Playing against her sister and in front of her parents and a big group from her hometown, sophomore guard Casey Santoro put up the first triple-double in Kent State history as the Flashes overwhelmed Division II Clarion 89-43 Saturday.

Santoro had 16 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists. No KSU player — man or woman — had ever done that before.

Santoro had eight rebounds when she went to the bench with five minutes to go in the game. “Put her back in!” her teammates and some assistants told head coach Todd Starkey.

“That’s when I knew I was close,” Santoro said.

She went back in with 3:32 left and passed to Bridget Dunn to set up a 3-point basket 11 seconds later. A minute later, as the crowd cheered for another assist, Santoro passed to Dunn for another 3 and a place in the record book. Santoro got a standing ovation when she came out of the game shortly afterward.

“It feels pretty awesome,” Santoro said. “But I couldn’t have done it without my teammates knocking down the shots.”

The big things to know from the game:

• Santoro’s triple-double included assists on eight 3-point baskets.
• Senior Hannah Young scored a career-high 16 points and had her first collegiate double-double. Bridget Dunn (15 points) and Annie Pavlansky (10) had career highs in scoring.
• The win gives the Flashes an 8-1 start, tying for second-best in school history.

Here’s the pass that gave Santoro the triple-double:

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Casey Santoro finds Bridget Dunn for 3 and the triple-double (16/10/10)!#GoFlashes ⚡ pic.twitter.com/hJfAee1GkN

— Kent State Women’s Basketball (@KentStWBB) December 11, 2021

Santoro made 4-of-6 three-point attempts and 6-of-10 shots overall. She had a career-high 10 assists, two steals and only one turnover in 31 minutes

The Santoro backstory

“It was awesome to see Casey play like that,” Starkey said. “I don’t think she went into the game trying to do that. But you don’t do it by accident. It’s the type of habits she has every day, her work ethic, her focus. She’s tough as nails as a player.

“There were a lot of coaches that didn’t even look at recruiting her. They said she was too small. (Santoro is 5-4.) I said, ‘She doesn’t have to be good for you. She just has to be good for me.'”

Starkey has no problem with small point guards.

“I’ve won six championships in my career,” the coach said. “Every championship I’ve won, I’ve had a small point guard. They play with the chip on their shoulder. People tell them they can’t do it, and they go out every day to try and prove that they can. That’s what Casey’s all about.”

Santoro scored 2,400 points in Bellevue High School and made the all-Ohio first team three times. Last season she averaged about 20 minutes and scored 6.7 points a game. Her shooting percentage was just 31.1%.

This year, she’s making 47.1% of her shots and 54.5% of her 3-point attempts, which is fourth in the Mid-Amerian Conference.

Last season she averaged a bit more than two assists and 1.5 turnovers per game. This season she’s averaging 4.1 assists and 1.3 turnovers. Her assist-to-turnover ratio — something coaches care a lot about in point guards — is second in the MAC at 3.1-to-1.

“She was such a prolific scorer in high school,” Starkey said. “There’s an adjustment to playing with really good players around you and the type of post players that we have.

“So it was a process that she had to go through last year. And in a COVID year, we didn’t have as much time to work with them individually, and there were gaps where we couldn’t have them in to watch film.

“She’s gotten better at learning her teammates. You have to know not only the other team’s personnel but your own personnel. You have to know where your teammates need the ball and where not to throw it. Just because they’re open doesn’t mean they’re the right person to throw it to.

“And Casey’s been a really good student of the game. She spends a lot of time watching film. She spends a lot of extra time in the gym — the old cliche, ‘first one in the gym, last one to leave’ — well, it’s true with her.”

Saturday’s game was the first this season that Santoro has started. She said that Mariah Modkins, the usual starter, had COVID-19. (Starkey has said that the entire team has been vaccinated. But protocol still requires a player to sit out if they show breakthrough symptoms or have a positive test.)

The Santoro sisters did a joint interview after the game, mostly for the Sandusky Register, their hometown newspaper.

Cory said it was “pretty cool” to see her sister get a triple-double. “I guess it’s OK if she gets it against your team,” she said, laughing.

Here’s link to the Sandusky Register story on the sisters by sports writer Billy Heyen.

Scoring from unexpected places

Neither of KSU’s top scorers going into the game managed 10 points. But Santoro and three other players did.

One was Young, who has started all nine games this season after starting only seven total her first three years. A 5-10 guard, Young had achieved her double-double against Clarion with six minutes to go in the third quarter. Her 16 points were one above her previous best and her 13 rebounds were two off her career-high. (“One of the coaches was telling me, ‘Try to beat it,'” Young said, smiling.) She played only 21 minutes in the game.

Dunn, a 6-3 freshman forward from Carmel, Indiana, had 15 points and seven rebounds, both the best of her young career. She made 3-of-7 three-point shots and ranks 15th in the MAC in 3-point shooting at 39.4%.

“She’s had a good start,” Starkey said. “She has a very high basketball IQ and is a really good passer for a post player. Obviously, she can shoot really well from outside.”

The coach said Dunn’s style of play is similar to senior Lindsey Thall, who has started every game in her four-year career.

“We thought Bridget would be great to play and learn beside Lindsey,” Starkey said, “and then be able to be a lot like her as she continues to develop.”

Pavansky, a senior, had 10 points, the most of her career.

“We’ve had a lot of talent here over the last four years, and she hasn’t been able to get the playing time that she would like to,” Starkey said. “So when you get opportunities for somebody like her to have a game like that — where it’s fun, your teammates are cheering — it’s an awesome thing.”

Every time Starkey talks about Pavlansky, he points out she has a perfect grade point average. She’s only one of three upperclassmen in the MAC to have a 4.0 average.

The coach also smiled as he remembered that Pavlansky’s uncle was Starkey’s junior varsity basketball coach in the early 1990s at Canfield High School outside Youngstown.

Dunn and Pavlansky combined for five 3-pointers. Santoro assisted on all of them.

A fast start and a tough next opponent

The victory gives Kent State an 8-1 start to the season, tying for its second-best in the 45 years of KSU women’s basketball. The best start was 11-1 in 2008-09, when the team finished 20-9. Teams in 1978-79 and 1993-94 also started 8-1. (wbbFlashes’ preview on the Clarion game has some interesting detail on those teams and three of the best teams in school history, which got off to mediocre starts.)

Clarion is 2-5 on the season.

Kent State has 10 days off for final exams.

Then they’ll host Florida State of the Atlantic Coast Conference, a team that has made the NCAA Tournament the last nine years. The Seminoles were ranked in the top 25 for several weeks earlier in the season. They are 6-2 going into Sunday’s game with Florida (8-3).

The game will be at the M.A.C. Center at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 21 (the same afternoon the KSU football team plays in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl). The FSU game is the first game of a doubleheader with the Kent State men’s team, which plays Cleveland State a half-hour after the women finish.

Box score

Notes

• Starkey said junior guard Abby Ogle was out indefinitely with an injury. She was on the bench with her leg heavily bandaged. Ogle is a transfer from West Virginia who was a third-team all-American in junior college. She had played in six games and was tied for the team lead in steals despite playing just 11 minutes a game.
• With Modkins out, junior Clare Kelly backed up Santoro at point guard. She didn’t score but had four assists, four rebounds, two steals and a blocked shot. Kelly started 13 games last season at shooting guard and averaged 8.8 points, scoring 27 against Toledo.
• Every KSU player in uniform got into the game, with freshman guard Jenna Batsch logging 21 minutes. Bexley Wallace, a 6-3 junior forward and transfer from Penn State, scored her first two baskets for Kent. Sophomore Lexi Jackson, the team’s tallest player at 6-4, saw her first action in almost a month after being sidelined with illness. She scored four points and had a rebound.

Numbers

The statistics were as lopsided as you’d expect a 46-point win to be.

• KSU outrebounded Clarion 55-30, its biggest margin in three seasons.
• Clarion made only 24.1% of its shots and 15.4% of its 3-pointers. The Flashes shot 44.1% from the field and 45.2% on 3-pointers.
• Kent State outscored Clarion in the paint 36-14, on second-chance points 24-7 and on fast breaks 19-7. The Flashes equaled ther season high of 23 assists and blocked five shots, the most since their opener at Northern Kentucky.