Juniors Chris Bond and Jesse Berry sat with glazed looks on their faces, seemingly relishing a moment away from reality as their coach tried to explain how Wednesday’s game got away in the postgame press conference.
“I think we’re close [to getting things figured out],” Berry said, springing back to life. “Yeah, yeah, I think we’re close.”
Ball State’s Preseason All-Mid-American Conference guard repeated the phrase twice, almost reassuring himself a game like the 69-63 loss to Cleveland State minutes earlier wouldn’t happen again.
“The turnovers have got to come down,” Berry said. “We can’t win a game with 19 turnovers. We can’t win a game giving up 17 offensive rebounds. If we get those down, I think we’ll be a good team.”
Turnovers and the rebounding margin were two things both Berry and coach Billy Taylor mentioned as focal points in the loss, but if it’s not one thing, it’s the other at this point for the Cardinals.
Coming into the game, efforts were focused on getting Berry back on track, and yet his career-high 28 points on 8-of-16 shooting weren’t enough.
“I mean we lost,” Berry said. “Twenty-eight points really don’t matter when we didn’t accomplish what we came to accomplish. We didn’t win the game.”
For much of the first half, it looked like Ball State had the game under control. They had the lead for all but 52 seconds before halftime and were winning the rebounding battle.
That all changed when Cleveland State coach Gary Waters switched his defense to a hybrid box-and-one and matchup zone combination. Waters said his team had worked on the defense only twice in practice, but it paid immediate dividends.
The Cardinals crisp ball movement in the first half instantly evaporated and the team struggled to score.
“They hadn’t shown it so far this year, but you always have to be prepared for a junk defense,” Taylor said. “I thought we had open opportunities, but we didn’t do a consistent job punching gaps and getting the ball where we needed to get it against that defense.”
While Waters said the Vikings switched its defense to take away Majok Majok, nothing characterized the Cardinals inability to run effective offense like the junior college transfer’s measly six shot attempts.
Two of Majok’s baskets came when the game was already decided and Ball State’s most consistent scoring option this season failed to reach double figures for the first time, finishing with eight points.
“We watched him in about three games and we knew Majok quite well,” Waters said. “Without having that inside presence really slows their offense down.”
After Cleveland played its hybrid defense almost exclusively in the second half, Ball State’s offense slowed way down.
The Vikings went on an 18-2 run in a seven-minutes span in the second half to take a 62-53 lead with 4:34 remaining. Most of that scoring from freshman guard Bryn Forbes who scored all of his 18 points after the break.
“We were giving a lot of attention to [Charlie] Lee and [Tim] Kamczyc as players to stop,” Taylor said. “It was a good adjustment [by them]. Forbes came off the bench and had no fear. He made some tough drives to the basket, some jump shots and just came in with great energy.”
Ball State tightened up its defense, but couldn’t finish possessions with defensive rebounds to stay close enough for a final push.
With three minutes left, Cleveland State burned one minute off the clock after Lee missed a 3-pointer, but rebounded his own miss. That was the last straw for the 3,174 in attendance at Worthen Arena as the boos started to ring out.
“We’re five games in and we’ve diagnosed some of the major problems,” Taylor said. “It’s up to us as coaches and players to correct it. Fortunately, we’re not in conference play so we have time, but we have to be able to fix these problems.”
