Freshman forward Janae had the best game of her young career, scoring 14 points to lead the Flashes in their 64-54 loss to Chattanooga. (File photo from KSU ‘X’ — formerly Twitter — feed.)

In the second quarter of Kent State’s 64-54 loss to Chattanooga Friday, the Flashes scored only four points.

In the whole game, KSU managed only two 3-point baskets on 22 attempts.

That’s about all you need to know. The Flashes are now 2-2 on the season and play Missouri at 5:45 p.m. Saturday in the Daytona Beach Classic. Chattanooga, the preseason choice to win the Southern Conference is 5-1 and is off to its best start in 10 years. Missouri, of the Southeastern Conference, was 4-1 before its late game Friday with Tennessee Tech.

Kent State led 18-14 after the first quarter. But in the second, it didn’t score during the last seven minutes and trailed 29-22 at halftime. The Flashes made only 2-of-14 shots and 0-for-6 on 3s in the second quarter.

Chattanooga led by as many as 15 points in the second half. Kent State cut the score to 61-54 with three minutes to go, but the Flashes didn’t score again until a basket by Jenna Batsch with six seconds to go.

Freshman center Janae Tyler led Kent State with a career-high 14 points. She made 6-of-8 shots, and had three assists and two rebounds. Transfer grad student forward Mikala Moris had 12 points and redshirt senior Katie Shumate had 10. Shumate also had seven rebounds, three assists and two blocked shots.

Chattanooga’s Jada Godd had 26 points, and Jada Gunn had 20, both career highs.

Junior guard Jenna Batsch hit a career-high in scoring for the second game in a row, this time with 16 points. She had 15 against the University of Louisiana on Sunday. (Photo by David Dermer for the KSU athletic department.)

For 22 minutes, things couldn’t have gone any better for the Kent State women in their matchup against defending national champion Louisiana State. Behind 19 points from redshirt senior Katie Shumate, the Flashes led 42-41.

But then LSU showed why its athleticism and talent is as good as any team in the country. The Tigers shot 72% in the second half, stole the ball 13 times (20 total in the game) and scored 32 points off of Kent State turnovers. Freshman Mikayiah Williams — playing on a team with three all-Americans — scored 32 points in second half and 42 for the game.

Kent State is 1-1 on the season. LSU is 3-1.

“There’s a lot to gain from this experience,” coach Todd Starkey said. “We can certainly get confidence from the first 25 or 30 minutes of the game, from being able to mix it up with very talented players and really compete.”

Kent State hit seven 3-point baskets in the first half — four by Shumate and three by Bridget Dunn. LSU was 0-for-5 on 3-pointers.

Shumate and the Flashes played so well that on X (formerly Twitter), national commentator Rebecca Lobo called it a “highly entertaining matinee” and cited Shumate’s 17 first-half points.

In a reply, Starkey said Shumate was “an honor to coach.”

In a postgame interview, Starkey said:

“I can’t say that I was surprised, but I was definitely impressed” by Shumate’s performance.

“Katie’s very capable against anybody,” Starkey said. “She could play at any level and have success. And when she’s focused like that and determined, she’s a really, really talented player.”

Shumate’s statistical line for the game: 22 points (7-of-14 shooting, 4-of-7 on 3s), 11 rebounds (seven offensive and four defensive), two steals, an assist and a blocked shot.

Shumate was complimented by another good game by junior guard Jenna Batsch.

Batsch set a new career high with 15 points in Sunday’s 64-55 victory against the University of Louisiana. Against LSU, she scored 16. Fourteen on those game in the second half on 5-of-6 shooting and 2-of-3 three-pointers.

Dunn had 11 points and three 3-pointers for Kent. Corynne Hauser had seven points and four assists, and sophomore Dionna Gray and freshman Mya Babbitt had six points on two 3-pointers each.

LSU’s Williams, Starkey said, played “as good of a half of basketball offensively that I’ve ever seen from an individual player that I’ve coached  against.”

“We actually had a lot of possessions where we played great defense on her, and she was hitting contested, pull-up, fadeaway jump shots from 17 feet. She was hitting 25-foot 3-point shots with people with a hand in her face. When a player’s just playing like that, all you can say, ‘Congratulations.’

Wiliams line: 42 points (an LSU record for a freshman), seven rebounds, three assists and three steals.

Finally, some overpowering numbers in favor of LSU:

• Points off turnovers: LSU 42 off 28 Kent State errors. (KSU scored eight off 13 LSU turnovers).
• Points in the paint: 58. (Kent 14).
• Second-chance points: 24. (KSU 14).
• Fast break points: 32. (Kent 8).

Corynne Hauser was one of three KSU players scoring in double figures with 10 points. Mikala Morris also had 10 and Jenna Batsch 15.

Kent State held Louisiana to under 30% shooting when five players scored at least nine points as the Flashes won their season opener 64-55.

KSU led for all but eight minutes of the game.

Louisiana made only 16-of-54 shots and 2-of-12 three-pointers and had only four assists.

Kent State shot 37.5% overall and 22.7% from beyond the arc.

“In every season, our defense has to be good enough to travel when we don’t shoot the ball well,: coach Todd Starkey said. “And we did not have a great shooting night tonight. But our defense was pretty stout.”

Junior Jenna Batsch started her first college game and led the team with career highs in points (15) and minutes played (36). Corynne Hauser and Mikala Morris each had 10 points, and Katie Shumate and Janae Tyler each had nine. Shumate led the team in rebounds with nine; Morris, a graduate transfer from Quinnipiac, had seven rebounds.

Louisiana is 1-2 on the season. It lost to Auburn 60-54 on Thursday.

Kent State is 1-0 and plays at defending national champion Louisiana State on Tuesday.

Box Score

Katie Shumate (14) led Kent State in points, rebounds and assists last season.

The KSU women’s basketball team will open this season without four of its top six scorers from last year. 

But nobody is calling 2023-24 a rebuilding year.

Mid-American Conference coaches have picked the Flashes to finish third in the league this season, the highest Kent State has ranked in the preseason in coach Todd Starkey’s eight seasons. The Flashes are ranked 16^th in the preseason Mid-Major Poll. 0

Kent State opens its regular season Sunday at Louisiana, then plays defending national champion Louisiana State Tuesday. In an exhibition game last Sunday, the Flashes overwhelmed Division III Muskingham 106-35. 

Last season the Flashes went 21-11, their best record since 2005-06.

KSU lost forward Lindsey Thall, guard Hannah Young and guard Clare Kelly to graduation and point guard Casey Santoro through a transfer to Florida Gulf Coast. The four combined for 3,654 points in their time in Kent.

But Starkey has a lot of accomplished players to step into the lineup. 

Katie Shumate: All-MAC, past and present

The new season’s roster begins with grad student Katie Shumate, a four-year starter who averaged 17.7 points and 9.7 rebounds her final 12 games last season. Coaches voted her preseason first-team all-conference. She has received post-season all-MAC honors in three of her four years in Kent.

“Her versatility is her biggest strength,” Starkey said. “She’s a phenomenal 3-point shooter and can score in the mid-range. We can post her up against smaller guards or spread the floor and take bigger players off the dribble.

“Based on how she finished last year and how she’s been playing through the summer, she is going to be on a short list of potential player-of-the-year candidates.”

If Shumate represents continuity for the Flashes, the team’s post players show the biggest change.

Punch in the post

For the first time in years, Kent State will have two players whose focus will be on inside, back-to-the-basket scoring and rebounding.

6-foot-2 Mikala Morris is a transfer from Quinnipiac, a traditional mid-major power. In all four years of her years there, she made the first or second all-league team of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. 

When Morris graduated from Kenton Ridge High School (near Springfield, Ohio) in 2019, she was the all-time leading rebounder (girls or boys) in Ohio high school basketball history. At Kenton Ridge, she scored 2,052 points and blocked 383 shots. In KSU’s exkibition against Muskingham, she led KSU with 11 rebounds in 19 minutes

6-1 Janae Tyler averaged 18.1 points and 12.5 rebounds in a first-team all-state season at Holt High School in Michigan. Both Starkey and her high school coach said she plays three or four inches taller than her actual height.

Starkey said Morris and Taylor will give the KSU offense a different look.

“I think we have the ability to be much more of a physical and imposing team than we’ve been in the past,” the coach said.

Senior guard Abby Ogle said the Flashes will have “an inside presence that will be able to match up with bigger kids a lot better.”

Point guard Corynne Hauser said bigger point players are good for guards.

“Because we can shoot over a zone, they can’t collapse on the inside,” she said. “And that opens up the drivers.”

‘The perfect post complement’

Junior forward Bridget Dunn was leading the team in rebounding when she went down with an ACL injury in February. She’s the tallest player on the team at 6-3, but she’s not the inside presence Morris and Tyler are.

Instead, she’s one of the best 3-point shooters on the team, much like Thall was in her five years as a starter.       

“When we were recruit Mikala, we told her, ‘You’re going to play with somebody opposite you who perfectly complements your game,” Starkey said. “Bridget stretches the floor. Do they guard her with a post player or guard her with a guard. So they can’t help off of anybody on the court. We have the ability for a lot more high-low game (when a tall player passes from the foul line to another tall player close to the basket.)”

An all-freshman guard who played hurt last season returns

5-foot-7 Corynne Hauser had surgery early this summer to repair a hip injury suffered in the first month of practice last year. 

She still played in every game, was fourth among KSU scorers and led the team in assists. She made the MAC all-freshman team.

A two-time all-stater from Rochester, Pennsylvania, Hauser can play point or shooting guard.

When Hauser is not playing point, sophomore Dionna Gray will run the team on the floor. Gray, player of the year in West Virginia as a high school senior, got extra minutes at the point most of the summer while Hauser recovered from her surgery.

Gray and Hauser combined for 13 assists in last week’s exhibition game.

A junior moves into the lineup

Janna Batsch, a 6-foot-1 guard/forward, started her first college game against Muskingham. She and Tyler led the Flashes in scoring with 14 points each.

Batsch, who said she had worked hard on her 3-point shot, hit two in the exhibition and had two steals.

A wealth of depth in the middle of the rotation

The Flashes have at least four other players who could see significant minutes at guard and forward. 5-10 Tatiana Thomas was a primary substitute after Dunn was hurt last season, Abby Ogle is a defensive specialist who worked on her outside shooting during the off-season (she hit 2-of-2 three-pointers and had two steals against Muskingham.)

Freshman Mya Babbitt was one of the best 3-point shooters in Nebraska last year. She hit eight 3-pointers in the state semifinals, then hit three more in the fourth quarter of her team’s championship victory. Bianca Juzzo is a 5-10 player from Brazil who had five rebounds against Muskingham.

“We have a really deep bench,” Starkey said. “We want to make sure that we’re taxing the other team up and down the floor so that they’re getting fatigued.

The coach said the team is ready for the season.

“I think we’re in a pretty good spot,” he said. “This team definitely has a few more gears, and we’ve going to be able to continue to progress as we go through the season. I like what I’m seeing early.”

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.

Box score

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.

MAC standings

Kent State women’s basketball coaches push their guards to attack the basket aggressively.

Freshman Corynne Hauser and senior Katie Shumate executed that lesson well Sunday and led the Flashes to a 64-49 victory over St. Bonaventure in the M.A.C. Center.

It was the fourth-straight win for the Flashes, who are 5-2 and ranked 11th in the most recent Mid-Major Top 25. St. Bonaventure is 2-7.

Hauser scored a career-high 18 points on 5-of-8 shooting and 2-of-3 from 3-point distance, and 6-of-6 from the foul line. She also had two steals. Shumate had 15 points on 6-of-11 shooting, six rebounds and two steals.

“Being aggressive really does open up things for us and for the rest of our teammates, too,” Shumate said.

“When Katie wants to be aggressive, she could drop 30 a night,” Hauser said.

Hauser said she had been working with associate head coach Fran Recchia on being more aggressive in her 3-point shooting. Hauser had two 3s for the first time Sunday.

“She’s been stressing to shoot more 3s to get more opportunities, not just for myself but for other players,” Hauser said.

Coach Todd Starkey Hauser had bee “passive coming off of ball screens.”

“We tell her, ‘When you come off the other side of the screen and you’re not guarded, you have to shoot the basketball,'” he said. “She averaged 26 a game in high school, so she knows how to score. I just want her to look for hers. Her teammates have encouragted her to do so because they know how talented she is.”

Sunday was the fourth time that Kent State had held an opponent below 60 points.

“We’re playing on defense first,” Shumate said. “We’re locking in on what we need to do and not looking forward to the offensive end. I’s just, ‘We’re on defense, and we’re going to be here until we get a stop. And the better we play on defense, the sooner we’re gonna get back on the offense.”

Every member of the team played, and 12 of the 13 on the roster played at least seven minutes.

Graduate student guard Abby Ogle had career highs with three steals and three assists and scored six points. Freshman Tatiana Thomas scored her first collegiate basket with a putback in the third quarter and had two rebounds. Freshman Dionna Gray made a 3-pointer for the second game in a row.

Running the numbers

• Lindsey Thall had six assists, a career-high for her and a season-high for the team.
• Shumate and Hannah Young each had six rebounds to lead KSU to a 37-33 advantage on the boards.
• Both teams were perfect from the foul line. Kent State was 14-of-14; St. Bonaventure 10-of-10. It was the first time Kent State had made all of its free throws (taking 10 or more) in a game since 1999.
• The Flashes had 10 steals, their best so far this season. Its 13 assists ranked second.
• KSU equaled its season high with four blocked shots.
• Kent State made 36.2% of its field goals and 32% of its 3-pointers. St. Bonaventure’s numbers were 30.2% from the field and 30.4% from 3.
• Kent State held l’yanna Lops, the 6-3 forward who was the Bonnies’ leading scorer, to 0-for-10 from the field and two rebounds.

Next: Wedneday at Duquesne

The Flashes visits Pittsburgh to play Duquesne at 6 p.m. Wednesday on ESPN+. The Dukes are 6-2 with losses to PIttsburgh and Tulsa. Their best wins are over 6-3 Brown and 5-2 Deleware.

Box score

Shooting was supposed to be Kent State’s strength this season.

But so far it’s been defense that has carried the Flashes to a 3-2 record against five strong opponents.

Kent State held their fourth opponent of the season under 60 points in beating Quinnipiac 58-55 in the first game of the Christmas City Classic in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.

Both Kent and Quinnipiac were ranked in the Mid-Major Top 25 going into the game — Quinnipiac 12th and Kent State 17th. The Flashes are now 3-2 on the season with their losses coming to Power 5 schools Florida State and Arkansas. Quinnipiac’s previous two losses came to schools ranked in the Top 10 of the most recent AP Poll — No. 6 Indiana and No. 8 North Carolina. The Bobcats are 2-3.

Kent’s winning recofrd has come even though the team has made over 40% of its shots only once this season. The Flashes have made more than 30% of their 3-pointers only twice.

“We’ve got really good shooters who just aren’t seeing the ball go through,” coach Todd Starkey said. “In the past, that really has affected our level of defensive buy-in. This year it’s not affecting them to any large degree at the defensive end. They’re playing through that, and our defense has been something we’ve been able to really depend on.”

Graduate student forward Lindsey Thall led Kent State with 18 points and two 3-point baskets. Casey Santoro had 15 points, six rebounds, six free throws and three assists — all season highs for the junior guard.

But a more obscure statistic impressed Starkey even more.

“Lindsey drew 10 fouls, and Casey drew eight,” he said. “That’s huge.”

Santoro and Thall each got to the foul line 10 times and helped lead the Flashes to a 19-12 advantage in free throws. Quinnipiac point guard Rose Caverly, who was guarding Santoro, missed much of the fourth quarter with four fouls. She and forward Mary Baskerville both fouled out in the last minutes.

The Flashes trailed by nine points after eight minutes of the first quarter and trailed 16-11 at the end of the quarter.

Starkey’s message to the team?

“We did not play well, and we were only down five,” he told them. “I think that changed their mindset. They stayed pretty positive, and we held them to eight points in the second quarter.”

Kent State tied the game on a floater by Santoro four seconds before halftime. They took they lead on a 3-point basket by Clare Kelly a minute into the third quarter, and the Flashes never trailed after that.

In the fourth quarter, KSU held Quinnipiac to 4-of-17 shooting in the fourth quarter. At one point, the Bobcats went 1-for-15 from the field in the quarter.

Thall, who is 6-2, and 6-3 sophomore Bridget Dunn anchored the KSU defense.

“We only had three blocked shots, but the number of shots that Bridget and Lindsay altered were significant,” Starkey said. “Bridget contested a ton of shots.”

Dunn tied Thall for the most 3s on the team last season but has made only 2-of-16 so far. But she’s become the team’s leading rebounder.

“She’s really taken that role to heart,” Starkey said.

Dunn and Thall played significant minutes together for the first time this season because of Quinnipiac’s tall front line. Otherwise, Kent State has played a four-guard offense.

For the game, Thall made 4-of-10 field goal attempts, 2-of-8 three-point shots and 8-of-10 free throws. She also had four rebounds, an assist and a blocked shot.

Santoro was 4-of-6 from the field. Her six rebounds tied her for the team lead with Hannah Young. Dunn had five. The Flashes outrebounded Quinnipiac 33-31.

Next: Southern Illinois in the championship

The Flashes play Southern Illinois at at 2:30 p.m. Sunday in the championship game of the tournament. SIU won its first game of the season Saturday, beating host Lehigh 87-81. Overall, Southern is 1-4, with losses to Middle Tennesee State, IUPUI, Northwetern and Memphis. 5-7 guard Ashley Jones is the Salukis’ leading scorer. She had 16 against Lehigh.

Box score

The game wasn’t perfect, Kent State women’s basketball coach Todd Starkey said. But it was awfully good.

The Flashes routed Northern Kentucky, a team that went 21-8 last season and is picked to finish fourth in the Horizon League, 77-54 at the M.A.C. Center on Sunday. Both teams are now 1-1 in the young season.

The Flashes scored the first 14 points of the game and were never threatened. They led 44-20 by halftime and never let NKU within 20 points in the second half.

“I was really pleased with our effort,” Starkey said. “We got out to a great start and executed our game plan offensively really well.”

Despite shutting out Northern Kentucky for almost five minutes, Starkey said there were flaws in the KSU defense.

“We closed out on shooters with our hands down a few times, gave up some open looks,” he said. “It could have been different if they would have knocked down a couple of those early 3s.”

But after the first-quarter timeout, Starkey said he thought the team’s defense was “really effective and consistent.”

“It wasn’t like there was a specific gimmicky thing that we did,” he said, “because we didn’t really change a whole lot of the main things. We just did what we do better.”

Sophomore forward Bridget Dunn described the defense this way:

“It’s a team game,” she said. “You can’t leave anyone on an island. The five of us have to play together. So we have to be in our gaps and help each other. If somebody’s beat, we have her back, and we have to rotate, cover openings and then box out and rebound, finish the play.”

A key to the defense was stopping NKU guard Lindsey Duval, who scored 36 points and made 17-of-27 free throws in a triple-overtime win over Lipscomb on Thursday. Against Kent State, she had 12 points and never got to the foul line.

Senior Clare Kelly guarded Duval much of the time.

“Claire did a phenomenal job on Duval,” Starkey said. “he really listened to scouting report, and she had a really good feel for what (Duval’s) tendencies were. She drew one foul straight from film. It was something that Duval has a tendency to do, and Clare was waiting on it .”

Kent State’s scoring was about as balanced as it could be. Senior Katie Shumate had 13 points, Kelly 12, freshman Corynne Hauser 11 and sophomore Casey Santoro 10 and graduate student Lindsey Thall eight.

All 14 players on the roster got into the game, with 11 of them scoring and 10 playing more than 10 minutes. Freshmen Dionna Gray and Tatiana Thomas saw their first collegiate action. Redshirt freshman Elena Maier got on the court for the time since she suffered a knee injury during her junior year in high school.

Running the numbers

• Kent State made 50.9% of its shots and 35.3% of its 3-point attempts. Northern Kentucky made 33.2% and 22.2% of its 3-pointers.
• Dunn had nine rebounds to lead the Flashes’ 40-32 margin on the boards.
• KSU outscored NKU 40-18 in the points, the second-straight game with a big advantage in this category. Kent’s bench had 34 points to Northern Kentucky’s 19.

Next: A very tough road trip

Kent State plays two Power 5 teams in its first away games. On Thursday, the Flashes will plan Arkansas (2-0) at 6 p.m. Kent time. The Razorbacks were 18-14 last season and were predicted to finish fourth in the SEC this season. Their two wins this year came over regional Arkansas schools and were by an average of 30 points. Arkansas will play Tulsa (2-0) on Monday.

On Sunday, the Flashes will travel to Okahoma State for a 3 p.m. game. Oklahoma State is 2-0 with 30-point wins over Texas Rio Grande Valley and Northwestern State. The Cowgirls will play Oral Roberts on Monday and Missouri State on Thursday before they meet the Flashes. Oklahoma State was 9-20 last season and is predicted to finish ninth in the Big 12 this season.

Box score

This year, the watchword for the Kent State women’s basketball team is “consistency.”

Last year’s team was anything but. The Flashes started 8-1, second best in school history. Victories included wins over UCLA and Penn State.

Then came COVID-19, which canceled a game with Florida State, which is the Flashes’ seasoning opening opponent Thursday at the M.A.C. Center.

COVID lingered through January, and Kent State lost four of its first five Mid-American Conference games, all by fewer than 10 points. KSU won six straight games to start February, then lost four of its last six and missed the league tournament on a tie-breaker.

The Flashes finished 19-12 and split two games in the WNIT.

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Thursday’s Florida State game

The game will be the second of a doubleheader with the KSU men, who play Division III Baldwin Wallace at 5 p.m. The women’s game will start a half hour after the men finish, probably between 7 and 7:30 p.m.

Florida State is the first Power 5 team to visit the M.A.C. Center since Ohio State in 2019. The Seminoles were 19-12 last season and made the First Four of the NCAA Tournament. More on FSU at the end of this post.

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“This is a team that I think is hungry,” coach Todd Starkey said. “They’re excited to prove that they are better in conference play than we showed last year.”

Returning starters LIndsey Thall and Hannah Young, both fifth-year players, used the word “consistent” about five times in a preseason interview.

“We can’t be up and down in practice or up and down in games,” Young said. “I think if we can be on the same path every single day, we’re going to be fine.”

And one more time from Starkey:

“”If we can stay consistent with our focus, energy and efforts…when we’re shooting the ball well, we can beat anybody,” he said. “The key lies when we’re not shooting the ball well. Can we be consistent enough defensively and in execution?”

The team returns six of its top seven scorers and 11 players from last year. But the Flashes’ biggest personnel loss may dictate a different style of play

Nila Blackford, the 6-2 forward who led the team in rebounding all three of her years in Kent, transferred to Xavier. She was Kent’s workhorse inside, averaging in double figures for three years and earning second-team all-MAC recognition in 2020-21.

The returning forwards, Thall and sophomore Bridget Dunn, were known more for their outside shooting. Thall holds the KSU record for 3-point shots in a career, and Dunn, as a freshman, tied Thall for the team lead in 3-pointers last season.

Dunn and Thall never started at the same time last season (Blackford started 30 games), and they didn’t start together in KSU’s 72-40 exhibition victory over Mercyhurst last Thursday.

But they do give Starkey options this season. The Flashes could play two post players and three guards, the most common lineup in college women’s basketball, or four guards and a post.

“We’ll do some of both,” the coach said. “We started to play that way (four guards) late last year. A lot of it will be based on who we’re playing — if we feel like we have an advantage plaing with two bigs or if we have an advantage of playing with guards.”

The Flashes have a multitude of guards. Young, senior Katie Shumate, senior Clare Kelly and sophomore Casey Santoro all started or played more than 20 minutes a game last season. All three freshmen on the team are guards. One is Corynne Hauser, a two-time Pennsylvania all-stater who averaged 25 points a game her senior year. She scored 11 points against Mercyhurst, tied for second high on the team.

Expect a faster pace from the Flashes.

“We’re trying to be better in the transition game offensively and defensively,” Starkey said. “They’re both areas that we saw really needed evaluating.”

It’s a matter of tempo, the coach said, which means “the ball is moving, the game is moving up and down the court. There’s consistent energy.” 

Young said it will “change everybody’s game a little bit.”

“The offense will be moving faster and in transition,” she said. ‘I’m just going to do my part in that and then see where it takes us.”

The 2022-23 Flashes

EXHIBITION STARTING LINEUP

• Lindsey Thall, 6-2 grad student forward
• Katie Shumate, 5-11 senior guard.
• Hannah Young, 5-10 grad student guard.
• Clare Kelly, 5-8 senior guard.
• Casey Santoro, 5-4 junior point guard.

OTHER PLAYERS LIKELY PLAY STARTER MINUTES

• Bridget Dunn, 6-3 sophomore forward.
• Corynne Hauser, 5-7 freshman guard.

The roster by position

FORWARDS: Grad student Lindsey Thall, sophomore Bridget Dunn, grad student Annie Pavlansky, sophomore Jenna Batsch.

GUARDS: Senior Katie Shumate, grad student Hannah Young, senior Clare Kelly, freshman Corryne Hauser, grad student Abby Ogle, freshman Tatiana Thomas, sophomore Lexi Linton.

POINT GUARDS: Junior Casey Santoro, freshman Dionna Gray, redshirt freshman Elena Maier.

By class:

GRAD STUDENTS/FIFTH-YEAR PLAYERS: Lindsey Thall, Hannah Young, Annie Pavlansky, Abby Ogle.

SENIORS: Katie Shumate, Clare Kelly.

JUNIORS: Casey Santoro.

SOPHOMORES: Bridget Dunn, Jenna Batsch, Lexi Linton.

FRESHMEN: Corynne Hauser, Dionna Gray, Tatiana Thomas, Elena Maier (redshirt freshman).

About Florida State

The Seminoles opened their season Monday with a 113-50 victory over Bethune Cookman. FSU also scored at least 115 points in exhibition games beating two Division II schools.

“We’re going to have to be really good at transition defense,” Starkey said. “You don’t score over 100 points to start the season if you don’t have the intention of really getting downhill in transition and trying to score quickly. We’re going to have to contain those types of outbreaks, really limit their transition easy baskets, and force them into tough contested shots.”

In its exhibition, Kent State held Division II Mercyhurst to 40 points, just three in the fourth quarter.

Freshman Ta’Niya Latson led Florida State with 28 points in its opener. Redshirt senior forward Erin Howard had 16 rebounds, and sophomore forward Makayla Timpson had 12 as FSU outrebounded Bethune-Cookman 67-32.

The Seminoles were picked ninth in the Atlantic Coast Conference this season.

FSU assistant coach Morgan Toles was an assistant at Kent State during Starkey’s first three years. She is an FSU alum.

I’m having shoulder surgery this week, so the blog will be on hiatus. I hope to be able to do short posts, maybe after Saturday’s game, maybe next week. It depends on whether I feel good enough to type.

In the meantime, you can get game results and previews on the team website at:

https://kentstatesports.com/sports/womens-basketball.

The team Twitter feed is @kentstwbb for scoring updates during games and results right afterwards.

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KSU has two revenge games this week against Northern Illinois (at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the M.A.C. Center) and at Akron at 2 p.m. Saturday. Both games will be on ESPN+ or ESPN3. The links will be on the KSU website.

The Flashes lost to both teams in the final seconds in January.

NIU beat the Flashes 61-55 on Jan. 26, making six free throws in the final 30 seconds after KSU had tied the game at 55. The Huskies are in eighth place in the MAC at 7-7 (10-12 overall). They’re part of a cluster of seven teams (including Kent State) between third and ninth, all within a game-and-a-half of each other in the standings. The teams are fighting to finish no lower than eighth, the last place that will make the league tournament in March in Cleveland.

Akron is a surprising third in the Mid-American Conference at 8-5 (11-8 overall). The Zips beat KSU 62-61 at the M.A.C.C. on Jan. 5. The Flashes rallied from nine down in the fourth quarter but missed a shot at the buzzer that would have won the game.

Kent State is 7-6 in the MAC and 15-7 overall. The Flashes have won five in a row since losing to Northern Illinois, That’s the longest active winning streak in the league.

KSU website, with links to preview, statistics, roster and schedule.

MAC standings.

MAC statistics.