17 hours Ago
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — The No. 3 seed Cleveland State women’s basketball team fell to No.
2 seeded Purdue Fort Wayne, 83-65, on Monday afternoon inside the Corteva Coliseum in Indianapolis to end their season in the Horizon League Tournament semifinals. Horizon League Player of the Year Mickayla Perdue scored a game-high 33 points on 10 of 26 shooting for Cleveland State (24-9) while graduate student Destiny Leo added 11 points. Other than Leo and Perdue, no other Vikings player scored more than 8 points.
“I’m proud of our team for what we’ve accomplished this year and being able to make it back here six straight times is pretty remarkable,” Cleveland State head coach Chris Kielsmeier said to the media. “We just didn’t have it today in large part because Perdue Fort Wayne played great. We knew how they could beat us was to overpower us and beat us up in the paint which happened and from the 3-point line, which happened.
“We just have to be better in the moment. It’s really, really hard to win here, we have a bunch of players that know that.” The Mastodons (25-7) cracked the Vikings defense from all angles, shooting 52% from the floor (33-63).
But they were even more deadly from deep, shooting 15-28 (53%) from 3-point range. All five starters for the Mastodons scored in double figure points. The Vikings were held to 40% shooting (23 of 57) while the team was outscored in the paint, 30-18.
The Vikings led only once thanks to a Leo triple to open up the scoring. From there, it was the Mastodons’ day in Indy. Back on Feb.
15, the Vikings defeated the Mastodons, 61-52, to end a lengthy winning streak by Purdue Fort Wayne. The keys to winning that day became an Achilles heel for the Vikings on Monday. “We started the game at Fort Wayne really well, and I think that kind of stunned them, maybe put them back on their heels a little bit and then the exact opposite happened today,” Kielsmeier said.
“They got some open looks, we made some really big mistakes right at the beginning of the game that allowed them to hit some shots and I think it put us back on our heels.” Perdue and Leo spoke to the media after the game while still reeling in the defeat but know that not all is lost for this team. “Obviously it was a tough loss, that’s not what we expected to come and do or show,” Perdue said.
“I’m proud of my teammates, we got here another year, it wasn’t the outcome that we wanted, but we do have a high chance of getting another opportunity to play another game this year. That’s what we’re going to be focused on now to win that.” Comforting his players after the loss, Kielsmeier said he knows it will take time for this game to be put out of mind, but in the grand scheme of life they have so much to be proud of.
“What they did, a lot of programs would love to do,” Kielsmeier said. “We’ve just created such a high expectation for what our program has, it’s just really hard to meet those expectations. But if you’re not going to have those expectations, then the chase isn’t worth it.
We expect to come up here and we expect to win. We’ll be back.”.
