The score was overwhelming.

So was the noise.

As 2,000 Kent elementary school students screamed for almost two hours, the Kent State women’s basketball team routed Otterbein 97-36 in a Tuesday morning “Education Day” game. It was the Flashes’ second-straight overwhelming victory against a Division III team, which doesn’t give athletic scholarships. Ten days ago, KSU beat Hiram 105-33. The point difference against Hiram was the largest margin of victory in Kent State history. Tuesday’s margin tied for the third largest.

Kent State scheduled Otterbein and Hiram to balance its first six games against Division I opponents. That schedule, which included a win and two losses against Power Five teams, was ranked 12th in the country.

KSU’s record is now 7-3. Otterbein is 5-4. The game was technically an exhibition for Otterbein; Division III schools are limited to 25 regular-season games.

The story of the game was more about the crowd than about the score. Teachers who accompanied their students could barely hear themselves think. The players sometimes couldn’t hear each other on the court.

And they all had a grand time.

“My ears are still ringing,” graduate student Lindsey Thall said with a smile during the team’s postgame press conference. “It’s really fun. They bring a lot of energy for the game, so it kind of hypes us up.”

Fellow grad student Abby Ogle joined her teammates in signing autographs for the students after the game.

“You feel like a little celebrity,” she said.

The Education Day game is one of the highlights of the KSU season, coach Todd Starkey said.

“It’s so much fun for our players,” he said, “and so much fun for the kids in the community to see and be connected to Kent State.”

Otterbein scored first and led 5-2 two-and-a-half minutes into the game.

But that was it.

The Flashes reeled off 30 straight points over the next 13 minutes.

Every Kent State player scored at least two points and grabbed at least one rebound. All played at least seven minutes; 13 played at least 10 minutes. No starter played more than 18.

It gave the core of the roster a lot of time to support their teammates.

“I like to cheer for everybody,” Thall said. “I love hyping everybody up when they’re making shots. It’s still fun on the bench.”

Starkey said it’s wonderful to see.

“The number one responsibility of any of our players is to be a good teammate,” he said. “it’s neat to see them all support each other. And it’s genuine. They really care about each other, enjoy cheering for each other.”

Though the team scored 97 points, no individual scored more than 13. Freshman Corynne Hauser led the Flashes with that number. Thall, freshman Dionna Gray and Ogle all had 12, and senior Katie Shumate had 10. Junior Casey Santoro and sophomore Jenna Batsch each scored eight.

Grad student Hannah Young had seven rebounds, leading the team for the fourth time this season. Hauser and senior Clare Kelly each had three assists, and Shumate and Gray each had three steals.

The team headed home for Christmas after the game, will return on Dec. 26 and resume practice on Dec. 27. The Flashes will play Coppin State (3-9) in their final non-conference game at 1 p.m. Dec. 31 at the M.A.C. Center.

Running the numbers

• Kent State’s 45.8% shooting on 3-pointers was its highest of the season. So was the Flashes’ 50 rebounds and 24-rebound margin. Its 52.2 overall field-goal percentage was ./6 points behind its season-best against Hiram.
• KSU’s 13 steals and 16 assists were second highest of the season, again behind the Hiram game.
• The Flashes outscored Otterbein 22-8 off turnovers, 50-18 in the paint, 14-4 on second-chance points and 21-7 on fast breaks.
• Ogle’s 6-of-7 field goals, Hauser’s 5-of-7 and Gray’s 5-of-7 were the best of their careers.
• Six different players blocked a shot, eight had an assist and seven had a steal.

Family Christmases

Ogle, Thall and Starkey all said they were most looking forward to seeing family.

Starkey’s four adult children will be visiting him here. Thall has a short trip home to Strongsville.

Ogle has the longest trip of any player on the roster — 800-plus miles to Baldwin City, Kansas.

The temperature there was 11 degrees below zero on Tuesday morning, Ogle said.

Box score

The score says it all:

Kent State 105, Hiram 33.

It was the largest margin of victory in Kent State basketball history — men’s or women’s.

It was the most points the KSU women have scored since 2000, when they beat Bowling Green 106-94.

It was overwhelming from start to finish.

Kent State led 14-0, then 22-1, then 31-4 at the end of the first quarter. The score was 55-13 at halftime, then 79-22 after three quarters.

A free throw by graduate student Annie Pavlansky made the game 100-31 with 1:36 to go, and Pavlansky ended things with a 3-point basket with 24 seconds left.

Yes, it was Hiram, a Division III school that doesn’t give athletic scholarships. The game was technically an “exhibition” for the Terriers because Division III schoocan only to play 25 regular-season games. (In its seven regular-season games so far, Hiram is 4-3.)

Counting the Hiram game, Kent State is 6-3.

Why does KSU even play Hiram? “Schedule balance,” coach Todd Starkey said in a pre-season interview. The game was a break for the Flashes, who had played the 12th most difficult schedule in the country for its first eight games, according to Warren Nolan.com, a statistics site I follow.

Thirteen Kent State players got in the game (grad student Lindsey Thall sat out with an ankle injury), and all scored. Twelve played more than 12 minutes. Only one starter played more than 17 minut; thatat was sophomore forward Bridget Dunn. With Thall out, Dunn started her first game of the season.

“It was nice to get everybody some playing time,” Starkey said. “Everybody came in and contributed with great energy.

“Every single one of these players works really hard in the classroom and in practice every day.”

In the interview room after the game were a couple of players who haven’t been in the headlines this season.

“It was really fun,” said freshman point guard Dionna Gray, who scored 10 points and had four assists and two steals. “Everybody got to touch the ball, and everybody got to score.”

Gray averaged 22 points a game and was Gatorade player of the year in West Virginia last season. At Kent State, she’s competing for playing time at point guard with two other all-staters — junior Casey Santoro and fellow freshman Corynne Hauser. Before Gray played 19 minutes on Sunday, she had averaged seven minutes a game.

“It’s been a while, so it felt good to be able to feel more like a point guard today,” she said.

Grad student Abby Ogle, who has played 10 minutes a game as part of KSU’s main rotation, scored a career-high 13 points in 13 minutes. She had five steals, the most by any Kent State player this season, and three assists.

Ogle was a third-team junior college all-American but played sparingly at West Virginia, her first four-year school. After she transferred to Kent State, Ogle was injured early last season and played in only six games.

“It’s just really nice to get back to how I used to play before everything happened,” she said. Ogle is tied with Katie Shumate for the team lead in steals with 10, and she has played 40% of Shumate’s minutes. Her philosophy on steals:

“Gamble, but gamble well,” she said.

Other players who got far more minutes than usual:

Freshman wing Tatiana Thomaho led the team in rebounds with eight. She scored five points, had three assists, two steals and a blocked shot in 13 minutes.

“She’s a great athlete, a phenomenal finisher and rebounder,” Starkey said. “Like all the freshmen, she’s still on a learning curve. There’s a process you have to go through to understand how intense college basketball is, and they’re still learning that.”

Redshirt freshman Elena Maier, who had missed more than two years of basketball after a knee injury in high school, scored her first collegiate points and played 15 minutes.

“Go g through an ACL your senior year in high school is tough,” Starkey said. “Then she came here and had to have another surgery to repair some of that stuff. That was a long two years for her.”

Her points came on a 3-point shot for the corner, a spot where she shoots “as well as anybody on our team,” Starkey said.

The team chose Maier to ring the Victory Bell after the game.

Sophomore guard Lexi Linton stole the ball and went the length of the court for layups three times. The game was her second of the season, the steals were the first of her career, and her six points doubled her previous college output. “She can be a disrupter out there,” Starkey said.

The regulars

• Senior Katie Shumate, the Flashes’ leading scorer, led the team with 18 points in just 13 minutes. She was 7-of-9 shooting.
• Sophomore Bridget Dunn scored seven points, had five rebounds, two assists and two steals and blocked a shot.
• Freshman Corynne Hauser had four assists. She leads the team with 2.9 assists per game.
• Grad student Hannah Young, the team’s leading rebounder, had six in 12 minutes, blocked two shots and had three steals.
• Grad student Annie Pavlansky had 13 points on 5-of-9 shooting and five rebounds, both the best of her five-year career.
• Sophomore Jenna Batsch had nine points, her most of the season, on 4-of-8 shooting.

Running the numbers

Across the board, they were KSU’s best of the season.

• The Flashes had 25 steals, their most in at least 12 years
• They had 22 assists, one below their highest number since 2012-13.
• KSU’s 51.8% shooting was its best of the season.
• Hiram’s 18.4% shooting was the worst of any Kent opponent.
• Kent State outscored Hiram 52-4 off turnovers, 54-6 in the paint, 22-5 on second-chance points and 33-0 on fast breaks. Its bench outscored Hiram’s reserves 66-9/

Box score

Next: Exams, then Otterbein

The Flashes are off until Dec. 20 for final exams. Then they will play an 11 a.m. “Education Day” game against Otterbein in the M.A.C. Center in front of several thousand elementary school children. Like Hiram, Otterbein is a Division III school and is 4-3 on the season.

Around the MAC

Some big wins for Mid-American Conference Schools in the last week:

• Ball State (8-2) upset Pittsburgh (6-4) of the ACC 68-66 in overtime Sunday.
• Toledo (7-2) beat No. 14 Michigan (9-1) on Thursday in Ann Arbor 71-68.

Kent State is the only other MAC school to beat a Power Five team —58-55 at Oklahoma State (now 8-2) on Nov. 20.

MAC standings (just non-conference games so far)

Throughout Kent State’s 5-2 start to the season, its defense has carried the team.

On Wednesday, the defense couldn’t hold up.

Duquesne made 48.1% of its shots and 56.3% of its 3-point attempts on its way to a 73-67 victory over the Flashes in Pittsburgh. Both were the highest numbers put up by a Kent State opponent this season.

Kent State is now 5-3; Duquesne is 7-2.

The win broke KSU’s four-game winning streak.

“Our defense was subpar, for sure,” coach Todd Starkey said. “I thought Duquesne did a good job of executing their stuff, and we did a good job of letting them do it. Some of it was a collective lack of effort, but we just weren’t as connected physically and verbally as we’ve been recently.”

Kent State’s offense shot as well as it has all season in the first half but couldn’t keep it up the rest of the game.

In the first 20 minutes, the Flashes made 10-of-19 three-pointers (52.6%) and 16-of-31 total field goal attempts (51.6%). Both were well above KSU’s season numbers.

But in the second half, KSU made only eight baskets (23.5%) and four 3-pointers. In the fourth quarter, KSU made 3-of-15 shots and scored just nine points.

“We gave up way too many first-quarter points (21) and kind of were playing out of a hole,” Starkey said. “We shot well, and that’s what kept us in the game.

“We had opportunities in the second half but really struggled to score. Our execution offensively down the stretch wasn’t what it needed to be. They just outplayed us for a good portion of the game.”

A 26-18 second quarter put Kent State up by five at halftime, but Duquesne tied it halfway through the third quarter. The Dukes went ahead by as many as four, but Bridget Dunn tied the game with a 3-pointer with 12 seconds to go in the third quarter.

Duquesne scored the first six points of the fourth quarter and led the rest of the game. In the fourth quarter, Kent State twice went four minutes without scoring.

Hannah Young made her first four 3-point attempts but was shut out for the rest of the game. Duquesne point guard Tess Myers made her first 3-pointers and finished 6-of-8 from beyond the arc.

“They made the adjustment on our hot shooter,” Starkey said. “We did not make the adjustment on theirs.”

Down the lineup

• Carey Santoro led Kent State with 13 points and had seven assists, the most by a Kent State player this season. At 5-4, Santoro blocked a shot by Duquesne’s 6-4 Precious Johnson.
• Young had 12 points and three rebounds.
• Katie Shumate led the Flashes with 10 rebounds and scored eight points.
• Freshman Corynne Hauser started her first game and had seven points, five rebounds, four assists and a steal. She had a large group of fans from her hometown of Rochester, Pennsylvania, which is about 30 miles from Pittsburgh.
• Lindsay Thall, KSU’s leading scorer, made 2-of-13 shots and didn’t have a rebound for the first time this season. She blocked two shots.
• Bridget Dunn, Kent State’s 6-3 sophomore forward, had a season-high nine points and seven rebounds.
• Abby Ogle went 3-for-4 from the field and had two rebounds.

Kent State’s bench outscored Duquesne’s 20-0.

More numbers

• Kent State’s 14 three-point baskets are the fourth most in a game in school history.
• The last five games between Kent State and Duquesne have been decided by fewer than seven points. KSU had won three in a row before Wednesday.
• The Flashes scored 16 points off of 13 Duquesne turnovers. Kent had 12 turnovers, second lowest of the year.
• Duquesne outscored Kent State in the point (34-18), on second-chance pointers (17-13), and on fast breaks (10-5).
• Two Duquesne players had double-doubles: Amaya Hamilton with 22 points and 12 rebounds and Megan McConnell with 11 points and 12 rebounds. McConnell also had eight assists; she has already had two triple-doubles this season. Myers led Duquesne with 23 points.
• All five Duquesne starters played at least 38 minutes.

The MAC and the Mid-Majors

Five Mid-American Conference teams were ranked in this week’s Mid-Major Top 25. Toledo (6-2) was fifth, Kent State (then 5-2) was ninth, Northern Illinois (7-1) was 13th, Bowling Green (6-1) was 14th and Ball State (5-2) was 19th.

Next: Hiram on Sunday

The Flashes play Division III Hiram at 2 p.m. Sunday, then break for exams. They will play Otterbein, another Division III school, on Dec. 20.

Box score

Kent State finished a brutal first six games of its season with a Thanksgiving tournament championship.

The Flashes beat Southern Illinois 72-66 Sunday to win the Christmas City Classic in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

“If someone had told us at the beginning of the season that we’d be 4-2, the staff would have said, ‘We’ll take that right now,'” coach Todd Starkey said. “We were playing three Power 5s and three really good mid-majors. We could potentially have gone 0-6.”

Southern Illinois is 1-5 on the season. Quinnipiac, the team KSU beat 58-55 in the first game of the tournament, took third place with a 67-64 win over host Lehigh.

Five players played special roles in the victory.

LINDSEY THALL scored KSU’s first nine points on three 3-point baskets. She went on to score 20 points of 6-of-11 shooting and 4-of-7 three-pointers. Thall is the Flashes’ all-time leader in 3-point baskets with 231.

“Lindsey hasn’t been shooting the ball well until today,” Starkey said. “But with a player like that, you just keep going to them and let them shoot through it.”

Thall, who scored 18 points in KSU’s 58-55 win over Quinnipiac Saturday, was the tournament’s most valuable player.

CASEY SANTORO also made the all-tournament team. She scored 15 points and made 9-of-11 free throws, including eight in the fourth quarter.

“She played two really tough games,” Starkey said. “When you handle the ball as much as she does, you’re going to make some mistakes. But she did a really good job of playing through those mistakes. She did a really good job of handling pressure yesterday and today.”

Thall and Santoro drew 18 fouls between them against Quinnipiac. Against SIU, they drew 13 more.

CLARE KELLY played 37 minutes, a career high and the most for a Kent State player this season, and scored 12 points. She made 3-of-4 three-point shots.

“She was really dialed in today,’ Starkey said. “And her defensive effort was phenomenal.”

DIONNA GRAY had only played 16 minutes and scored six points through the first five games of her freshman year. On Sunday, she scored 10 points in 12 minutes.

“She gave us a big spark in the second quarter when Casey was in foul trouble and Corrynne Hauser rolled an ankle,” Starkey said.

HANNAH YOUNG had 10 rebounds, the most for any KSU player this season, and scored eight points.

Through the first 29 minutes, the Flashes held SIU to 24% shooting.

“We’ve learned that we can trust and rely on our defense,” Starkey said. “We’ve got a lot of players on the court with a lot of experience and who have played together. I think they have a lot more confidence in in each other.”

In the third period, Southern Illinois made only 1-of-14 shots as Kent State build a 49-29 lead.

But in the last minute of the quarter, in Starkey’s words, some “crazy things” happened.

“We got a no-call (of a foul) that I got an apology for,” Starkey said. “Then they scored on the next trip down. Then we had a missed shot, and they hit a 65- or 70-foot shot.

“I think it gave them just enough hope. Then they scored the first five in the fourth quarter.”

The run started the Salukis to their best — and Kent State’s worst — quarter of the year.

Southern outscored KSU 32-23 in the period and closed the margin to six points in the last minute.

Running the numbers

Better shooting: The Flashes made 10-of-22 three-point attempts. Their 45.5 percentage was 10 points higher than any other game this season.

Turnover trouble: Kent State committed nine turnovers in the first quarter and six more in the second against a high-pressure SIU defense. KSU was able to cut the number to seven in the second half.

Other statistical notes:

• Kent outrebounded a taller SIU team 40-39.
• The Flashes had eight steals, their most of the season. Hauser had three of them in the six minutes she played. SIU had 11 steals.
• Kent outscored the Salukis 20-8 on free throws.
• KSU’s bench was outscored for the first time this season (18-12).
• Southern Illinois outscored Kent off turnovers (20-17), in the paint (34-22) and on second changes (20-8).

Next: Home on Saturday

The Flashes are back in Kent for the first time in three weeks when they host St. Bonaventure at 2 p.m. Sunday. The Bonnies are 1-5 and lost three games at Cleveland State’s Thanksgiving tournament.

Box score

With 4.7 seconds left, freshman Corrynne Hauser made the biggest play of her young career to win Kent State’s game against Oklahoma State Sunday.

With 1.3 seconds left, graduate student Hannah Young made a critical defensive play to preserve the victory.

In two minutes around the beginning of the fourth quarter, grad student Lindsey Thall scored 10 straight points —the biggest scoring run of her five-year career — to keep Kent State in the game.

And for 34 minutes, senior Katie Shumate played big-time basketball against a big-time opponent, scoring 23 points to lead the Kent State women’s basketball team past Oklahoma State of the Big 12 59-56.

It was the Flashes’ third win against a Power 5 opponent in two years (they beat UCLA and Penn State last year) and evens their record at 2-2. Both of KSU’s losses this season have been to Power 5 teams — 80-71 to Florida State in this season’s opener in Kent and 80-59 at Arkansas on Thursday.

Oklahoma State is 4-1. Before the Kent State game, the Cowgirls had averaged 90 points a game.

“It’s a big, big win for our program,” coach Todd Starkey said. “These are the type of games we want to play. They prepare us for a tough conference schedule.

“It’s great for our players. These are memories that they’ll remember for their lifetimes.” 

Starkey said a key to the game was Kent State controlling the pace.

“We knew they wanted to run and they wanted to play fast,” he said. “We needed to try to control that. And we did a really good job of controlling the tempo, making them have to defend multiple sets.

“We wanted to execute an offense that made them guard multiple screening actions. So we were making them defend 20 or 25 seconds of a shot clock. If you do that enough times in a game, it reduces the number of possessions the other team gets.”

Hauser’s winning shot

Here is a look at Corynne Hauser’s game-winner.#GoFlashes⚡️ pic.twitter.com/qx0W9sDhEj

— Kent State Women’s Basketball (@KentStWBB) November 20, 2022

Oklahoma State had just missed two free throws when Kent State called timeout with 11 seconds to go and advanced the ball to its front court.

Hauser took the inbounds pass and moved to the left elbow, spun and drove to the basket. Leaning far to the left, she put the layup in with her left hand, and the Flashes were in the lead.

“We wanted the ball in her hands,” Starkey said. “We were trying to get a ball screen set with Lindsey involved, and Corynne saw a little opening there.

“She’s a player who likes the ball in her hands and wants big shots. She didn’t have a particularly great shooting day, but she made that one when counted. You want players who want to take the big shot. She’s certainly one of them.”

Young’s leaping defense

After Hauser scored, Oklahoma State called timeout and advanced the ball.

From the sideline, OSU’s Terryn Milton sent a looping pass to the right of the basket, where Taylen Collins was cutting toward the net. Young, who is 5-10, leaped into the air and batted the ball to Shumate, who was fouled. Shumate made both shots with a second to go.

“It was a great, great play,” Starkey said. “Hannah got banged around quite a bit in that game, but she kept playing tough. It’s great when a fifth-year senior can make a play like that down the stretch, when it really matters.”

Thall’s 10-point run

Thall, KSU’s second-leading scorer, hadn’t scored Sunday until she hit a short jump shot with four seconds to go in the third quarter.

Then she took over the game.

She scored on a layup 57 seconds into the fourth period, then made a jumper, a free throw and a 3-point basket in the next 90 seconds. She single-handedly had taken the Flashes from a six-point deficit to a 49-48 lead.

The first and last baskets of Thall’s streak:

10 straight for Lindsey Thall 🔥

KSU 48, OSU 47 pic.twitter.com/8o6wBi1AFt

— Kent State Women’s Basketball (@KentStWBB) November 20, 2022

From there on, the teams played within three points of each other.

“We started to play through Lindsey, and that was huge,” Starkey said. “I sometimes think that gets overshadowed in the box score. The timeliness of those 10 points was really big.”

Shumate’s big game

Shumate, 5-11 guard, has led Kent State in scoring in three of the team’s four games. (She was one behind the leader in the other.)

At Oklahoma State, she scored at least four points in every quarter, finishing with nine in the fourth. She led the Flashes with 23 points, eight rebounds and three steals.

“Katie was really good at being aggressive,” Starkey said, “and when she’s aggressive like that, she’s a tough matchup for anybody. 

“Early in the game, we felt we had a bit of a mismatch and were trying to play through her.”

Running the numbers

• In Oklahoma State’s four first games, the Cowgirls had averaged 49% shooting and 44% from 3-point distance. Against Kent State, OSU shot 31% and 22% on 3-pointers.
• Kent State made 36% of its shots and 21% of its 3-point attempts.
• The Flashes outrebounded Oklahoma State 43-41. Shumate led with eight. Thall, Young and sophomore Bridget Dunn had six.
• Kent State’s bench outscored OSU’s 17-9. KSU reserves have outscored their opponents in every game this season.
• The lead changed hands 17 times, and the score was tied seven times.
• Ten Flashes played at least eight minutes, with nine playing at least 10. Nine scored.

Next: A holiday tournament in Bethlehem

The Flashes play Quinnipiac, a consistently strong mid-major, at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in the first round of the Christmas City Classic in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Quinnipiac is 2-2, with 30-point losses to No. 10 North Carolina State and No. 12 Indiana. The Bobcats have beat Hartford by 55 and Central Connecticut by 28.

In the tournament’s second game on Sunday, the Flashes will play Leheigh (2-2) or Southern Illinois (0-3).

Box score

Senior guard Katie Shumate scored the 1,000th points of her career Thursday, but the Kent State women’s basketball team fell 80-59 at Arkansas.

The Flashes are 1-2 on the season. Arkansas, picked to finish fourth in the SEC, is 4-0.

Shumate led KSU with 12 points.

“Katie’s battled through a lot of injuries over the last few years, she’s worked really hard and I’m really proud of the body of work that she’s put together,” coach Todd Starkey said. “Anytime you’re a thousand-point scorer, you’re doing a lot of things right, and she’s done it through adversity. She’s meant a lot to our program and has a lot of big things yet to come.”

Shumate, a 5-11 senior guard from Newark, Ohio, has had trouble with her knees much of her time at KSU and had surgery after her freshman year. At one point, there was doubt whether she would play at all during her sophomore year. But she started 17 of 20 games that COVID season and averaged 28.9 minutes, third highest on the team

Last year Shumate led the Flashes in scoring; she had ranked second her first two years in Kent. She averaged 12 points a game each of those three years and leads the team at 14.3 points a game so far this season. She has twice been all-MAC honorable mention and made the league all-freshman team her first year.

In Thursday’s second half, Shumate scored 10 points on 4-of-6 shooting and made 2-of-2 three-point shots. She helped the Flashes play Arkansas almost evenly over the last 20 minutes.

But by halftime, Arkansas led KSU 46-29, having outshot the Flashes 54% to 43% and outrebounded them 21-15.

“Their size and athleticism were just too much for us to handle,” Starkey said. “They’re playing 6-3 to 6-6 out there at any given time. It’s hard to come up with rebounds against that kind of size.

“They’ve got two McDonalds all-Americans and the SEC freshman of the year returning, so they’re a very talented team.”

Freshman Corynne Hauser had 10 points, three assists and four rebounds. So far this season, she is tied for fourth on the team in scoring at 9.3 per game and leads the team in assists with nine. She’s averaged just 19 minutes a game.

Hauser, a two-time all-state player from Rochester, Pennsylvania, played most of her minutes against Arkansas at point guard.

“We’re going to move her around in different positions,” Starkey said. “Sometimes she’s going to play point, sometimes she’ll play off the ball. She’s a talented player.” 

Hauser made four of her first five shots, all on drives to the basket.

Running the numbers

• Graduate student Annie Pavlansky scored nine points in 15 minutes, both career highs against a Division I opponent. She had two assists and two rebounds.
• For the game, Kent State made 36.7% of its shots and 30.8% of its 3-pointers. Arkansas shot 4.5% from the field and 37.5% from long distance.
• The Flashes had only four offensive rebounds and were outrebounded 45-35. Bridget Dunn led KSU with six.
• Ten Flashes played at least 13 minutes, led by senior guard Clare Kelly’s 27.
• Kent State blocked a season-high four shots. Shumate blocked two.

Next: Sunday afternoon at Oklahoma State

The Flashes play at Oklahoma State, their second straight Power 5 opponent, at 3 p.m. Sunday.

The Cowgirls are 4-0, having beaten Missouri State 73-54 on Thursday. Five Oklahoma State layers average in double figures. Lior Garzon, a 6-1 forward, has made 13 of her 25 three-point attempts. Forward Taylen Collins averages 11.8 points and 8.5 rebounds.

Box score

For three quarters, things went as hoped as the Kent State women’s basketball team sought an upset victory against Florida State of the Atlantic Coast Conference

The Flashes led 62-51 with 2:04 to go in the third quarter. Then KSU didn’t manage a point for the next seven-and-a-half minutes. It made only 3-of-21 shots in the fourth quarter, finally losing to the Seminoles 80-71.

It was the season opener for Kent State. Florida State is now 2-0.

“At the end of the day, we really needed shots to fall,” coach Todd Starkey said. “We had some good looks and weren’t able to finish. 

“We make shots, we win today. It’s really as simple as that.” 

The Flashes outplayed Florida State through three quarters, shooting 44% to FSU’s 41%. Kent State was shooting 41% from 3-point distance; Florida State was making 25%.

But in the fourth quarter, the Flashes were 0-for-9 on 3-pointers and 3-for-24 shooting overall. Florida State was only 4-for-11 in the last period but was helped to a 21-9 advantage by 11 free throws.

“After that big run we had, I think we just were playing a little bit not to lose instead of just playing hard and keeping the momentum,” said grad student forward Lindsey Thall, who led KSU with 19 points. “If we would have just stayed aggressive and kept pushing it, maybe we could have stretched out more. I think we just got a little bit stagnant.”

Kent State missed a major opportunity when star FSU freshman Ta’Niya Latson fouled out with 4:30 to go. At that point, Latson had scored 34 points; no one else on the Florida State team had scored more than six.

Hannah Young made the two ensuing free throws, and the score was 66-64. But senior guard Sara Bejedi and grad student Taylor O’Brien combined for 11 of FSU’s last 14 points.

The teams played within four points of each other for the first half, with Florida State holding a 39-38 lead. The biggest thing holding Kent State back was 10 turnovers, which led to an astounding 22-1 margin in points off turnovers. In the second half, the Flashes had only six turnovers and outscored FSU 10-5 off of them.

“We talked about how we need to care of the ball better, slow down and just be patient,” said senior guard Clare kelly, who had five points, two assists and two steals.

“That was the only reason they were up on us,” Starkey said.

The coach said the team can learn a great deal from the loss.

“We know we can play with anybody,” he said. “Every game that we play, we can say, ‘You played the way you did against Florida State, then you can play that way all the time.

“This team knows that they’re capable of doing special things. If this team can stay consistent and make shots, we win.”

Notes

• Florida State had five physical players taller than 6-1 and outrebounded the Flashes 50-40. KSU did outrebound the Seminoles 22-21 in the first half.
• Young led the Flashes with eight rebounds. Shumate had seven and Bridget Dunn six. Young also had nine points.
• The Seminoles blocked seven shots to KSU’s one.
• Kent State outscored FSU 40-30 in the paint, but Florida State had 20 fast-break points to the Flashes’ five.
• Florida State had scored 112 points in its first game and more than 115 in two exhibitions.
• The KSU starting lineup was the same as in its exhibition last week: grad students Thall and Young, seniors Kelly and Shumate, and junior Casey Santoro, who had 11 points.
• Freshman Corynne Hauser played 22 minutes, about half of it at point guard. She had four assists, two steals and seven points but went 2-of-11 from the field.
• Dunn and grad student guard Abby Ogle also played more than 10 minutes.
• Attendance was 2,209, more than 700 fans higher than any game last season.

Next: Northern Kentucky on Sunday afternoon

The Flashes host Northern Kentucky at 2 p.m. Sunday. The Norse beat Lipscomb 101-95 in three overtimes on Thursday. Grad student Lindsey Duvall, a 5-8 guard, scored 36 points, had 17 rebounds and made 17-of-27 free throws.

Northern Kentucky was 21-8 overall and finished fourth in the Horizon League last season. Kent State beat the Norse 80-73 on the road in last season’s opener.

Box score