The unofficial online home for fans of the Kent State University Golden Flashes. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

Flashes were supposed to play Miami, and Akron was supposed to play Ohio.

There were COVID problems at both Miami and Ohio, so they moved the Akron-KSU game from Jan. 22. We saw a lot of this during COVID last season, and I suspect we'll see a lot more this season.

Ohio has had all three of its MAC games postponed. Akron managed to play only one game in December.

The Zips are 2-4 and 0-1 in the conference. They lost 64-58 Saturday at Toledo, which had beaten KSU in Kent 69-60. Akron's wins have come against Robert Morris (5-6) and Detroit Mercy (0-11).

Kent State went 8-1 in non-conference play but lost its first two MAC games. The Flashes shot only a combined 29% in a 69-60 loss to Toledo and 55-51 loss at Western Michigan. Before MAC season, KSU had shot 43.5% and averaged 77.8 points a game.

More on the MAC's COVID woes and Wednesday's game is on the blog at HTTP://wbbFlashes.com.

The women lost to Akron 62-61 at the M.A.C.C and fell to 0-3 in the MAC.

They're 8-4 overall, and Starkey spent most of his postgame press conference trying to explain what's happened. (Short answer: He doesn't really know.)

Akron is 1-1 in the MAC and 4-4 overall.

Flashes trailed most of the fourth quarter but went on a 10-2 run at the end. They forced a turnover with 16 seconds to go and had a chance to win, but Bridget Dunn's 8-foot jumper missed.

Casey Santoro led KSU with a career-high 21 points, Katie Shumate had 13 and Dunn 11. Nila Blackford had 17 rebounds but went 3-for-11 shooting and missed all four of her free throws.

Flashes missed 20-of-34 shots in the paint and were outscored there 40-28.

Full story is on the blog at HTTP://wbbFlashes.com.

I guess beating 7-5 Penn St. and 5-3 UCLA wasn’t as big a deal as we thought. Going to 0-3 in the MAC is a pretty good size hole.

They aren’t winning at Buffalo so unless a game gets rescheduled soon they are going to go a month+ without winning a game. Not sure that happened even in the O’Banion years.

So unexpected that the women would be 0-3. I'm 75 years old and played organized sports, coached organized sports and watched sports since Truman was still in the White House. After all that I can honestly say I often don't have a clue as to why much of what transpires on the field or court happens.

I'd say it's really hard to say how Covid and the long break has affected players and teams. See strange things happen during the interim between the football season and bowl games. Can't say they didn't have time to game plan as Akron was in the same boat. Hopefully they can pull it together before the MAC tourney - if they make and if it id held at all.

The only time I saw the team live was against Duquesne and to be honest I wasn’t that impressed. I expected to see a junior/senior dominated team that had been good enough to beat UCLA and Penn St. to easily beat Duquesne. What I saw was a team that was a bit lucky to win at all. I was hoping I just saw an off game but I guess not. So far Starkeys teams while respectable haven’t been able to reach championship level. It’s tougher than it used to be as there aren’t as many bad programs in the MAC. It’s no longer a league with only 3 or 4 teams capable of winning. Most any team can win it any year.

By the way I love the headline on the website. SANTORO SCORES 21 IN RIVALRY GAME. Don’t worry about the fact that the team lost just celebrate an individual who had a good game. The everybody gets a trophy philosophy is alive and well.

(01-06-2022 04:12 PM)burden Wrote:  By the way I love the headline on the website. SANTORO SCORES 21 IN RIVALRY GAME. Don’t worry about the fact that the team lost just celebrate an individual who had a good game. The everybody gets a trophy philosophy is alive and well.

Agree.

I went back and watched some of the game from yesterday and I have to say, womens basketball at the Division I level is absolutely horrific to watch. I don’t even think I’d rank it that much higher than some high school games. It’s just a horrendous product. Maybe it’s because I lived through the Lindsay glory years and always have a tendency to compare teams to those, fair or unfair.

Add to that the fact only 2-3 teams have a chance to win the national title when the season starts and you get a yawner of a sport. The drop off between good and bad teams is larger in women’s basketball than any other NCAA sport.

“Flashes Fall Despite Santora’s Big Night”

How dare you!!

(01-06-2022 10:32 PM)JimJoyce Wrote:  I went back and watched some of the game from yesterday and I have to say, womens basketball at the Division I level is absolutely horrific to watch. I don’t even think I’d rank it that much higher than some high school games. It’s just a horrendous product. Maybe it’s because I lived through the Lindsay glory years and always have a tendency to compare teams to those, fair or unfair.

Add to that the fact only 2-3 teams have a chance to win the national title when the season starts and you get a yawner of a sport. The drop off between good and bad teams is larger in women’s basketball than any other NCAA sport.

In general I agree. Too much emphasis on counting scholarships and tremendous overexposure on ESPN. It’s better than it used to be though. I remember when a certain Akron coach didn’t even know how to break a press and consistently won 5 to 6 games a year because no one at Akron cared one iota about the sport. One of the reasons Lindsay was so successful is he knew his MAC season was 2 games against BG and 2 games against Toledo. He could count on winning at least 11 or 12 of the remaining 14. Think of football with 350 DI schools each with 85 scholarships and think how watered down that would be (it’s actually pretty watered down with 150 teams). That’s womens basketball. There might not be solution for having 5-10 elite programs in each sport (big10 in wrestling, SEC in womens gymnastics, etc) but in basketball having only 100-150 teams would make the rest of the games a lot more interesting. Not enough good players for 5400 scholarships in D1.

Burden you make some valid points - especially regarding the scholarships.

One thing I’ve always found amusing is the calls from women’s basketball people for equality. Like that screwball Nell Fortner (0-1 in her career at the MAC Center) last year. They want the same everything the men’s side has and then they turn around and play quarters instead of halves (offense is still down), use a smaller ball and a shorter three point line.

I think they do use a smaller ball (unless it recently changed). There always going to score less. A 5’3” point guard can’t shoot as well as a 6’2” point guard on average. It’s physics. I can deal with that. Because of it you do get a purer brand of basketball. What I don’t like are the weaker teams with obviously out of shape players who can’t even catch a pass. They are out there. The MAC only has a few but they are usually somewhere between the 9th and 15th best league out of 31. Imagine what plays in the 16th through 31st best league. I pity the good players that have to play with those types of players. I remember when Sarah Burgess transferred from South Carolina to Kent. Great player but it took her 6 to 10 games to realize her no look quick passes that worked at South Carolina were just spectacular turnovers at Kent. There are pecking orders in all college athletics but they are much more obvious in sports where balancing scholarships is emphasized and where ESPN is involved.

Game tomorrow against Buffalo postponed due to Covid in their program. Kent now playing at BSU on Sunday. and the merry go round continues.

Same thing with HS games around here. Athletic Directors earning their money.

(01-07-2022 03:46 PM)fallsdog Wrote:  Same thing with HS games around here. Athletic Directors earning their money.

Absolutely - a local small HS had a gal who eventually made it to the WNBA via OSU - with her they sometimes beat opponents with scores like 88 - 18 and so on.

The women finally won.

Here's the top of the blog:

Kent State still hasn't found its shooting eye, but the Flashes found a way to win their first Mid-American Conference game of the season on Sunday.

The team beat Ball State 54-51 for its first win in Muncie in 25 years. The Flashes had lost 13 in a row since a 78-66 victory on Feb. 19, 1997. When the MAC played in divisions, KSU often would play Ball State every other year. In that same time period, the Flashes won 12 of 14 games in Kent. (The league abolished divisions last season.)

The game was very much like Kent State's three losses to open the MAC season, except this time the Flashes found a way to win in the last minute. The game was low-scoring and close all of the way, and KSU still struggled shooting.

Key facts:

• Casey Santoro hit a layup with 17 seconds to go to give the Flashes a 52-51 lead. After Ball State missed a 3-point attempt, Katie Shumate made two free throws with three seconds left.
• Kent State held the Cardinals to the lowest shooting percentage of any of its Division I opponents this season and the second-lowest point total. It was BSU's poorest shooting and second-fewest points of its season.
• Playing about 50 miles from her hometown, KSU freshman Bridget Dunn equaled her career-high of 15 points to lead the Flashes. Nila Blackford had 15 rebounds. For the last three games, she's had 15, 17 and 15.
• KSU made less than 35% of its shots for the fourth game in a row and went 4-for-26 on 3-point shots.

The rest of the story is at HTTP://wbbFlashes.com.

Home game against BGSU has been postponed (guess why!!). Instead they will be playing at Ohio.

Wednesday is another game with an unexpected opponent for the Kent State women.

The Flashes were scheduled to host Bowling Green at the M.A.C. Center. But COVID-19 on the BG roster postponed that game, the third contest in a row KSU has played a team not originally scheduled.

KSU will travel to Ohio University to play the Bobcats, who were scheduled to play Buffalo, which has its own COVID outbreak. Kent State and Ohio were originally scheduled to play on Jan. 19, so the Flashes will have a different, yet-to-be-determined opponent, then.

The game starts at 7 p.m. and will be streamed on ESPN3.

The Bobcats were preseason pick to win the MAC. Their first three league games were postponed because of COVID. Ohio lost its first MAC game on Saturday to Northern Illinois 71-68.

Ohio is 6-3 overall and 0-1 in the MAC. Northern Illinois is 4-7 and 1-2.

Kent State is 9-4 and 1-3. The Flashes lost their first three MAC games by close margins, then won at Ball State 54-51 on Saturday.

KSU’s defense has kept it competitive through its struggles in the MAC. The Flashes have allowed on 59.3 points a game, third-best in the conference and limited opponents to 38.1% shooting, also third in the league. They rank first in the MAC in 3-point defense, where opponents have made just 26.8% of their shots.

KSU forward Nila Blackford has 37 rebounds in her last three games and ranks third in the MAC in rebounding. But her scoring and shooting are down substantially from last year, when she led KSU with 15.6 points per game.

Ohio is led by last year’s MAC player of the year, Cece Hooks, a 5-8 fifth-year guard. Hooks is second in the MAC in scoring (21.6 points per game), fourth in shooting percentage (49.7), first in steals (3.6) and ninth in rebounding (7.7).

But critical to Wednesday’s game will be the status of redshirt junior Erica Johnson, a 5-11 guard who, like Hooks, was a preseason all-MAC selection. Johnson missed OU’s game with Northern Illinois as she recovered from COVID. She is fourth in the MAC in scoring at 20.3 points a game and leads the league in assists at 5.8 per game.

Kent State is also hoping for a recovery from COVID by senior forward Lindsey Thall, who has missed KSU’s last three games. Thall is second on the team in scoring at 13.1 points per game and second in rebounding at 7.0.