From left: Corynne Hauser, Abby Ogle and Bridget Dunn charge toward the basket. (Photos by David Dermer.)

Kent State’s women spread its points around generously on Wednesday as it routed Coppin State 77-40.

The Flashes’ leading scorer — grad student forward Mikala Morris — just had 12 points, plus five rebounds and four assists. Behind her was another grad stduent, guard Katie Shumate, had 10 points, plus eight rebounds, two assists, two steals and two blocked shots.

Nobody else scored in double figures, but four players scored eight points or nine points. In all, 12 of the 14 players on the roster scored at least two. Only Shumate and junior forward Jenna Batsch played more than 20 minutes.

At his postgame press conference, coach Todd Starkey pondered what having that depth meant for him, the team and individual players.

FINDING GOOD PLAYERS PLAYING TIME

“My biggest challenge this year is how to find good players playing time,” the coach said. “You just look down the bench, you sub in other players, they do something really well. And then we put more subs in, and then I have to get starters back in. It’s a nice problem to have, but it’s a real thing. Those players down the bench could probably start or play major minutes for other teams.

“Those players work just as hard and do the things that we’re asking starters to do. A lot of times, they don’t get the attention. So it’s really good to see those players come in and do well.” 

PLAYING HARD ON DEFENSE

After the teams were tied 4-4 halfway through the first quarterr, Kent State ran off seven straight poinets, then outscored Coppin State by seven more in the second period and overwhelmed the Eagles 26-7 in the third.

Shumate credited defense, which provided six blocked shots, forced 15 turnovers and allowed only 14 points in the paint.

“That’s been a big emphasis for us — talking and playing hard on defense,” Shumate said. “I like the way that we’re playing connected with a lot of energy.

USING THE PAINT

On offense, the Flashes have found part of a solution to their struggles with 3-point shooting: Score close to the basket.

“What we’ve been able to rely on is in is the paint,” Starkey said. “Mikala Morris and Janae Tyler both are really doing a great job of establishing the paint. We want to play through them and look for paint touches and kick outs to rhythm 3s.”

Kent State has averaged 27% on 3-point shooting, though it made 32% on Wednesday. Morris and Tyler have averaged a combined 17.8 points this season.

Kent State is 4-2 on the season. Coppin State is 3-5. The Eagles did beat Pittsburgh 61-56 on Thursday. It was their first win over a Division I team in program history.

NEXT: AT NO. 15 FLORIDA STATE ON SUNDAY

The Flashes travel to Tallahassee for a 2 p.m. Sunday game against No. 15 Florida State, which had won its first five games before losing to Stanford on Friday.

At the M.A.C. Center last season, the Flashes led FSU into the fourth quarter before falling 80-71.

Coppin State game box score

Mikala Morris, Kent State’s 6-2 grad transfer from Quinnipiac, just missed a double-double with 18 points and nine rebounds. Both were highs for her in a KSU uniform, though she had scored more several times at Quinnipiac. (Photo from KSU Athletic Communications.)

With 5:13 to go in Kent State’s victory over Missouri Saturday, junior guard Jenna Batsch hit a 12-foot jump shot to start the Flashes toward their fourth win over a Power 5 team in the last three years.

Batsch’s basket made the score 60-57, and for the rest of the game, neither team led by more than three points. For most of that time, neither team led by more than one.

Finally, point guard Corynne Hauser made a layup with 12 seconds left to give KSU a 65-64 lead. Katie Shumate added two free throws with three-tenths of a second left to make the final score 67-64.

Kent State is now 3-2 on the young season. Missouri is 5-2.

BEATING THE POWER 5s

First it was a 75-69 win over UCLA in the Gulf Coast Showcase on Nov. 26, 2021. Two days later it was Kent State 81, Penn State 74.

Last season, it was Kent 69-66 at Oklahoma State.

“Four Power 5 wins in the last three years is a big thing for us,” KSU coach Todd Starkey said. “It should continue to put our program on the map. 

“UCLA, Penn State, Oklahoma State, and now Missouri…These are all programs that have significantly more resources than we do. They can do so much more for recruiting. They have NIL collectives. They have charter flights.”

BIG GAMES FROM MORRIS AND HAUSER

Morris just missed a double-double with 18 points and nine rebounds.

“She really stepped her game up today,” Starkey said. “We needed that from her. She’s been trending in that direction, so I wasn’t surprised by it. But I was really pleased to see it, and all of her teammates are pretty excited about it.”

Hauser had 17 points and eight assists.

“And just one turnover against a really good defensive guard,” Starkey added.

In Friday’s 64-54 loss to Chattanooga, Hauser made didn’t make a basket in six tries.

“She knew she didn’t play well,” Starkey said. “And for her to follow up with this type of performance — especially against that good of a team — is really kind of a monumental thing.”

LOTS OF OTHER HELP

Junior forward Bridget Dunn had seven rebounds and eight points.

“It was great to see Bridget break out of a shooting slump and hit two big 3s, one in the fourth quarter,” Starkey said.

Junior guard Jenna Batsch had a career-high eight rebounds, eight points, two assists and two steals.

Freshman Janae Tyler, who scored 14 points Friday against Chattanooga, had six against Missouri. Morris’s big day limited Tyler’s playing time.

Grad student Abby Ogle had four points, three rebounds, an assist, a steal and a blocked shot.

A FAST START

Kent State jumped to a 14-point lead in the first quarter and led 21-12 at the end of the period.

“It gave us confidence,” Starkey said. “We had kids that hadn’t seen the ball go through the basket in a while. So when you have players making shots early, it gives a boost to the whole team.”

FLASHY STATS

• Points off turnovers: Kent State 17 (from 11 Missouri turnovers), Missouri 9 (from nine KSU turnovers).
• Points in the paint: Kent 28, Missouri 20.
• Rebounds: Kent 39 (13 offensive), Missouri 34 (11 offensive).
• Second chance points: Kent 13, Missouri 5.

NEXT: AT LONG LAST, A HOME GAME

The Flashes host Coppin State (3-3) at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the M.A.C. Center.

“We probably are the only team in the country that hasn’t played at home,” Starkey said. “We’re excited about getting back.”

Coppin State beat Pittsburgh 61-56 Tuesday for the school’s first win over a Power 5 school. Laila Lawrence, a 6-2 junior forward, had double-doubles in that and three of the other four of the team’s first six games.

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Happiness is four guards scoring: (From left) senior Katie Shumate (15 points), junior Jenna Batsch (10), freshman Mya Babbitt (six in a career-high 17 minutes) and Corynne Hauser (15 points).

It was far from a good shooting night for the Kent State women, but the Flashes used strong offensive rebounding and a big fourth quarter to beat Xavier 64-57 on Tuesday night.

KSU is now 2-1 after three road games. Xavier is 0-5.

“We found a way to win on the road against the Big East opponent,” “And we had a terrible shooting night — 34% from the floor, 22% from 3 and 61% from the free-throw line.

“We made some nice adjustments in the fourth quarter and finally came alive for 10 minutes.”

A key moment came in the huddle between the third and fourth quarters, when Kent trailed 46-43.

“We implored them to make sure that we’re crashing the glass,” Starkey said.

The Flashes had seven offensive rebounds in the first half but scored only three points off of them.

“It doesn’t matter if you get the offensive rebound if it doesn’t turn into something for you. So we really wanted to make sure that we were getting not rebounds, but second-chance points.”

Kent State had 18 points in the second half off of 13 offensive rebounds. For the game, Katie Shumate and Jenna Batsch had four each. Bridget Dunn had 10 rebounds, nine defensive, for the Flashes.

In the fourth quarter, KSU held Xavier to 11 points on 3-of-11 shooting.

“We changed the way we were guarding ball screens,” Starkey said. “We went one possession of zone, then we went to a different way to defend screens. It seemed to throw them off a little bit, and it seemed to give us some energy.”

Four guards dominated Kent State’s scoring:

KATIE SHUMATE, after scoring only one point in the first half, finished with 15. She added six rebounds, blocked three shots and had an assist and a steal.

CORYNNE HAUSER had a season-high 15 points with five assists and three steals.

JENNA BATSCH had her third straight game in double figures with 10 points.

MYA BABBITT, a freshman from Papillion, Nebraska, played 17 minutes after only playing two in her first games. She hit two 3-pointers after making two other 3s in the last two minutes of KSU’s game against LSU last week.

“She went in today because we couldn’t shoot the ball,” Starkey said. “And she’s a great shooter. If you’re not shooting the ball well, you give good shooters an opportunity.” 

The Flashes saw a familiar face on the other side in forward Nila Blackford, a two-time all-MAC performer for the Flashes from 2019 to 2022. She transferred to Xavier before the beginning of last season. Tuesday she scored 19 points, grabbed 13 rebounds and blocked three shots.

“It might have been her best game at Xavier,” Starkey said.

NEXT: Off to Florida

The Flashes leave Wednesday for the Daytona Beach Classic. They’ll play Chattanooga (2-1) on Friday and Missouri (4-1) on Saturday.

They will finally play their first home game next Wednesday against Coppin State (3-3).

As soon as Kent State coaches saw their pairing for the first round of the WNIT, they knew they faced a difficult task.

The Flashes were going on the road to play Syracuse of the Atlantic Coast Conference, which had gone 18-12 this season and was 14-3 in home games.

They were going to face Felisha Legette-Jack, who became Syracuse head coach last summer after 10 years at Buffalo. She went 15-3 against Kent State in Mid-American Conference play.

They were going to take on Daisha Fair, the Syracuse guard who had been all-MAC for three years at Buffalo, averaging more than 23 points a game. She and three teammates followed Legette-Jack to Syracuse.

So the Flashes’ season ended with an 84-56 defeat at the hands of the Orange. Kent State’s final record is 21-11, its most victories since 2005-06. KSU finished fourth in the MAC with a 12-6 record and won its first quarterfinal game in the league tournament since 2010. In the preseason, it beat Oklahoma State of the Big 12 at Oklahoma State 59-56.

“As soon as we got the matchup, we were like — seriously?” coach Todd Starkey said. “It’s tough to play in the postseason on somebody’s home court. A lot of things had to go right for us today, and they probably had to help us a little bit. Neither one of those things happened.” 

Those things did happen in the first quarter, when the Flashes took a 16-13 lead.

KSU guard Katie Shumate scored five points and had seven rebounds, and the Flashes held Syracuse to 28% shooting and no 3-point baskets.

Kent State led 26-25 with 4:24 to go in the second when, but that was it for the Flashes.

Syracuse forced six turnovers in the next four minutes and made 7-of-7 shots, almost all on fast breaks from the turnovers. Kent State got one shot off, a made 3-pointer by Casey Santoro.

Syracuse started the second half on an 18-8 run and outscored the Flashes 46-27 in the second half. Kent State never got within 15 points in the last quarter-and-a-half.

In the end, KSU turnovers meant defeat.

The Flashes had committed fewer than 10 turnovers in seven of their last eight games. (The committed 12 in the eighth.)

But against Syracuse, KSU turned the ball over 19 times, leading to 25 points by the Orange. Syracuse stole the ball 12 times, equaling the most by a Kent opponent all season.

“We had been doing a really good job over the last couple of months of taking care of the basketball, and that kind of betrayed us today,” Starkey said. “But that’s what Syracuse does.”

Fair had 11 points in the second quarter and 10 in the third. She finished with 24 on 10-of-19 shooting.

“We had some costly turnovers and, and Fair got going,” Starkey said. “That’s not a great combination.

“A lot of people said in the off-season that they didn’t think the Fair could play in the ACC. She averaged 20 a game and was all-ACC first team.” 

As she’s done the entire second half of the season, senior Katie Shumate led the Flashes, this game with 18 points, 11 rebounds, four assists and a steal. It was her third double-double in a row, including both games in the MAC Tournament on her way to all-tournament honors. She averaged 17.7 points and 9.6 over her last 12 games.

“She’s literally been lifting us to higher places,” Starkey said. “She just started playing aggressively. It’s not that I’m surprised that she did any of that. I think it was getting past some of the injuries that she’s dealt with over the last few years and getting finally healthy and playing confidently again.”

Starkey said that it’s “his understanding at this point” that Shumate will return for a fifth season next year.

Santoro was the only other Kent State player in double figures with 13 points. She also had three assists, four rebounds and a steal.

Clare Kelly had eight points for the Flashes, Hannah Young seven and five rebounds, and Corynne Hauser six points.

It was the last game of their college careers for Young, Kelly, Lindsey Thall and Annie Pavlansky.

Thall leaves as Kent State’s all-time leader in made 3-point baskets (267, which is 55 more than second-place Larissa Lurken). She started every game she played in five years, missing five because of illness.

Young made 43.3% of her 3-point shots in her career, 0.2 percentage points KSU all-team leader, Kate Miller, who played a single season in 2001-02.

Young played in the most games in KSU history (142). Thall was just behind with 140.

As he’s done for most of the last two weeks, Starkey praised his four graduating seniors.

“You can’t find a better group of young women — character-wise, classroom-wise or, or what they’ve done on the court,” he said.

Notes

• Syracuse advances to play the winner of Thursday’s game between Seton Hall and St. Joseph’s.
• Kent State is now 2-7 in seven WNIT appearances. Both victories have come under Starkey. The Flashes are 1-5 in five NCAA Tournament appearances.
• 84 points were the most any team has scored against Kent State this season. The 28-point margin was the biggest against KSU.
• Kent State made 40.4% of its shots, about 2 points below its average, and 25.9% of its 3-pointers, which was almost 9 points below average.
• Syracuse outrebounded KSU 41-30, outscored the Flashes 41-30 in the paint and had 11 fastbreak points. KSU had zero points from fast breaks.

Box score

Kent State’s Mid-American Conference Tournament ended pretty much the same way its MAC season went.

The Flashes fell to top seed and league champion Toledo 68-58. They’ll now wait until late Sunday night to see if they get a bid to the WNIT. Kent has made the tournament four times in the last seven years, each time with a worse record than their current 21-10 mark.

Toledo, which is 27-4 and the winner of 15 straight games, advances to the MAC Tournament finals at 11 a.m. Saturday on the CBS Sport Network. The Rockets will play No. 2 seed Bowling Green (27-5), which beat Ball State 70-61 in the other semifinal Friday.

The loss to Toledo reflects a lot of the good and bad of KSU’s conference season:

• The Flashes finished 0-6 against the top three teams in the league, losing three times to Toledo, all by 10 points or fewer. They lost two games to second-place Bowling Green, one by six points and one by nine points, and lost their only game against Ball State by nine points.
• Kent State was 13-1 against all of the other MAC schools, including the team’s 75-68 quarterfinal win over Northern Illinois.
• Senior guard Katie Shumate continued her outstanding second half of the season. She scored 21 points and had 12 rebounds, her second-straight double-double in the tournament. In KSU’s last 11 games, Shumate averaged 17.7 points and 9.5 rebounds. Both those numbers would have ranked third in MAC if maintained for a whole season.
• As they have in every game against the league’s top teams, the Flashes had up-and-down quarters and couldn’t manage a fourth-quarter push to pull out a win. KSU trailed 17-7 after the first quarter and outscored Toledo 20-11 in the second. The Flashes took the lead briefly in the third quarter but saw the Rockets outscore them by nine in the second half.
• When the Flashes don’t shoot well this season, they struggled. They made just 35% of their field goal attempts against Toledo, about 6 percentage points below their average.
• When opponents shot well, KSU struggled. Toledo made 46.2% of its shots, about 7 points above Kent’s average defensive performance.

“We were shooting the ball so well coming into the game and, and we needed to shoot it well again,” coach Todd Starkey said. “Today we got the shots for the players that we wanted to get the shots, from the spots that we wanted them them to shoot. They just didn’t go down for us.”

In the fourth quarter, Kent State cut Toledo’s lead to 56-53 on a layup by Shumate with 4:59 to go. But the Flashes made only 2-of-9 shots the rest of the game as Toledo outscored KSU 12-5.

“I thought Toledo had a great defensive game plan for us,” Starkey said. “Offensively they attacked us where we were weakest and, they were able to get to the free throw line, especially down the stretch.”

Shumate keeps sizzling

Along with her fifth double-double of the season, Shumate blocked a career-high three shots, had two assists and made 3-of-5 three-point attempts.

She and junior Casey Santoro spoke for the team in the postgame press conference. Starkey said his four graduating seniors were “pretty broken up.”

Here’s how Shumate summarized the season:

“I’m proud of us this season. We played hard, and we played for each other. I wouldn’t want to have done it with any other girls. It’s tough ending like this, but Toledo’s a really good team.”

On the Kent State seniors

Starkey said his seniors were “better than any coach could hope for, and not only as basketball players.”

“They really have fought hard to get better every single year and done everything we’ve asked them to do,” he said. “And then in the classroom, the team has a 3.71 cumulative GPA. Two of our seniors are pre-med.”

The missing post player

Starkey said that against a team like Toledo, the Flashes really missed 6-3 post Bridget Dunn, who was lost for the season with a knee injury in January.

“We’ve been able to kind of mask that a little bit,” Starkey said. “But when you get a situation like this down the stretch, we really need Lindsay to be able to defend their bigs. A nd we don’t have any more size to go to.”

Thall is KSU’s only other true post player. Only one other player on the team is taller 6 feet tall.

The view from Toledo

Coach Tricia Cullop, MAC coach of the year for two straight seasons:

“Kent State is very skilled and can really shoot the ball, and we knew it would take a phenomenal defensive effort. I really thought we did a great job of taking away some of the opportunities and also securing rebounds.” 

“I could feel the momentum of our team in that last quarter — like, ‘We’re not gonna let this slip away.'”

Numbers

• Kent State committed only seven turnovers, the seventh time in eight games it has had fewer than 10. In my 30-odd years of following the team, there have been entire seasons that the Flashes have had no more than four games with that few turnovers.
• Toledo outrebounded KSU 40-30. Besides Shumate’s 12, Santoro had six and Clare Kelly four.
• The Rockets had 40 points in the paint to Kent’s 32 and 12 second-chance points to KSU’s five.
• Toledo senior Jayda Jansen made 6-of-7 shots off the bench and scored 16 points. Guard Sophia Wiard also had 16. Junor guard Sammi Mikonowicz had 12 points and 15 rebounds.

Box score

Three years ago, Lindsey Thall, Katie Shumate and Clare Kelly sat on a bus in Cleveland, about to head back to Kent to prepare for the semifinals of the Mid-American Conference Tournament.

They never returned to Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse. COVID-19 canceled their season the next day.

This Friday they’re heading to the semifinals for real, having beaten Northern Illinois 75-68 in the first round of this season’s tournament.

The Flashes will play regular-season champion Toledo (26-4), which eked out a 75-74 overtime win over No. 8 seed Buffalo on Friday. The game is on ESPN+ at 10 a.m.

Kent State is 21-9, its most victories in a season since 2005-06.

Kent State lost to Toledo twice in the regular season, most recently a 64-60 defeat in Toledo a week ago. The Flashes led the Rockets going into the last two minutes of that game.

Against Northern Illinois, Kent State never trailed. It led by as many as 14 in the first half, and NIU never got within five points in the second half.

“(2020’s canceled tournament) stings to this day,” Thall said in the team’s postgame press conference. “It just makes us want to take advantage of this opportunity even more. We know we deserve to be here, and we’re just gonna give it all we got for two more games.”

Kent State built a 38-25 halftime lead with defense and a barrage of 3-point baskets. The Flashes made 9-of-18 threes, led by Kelly’s 4-of-4, and held NIU to 34% shooting and just two 3s.

“When we’re defending the way we’re capable of and we’re knocking down shots, we can win games against just about anybody,” coach Todd Starkey said. “It’s hard to defend us when we’re making shots. We can really spread the floor and the way Katie and Lindsay are playing in the paint, it makes it difficult.” 

Four Flashes scored in double figures, led by Shumate’s 20. She also had 12 rebounds for her fourth double-double of the season. She also had three assists, a steal and made 4-of-6 from 3-point distance.

“When Katie Schumate plays that aggressive from the start of the game, it really livens the whole team. She’s been doing that for about almost two months now, playing as as good at basketball as I’ve seen in four years.”

Shumate, who has averaged about 17 points and 8.5 rebounds over KSU’s last 12 games, was named to the all-MAC third team this week.

Kelly scored season-high 16 points and missed only one of her seven shots.

“Claire was catching and shooting without a conscience, and knocking down shots,” Starkey said.

Thall was 7-of-15 shooting, with most of her baskets coming inside. (She owns KSU’s career record for 3-point baskets.) She had two assists, four rebounds and a blocked shot.

Casey Santoro had 12 points, including 7-of-8 free throws in the fourth quarter.

The victory gives KSU a three-game sweep of the Huskies this season. It’s the first time KSU has won three against an opponent since 2001.

The Flashes had beaten NIU 82-61 in January and 73-58 in the final regular-season game last Saturday. Starkey said the team’s strategy was the same as it was four days ago.

“Coaches sometimes tend to overthink — like we need two change something up,” the coach said. “We wanted to make sure we stuck with the same formula. The message to our players is just,’ Play through your shot.’ If they’re good shots, they’re good shots in Rocket Mortgage, just like they are at the M.A.C. Center, just like they’re on the road.”

The view from Northern Illinois

Coach Lisa Carlsen in her postgame press conference:

“Credit Kent State, especially in the first half. They really shot it well.”

“I thought Kent did a great job of really having an answer every time we tried to make it run.” 

“I think Kent is the best defensive team in the league, and they make it really hard, especially on our guards. They probably match up better with Shelby (Koker, NIU’s all-MAC point guard). It’s hard to get her going just because of their length and their ability to stay in front of the basketball.”

Numbers

• Kent State had 15 assists on 26 baskets. Sophomore guard Jenna Batsch had three in 14 minutes and also had two points and three rebounds. Santoro and Shumate also had three assists.
• Kent State had just six turnovers, the fifth time in six games the Flashes have had fewer than 10. NIU committed seven. KSU scored five points off turnovers, Northern seven.
• For the game, Kent made 41.9% of its shots and 42.3% of its 3-pointers. NIU shot 41.5% from the field and 35.3% from 3-point distance.
• Northern outrebounded Kent State 42-37.
• A’Jah Davis, a first-team all-MAC selection, led NIU with 26 points and 12 rebounds. Jayden Marable had 20 points for the Huskies.

Box score

The rest of the tournament

No. 2 Bowling Green (26-5) beat No. 7 Eastern Michigan (15-15) 70-36.

No. 3 Ball State (24-7) beat Akron (17-13) 92-68.

Bowling Green and Ball State will play Friday after the KSU-Toledo game, probably about 12:30 p.m. The game is on ESPN+.

The championship game will be at 11 a.m. Saturday on the CBS Sports Network.