a game in non-conference play; nine averaged more than 10. Can Kent State wear down its opponents?
INSIDE PLAY: Can Morris and Tyler give the Flashes the inside punch that’s been missing for years? League champion Toledo beat Kent State twice last season by pounding the ball inside. Preventing that could go a long way toward putting the Flashes on top.
ALL ABOUT BUFFALO
Kent State’s first MAC game is at Buffalo at 6 p.m. Wednesday on ESPN+. Like Kent, Buffalo was 6-4 in non-conference games. But the Flashes have played a much tougher schedule, ranked 134th in the country to 230th for the Bulls. KSU ranks 127th in the latest NET; Buffalo ranks 228.
But the game is in Buffalo, where the Bulls are 5-1. Kent State was 2-3 in true road games. (The Flashes went 1-1 on neutral site.)
The Bulls rank in the top three in the MAC in scoring defense, field goal percentage and field goal defense, and 3-point percentage and 3-point defense.
Buffalo guard Chellia Waton, a 5-8 redshirt senior, leads the MAC in scoring at 21.1 points per game. Second among the Bulls is sophomore guard Kristen Lewis-Williams, who averages 12.8 points.