Jenna Batsch scored 16 points in the second half and led Kent State in scoring with 18. She ranks second on the team behind Katie Shumate in scoring with an 11.2 average. The black uniform Batsch is wearing was a new design for the Flashes. (Photo by David Dermer for Kent State Athletics.)

Corynne Hauser and Katie Shumate both had double-doubles as the KSU women’s basketball team overpowered Ohio on Saturday 92-63.

It was Kent State’s second victory in the opening week of Mid-American Conference play. The Flashes are tied for first place in the MAC with Ball State, Toledo and Bowling Green. Those were the four teams picked at the top of the conference in the preseason poll of league coaches.

KSU is 8-4 overall and has won four games in a row. Ohio is 4-8 overall and 1-1 in the MAC.

Kent’s margin of victory was its highest against the Bobcats since 2005. Its 92 points were the most in regulation against a Mid-American Conference opponent since 2017.

“It was a good performance overall and a great balanced effort,” coach Todd Starkey said.

Hauser, Shumate and Jenna Batsch led five Flashes in double figures. Hauser’s double-double was unusual in that she had 16 points and 10 assists. Most double-doubles are like Shumate’s Saturday performance, in which she had 10 points and 10 rebounds. Batsch had 18 points, with 16 coming in the second half. Grad student forward Mikala Morris had 13 points. Freshman Mya Babbitt had 10 points in 16 minutes, both the highest against a Division I team in her young career.

Hauser’s 10 assists were a career-high. She has had 31 total assists in the last four games and is tied for second in the MAC with 5.3 assists per game.

Kent State broke open a fairly close game with a 12-0 run late in the second quarter. Then the Flashes outscored OU 23-13 in the third period.

NEXT: At Miami at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

The Redhawks are 0-2 in the MAC and 2-10 overall. They lost to Northern Illinois (1-1 MAC, 7-6 overall) 58-48 on Saturday. Miami’s leading scorer is forward Jadyn Scott, a 6-foot-2 transfer from Cincinnati. She is averaging 12.3 points per game.

The game is on ESPN+.

Coming up next Saturday is the first game ever to be nationally televised from the M.A.C. Center. The Flashes will play Northern Illinois at 6 p.m. on the CBS Sports Network. The national exposure is part of the MAC’s television deal.

Box score

Katie Shumate scored 18 points, grabbed seven rebounds and had five assists to lead KSU over Buffalo. (File photo from Kent State Athletics.)

Kent State made nine 3-point baskets in the first half and went on to beat the Bulls 73-64 in its Mid-American Conference opener on Wednesday.

Buffalo went 0-for-6 on 3-pointers and managed only 20 points in the half. A big fourth quarter by the Bulls wasn’t nearly enough to catch the Flashes.

“I thought we played a really good first half, especially defensively,” coach Todd Starkey said. “I’m pleased with how we shot the ball in the half. It’s always nice to open conference play with a road win, especially up here in Buffalo.”

Until last season, Kent State hadn’t won a game in Buffalo since 2011.

Kent State is now 7-4 this season; Buffalo is 6-5.

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What Flashes need to do to win the MAC: a pre-Buffalo look at the team.

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The Flashes led 41-20 after the half, then weathered runs by Buffalo in the third and fourth quarter. The nine-point final margin was as close as the Bulls could get. Kent State led for all but 17 seconds of the game.

Two players who hadn’t had great non-conference seasons led KSU.

Katie Shumate, a preseason all-MAC choice by league coaches, scored fewer than 10 points in four non-conference games. But Wednesday she had 18 points, including three 3-pointers, seven rebounds, five assists and two steals.

Junior Bridget Dunn, who had averaged 7.2 points per game in non-conference play, posted her first double-double at Kent State with 14 points and 10 rebounds. She made a career-high four 3-point baskets in eight attempts.

Jenna Batsch scored 11 points and had three assists. Corynne Hauser had 10 points and seven assists. Overall the Flashes had 18 assists on their 25 baskets.

Freshman forward Janae Tyler had nine points and six rebounds. Grad student Abby Ogle had three steals as KSU led Buffalo 16-11 in turnovers caused.

NEXT: Saturday’s home opener with Ohio. It’s at 1 p.m. at the M.A.C. Center and is on ESPN+. Ohio (4-7) beat Akron (5-6) 67-58 at home on Wednesday.

An earlier version of this story said the Ohio game was the first of a doubleheader with the men. That is wrong. The men play at Eastern Michigan at 3:30 p.m., also on ESPN+. Apologies for the error.

Box score

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.