Flashes celebrate their upset win over Ball State in the MAC Tournament. It’s the first time KSU will be playing in the tournament finals since 2006. (Photo by David Dermer for Kent State Athletics.)
In his pregame interview on Golden Flashes Radio, coach Todd Starkey said the team needed to do four things to upset Ball State in the Mid-American Conference semifinals on Saturday:
- Rebound well, and score off offensive rebounds.
- Play with minimal lapses for all 40 minutes.
- Keep Ball State, the highest-scoring team in the conference, to under 70 points.
- Play to send Katie Shumate, the fifth-year star of the team, to the MAC finals.
- The result: Check, check, check and check.
The Flashes won 65-50 and advance to play Buffalo in the MAC Tournament finals at 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland. Tickets will be available at the door, and the game will be televised on the CBS Sports Network.
Buffalo upset No. 1 seed Toledo 77-74 in overtime in the other semifinal game Saturday. The Bulls led most of the second half, let Toledo close at the end but pulled it out on the end. Chellia Watson, who led the MAC in scoring this season, had 30 points for the Bulls.
Kent State, now 20-10, beat Buffalo twice in the regular season, 73-64 in Buffalo on Jan. 3 and 67-58 in Kent on March 2. Buffalo’s record is 19-12.
“Tomorrow’s all that matters,” Starkey said. “The first two games don’t really matter other than what we can learn from it. They’ve got one of the leading scorers in the country in Cellia Watson, and they’re trying to get the same thing we are. So we’ve got to create our own luck. We have to be solid defensively all the way.”
Rebounding dominaton
Against Ball State, KSU never gave the Cardinals a chance in rebounding. The Flashes outrebounded BSU 50-29. They had 17 offensive rebounds to Ball State’s six. They scored 21 second-chance points. Ball State? Just two.
“We call their three posts the three-headed monster,” Starkey said. “We knew we needed to match their physicality and send a message early that we weren’t backing down.”
Redshirt senior guard Katie Shumate said offensive rebounds fire up the whole team.
“It obviously tears them down, but it restores so much energy in us that we lost by missing a shot,” she said.
40 minutes
It was Kent State’s most complete games of the year. After Ball State led 5-2, the Flashes scored 12 straight points and outscored the Cardinals in every quarter.
“It’s been one of our messages: When we get to March, when we get to the conference tournament, we want to put our best 40 minutes together,” Starkey said. “That’s playing out right before our eyes. We just have to do it one more time.”
Defense and more defense
Kent State held Ball State to its second-lowest post total of the year and 22 points below its league-leading average of 72.
“Defensively, we were just so solid from start to finish,” Starkey said. “We had a couple of mistakes, but I loved how Ball State would hit a big 3 and we’d come down, get it inside and score at the basket. That just takes the wind out of the sails of a team that feels like they’ve made a move, and you’ve canceled it out.”
40 minutes
It was Kent State’s most complete games of the year. After Ball State led 5-2, the Flashes scored 12 straight points and outscored the Cardinals in every quarter.
“It’s been one of our messages: When we get to March, when we get to the conference tournament, we want to put our best 40 minutes together,” Starkey said. “That’s playing out right before our eyes. We just have to do it one more time.”
Playing for Katie
Starkey has coached multiple players who never got to play in the tournament finals, let alone the NCAA tournament. The whole team wants to get there for Shumate, a five-year veteran who’s now the fifth-highest scorer in Kent State history.
“That kid has as much heart, as much toughness, as any player I’ve ever coached,” Starkey said. “And why is she such a good rebounder? She grew up in a house where they played basketball. Her brother J.T. played at Toledo, her younger sister Emma at Ohio State. Can you imagine some of the driveway battles that they’ve had?
“So she’s used to battling. That’s what we’ve been watching for five years. I want it so bad for her, and I know she’s going to give us everything she has left.”
The core players
Shumate had 12 points and 14 rebounds.
Bridget Dunn had her second-straight double-double with 16 points and 13 rebounds along with two assists and two steals.
Freshman post Janae Tyler led the team in scoring for the second straight game with 16 points in 22 minutes.
Jenna Batsch was the fourth Flash in double figures with 10 points. She also had five assists.
Post Mikala Morris had four points and six rebounds, and three assists, including two nifty inside passes to Dunn for layups in the third quarter.
And Starkey made it a point to single out guard Dionna Gray, who took over as starting point guard when Corynne Hauser was lost to a knee injury 10 games ago.
“She got chased around like crazy today, and she handled herself with so much composure,” Starkey said. “She made a few mistakes and went right back and did the next right thing, something we talk about a lot.”