YSU has 18 loop games

Youngstown State men’s basketball team wasn’t very impressive in its Horizon League opener a week ago at Cleveland State.

Usually the Horizon League season doesn’t begin until after the new year. The Penguins have played league games in December before, but not too often.

Now it will become an annual thing.

With the addition of Valparaiso this season, the league now has 10 teams, which means each team will play 18 league games.

“The problem is that there just aren’t 18 Thursday-Saturday’s between the first of the year and the Horizon League Tournament,” said YSU coach Jerry Slocum.

“We’re kind of fortunate in that we only have to play one league game before the new year; half of the teams had to play two,” he added.

The Horizon League likes to give league members at least one Saturday off during the season from league competition.

Slocum says he has no problem playing a conference game in the middle of the non-conference schedule.

Now the same cannot be said about the Penguins’ lone non-conference game in February, which comes right in the middle of the conference schedule.

Slocum is definitely one coach who doesn’t like the Penguins playing in the ESPN Bracket Buster Event each year.

“This is something that we have no control over,” he said. “The league has agreed to be a part of this event and we’re part of the league so we really have no choice.”

As part of the Bracket Buster format, a team that hosts a game must then give that opponent a return home game the next season.

That happened last year when the Penguins hosted Eastern Kentucky in the Bracket Buster. They have to return a home game to Eastern Kentucky earlier this year.

“Now we had to give up a home date for a return game with Eastern Kentucky and we have an away game this year in the Bracket Buster, so in the long run we lost two possible home playing dates,” Slocum added.

This year’s Bracket Buster game will be played on Feb. 23 and the opponent and site will be announced sometime in February.

Of course playing an early league game or even playing the Bracket Buster event isn’t as much of a concern to Slocum as the current performance level of his basketball team.

In the Penguins’ last three losses they have not shot the ball well. They have played well at times, like the second half against Kent State, but they haven’t been able to put together 40 good minutes of basketball.

The Penguins have a lot of new, young faces this year — two freshmen have been starting most of the season and Slocum knows that freshmen will make freshmen mistakes.

But the Penguins have enough veterans that they should be able to keep the boat afloat while the youngsters struggle somewhat.

Seniors John Barber and Byron Davis and junior Jack Liles are all regulars from a season ago. The big difference for those three is that this year they are being asked to carry the load for the team, while a year ago they were just a supporting cast for Quin Humphrey and Keston Roberts.

“We’re still learning and still working hard,” said Slocum.

“We had hoped to be a pretty good basketball team by January, but we’ve still got a long way to go.

Tonight the Penguins will play host to Robert Morris in a 7:05 tip off at Beeghly Center.

The Penguins will play twice more before getting into the brunt of their Horizon League schedule. They play at Akron on Friday night and then are at home against Slippery Rock on Dec. 29.

They also get a break when league play begins as they will host three straight Horizon opponents beginning with Illinois-Chicago on Jan. 3 followed by Loyola on Jan. 5 and UW-Milwaukee on Jan. 7.

XPete Mollica covers YSU athletics for The Vindicator. Write him at mollica@vindy.com.