Considering the contributions of those three — and those of another five transfers who aren’t from the Miami Valley — the Raiders’ 83-50 blowout loss to Cleveland State in the semifinals of the Horizon League Tournament at Indiana Farmers Coliseum on Monday had to be especially disheartening by the way it happened.
The 18-15 Raiders had their worst performance of the season on the their biggest stage and they were done in, in part, thanks to a Vikings player who had 39.925751 and -83.806694 tattooed on her left biceps.
“Those are the map coordinates of my hometown,” Mickayla Perdue said proudly as she rolled her arm to show off the inkwork.
“Those are the coordinates of Springfield.”
Perdue led Cleveland State with 18 points and almost single-handedly put the Raiders on their heels at the outset of the game.
She opened the contest with a three-pointer and soon followed it with a short jump shot following a steal, all before WSU managed to score. Just beyond the midway point of the first quarter, she had outscored the Raiders 9-8 and was the catalyst for the Vikings’ 30-15 dominance that quarter.
Chris Kielsmeier, the coach of the top-seeded, now 29-4 Vikings, admitted he “couldn’t have scripted it better.”
By the time WSU scored again, Perdue had 15 points and the rout was on.
“I was just ready to play,” Perdue said. “I was locked in at beginning. I think everybody was. You could see that on everybody’s face, even before the game, at the hotel.
“For me, I’ve waited a long time for this moment. It’s been a long road to get here.”
After becoming the all-time career scorer for girls basketball at Springfield High School — where she scored 1,482 points — Perdue chose Toledo over several college offers, but played in just nine games as a freshman and redshirted the following season.
Last year she moved on to Glenville State in West Virginia, where she averaged 17.7 points per game and led the Pioneers to the NCAA Division II Final Four.
Back in the transfer market — her sights set on a return to Division I — she again drew interest from several schools.
Credit: Chris Snyder
Credit: Chris Snyder
“When she went into the portal we talked about it, but at that point it’s all about what you need and what you’re looking for,” Hoffman said. “We toyed around with the idea and decided to go in a different direction.”
The Raiders coach had no regrets though she did let out a sigh after Monday’s game, as she played back some of what she had just seen:
“(Perdue) is a fiery player and she’s been extremely good in this league. Her ability to shoot the ball has taken her team to another level.
“And I’ll admit, it’s hard to see a local player like that NOT be on our team, helping us. But I think she’s right where she fits really well.”
Kielsmeier, who was named the Horizon League Coach of the Year this season, said he tried to no avail to land Perdue when she came out of Springfield:
“I recruited the kid for a long time. But the world we live in right now, sometimes you don’t get them the first time. I learned a long time ago, recruiting is not personal. Kids are going to go where they want to go. But this time around when we recruited her, she made it adamantly clear she wanted to play for a winning program and with somebody who was going to put her in a position to really work on her game.”
Perdue said when she got to Cleveland State it was the right fit: “I like the family atmosphere and on top of that I like the winning. You walk into their gym and they have all those banners there. It’s a winning program with a winning coach. I knew I could do well there.”
She was right.
She finished second in the league in scoring (17.2 ppg) behind Hutchison, was voted the Horizon League’s Newcomer of the Year and was also a first team all-league selection.
She was first in the league in three-point field goals per game, fourth in field goal percentage and fifth in free throw percentage.
Monday, the only real answer WSU had for Perdue was Hutchison, who gave a herculean effort herself.
She finished with a game-high 22 points, a team-high seven rebounds and had five assists.
“I don’t have any more eligibility left, so I knew if this was going to be my last game I was going to leave everything I had on the court,” she said.
The only other Raider in double figures was Kacee Baumhower with 15 points.
“Hutch didn’t surprise me at all, she’s done that almost every game,” Hoffman said. She’s super driven. She had that look in her eye. She has that a lot and it helped us be really good this year.”
Wright State ended up two games away from the NCAA Tournament and 10 wins better than last year’s 8-24 effort.
“We didn’t come here just hoping to have a great experience, show up and then leave,” Hoffman said. “We expected to win, to compete, to be better than we were today.
“But a lot of good can come from being here, seeing it, tasting it and feeling it.
“I want them to feel the disappointment and then to never want to go through what they’re feeling again. There are some lessons here. Nothing but a good education can come from this trip.”
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