More on Horizon for 2008

The second season officially begins for the Youngstown State basketball teams Thursday night and it’s not going to take long to see where the teams shape up in the Horizon League.

The Penguins have the advantage of opening the new year at home with back-to-back double headers at Beeghly Center Thursday and Saturday.

The men (4-7, 0-1 Horizon) ended a five-game losing streak Saturday with a 77-63 victory over Slippery Rock, a team that gave the Penguins all they could handle in the first half.

Ironically the Penguins had one of their better-shooting first halves against The Rock (48.4), but they struggled on defense.

The Penguins shot just 30.3 percent in the second half, but the difference was that they played defense the way coach Jerry Slocum wanted.

Prior to Saturday the Penguins had been a big disappointment in their last five games.

They started out the year playing well, considering they had two freshmen in the starting lineup. They went 3-3 with five of the six games on the road and two of them against UCLA and Notre Dame, but they were competitive.

Five straight losses
sent spirits spiraling

Then came five straight losses, several of them very disappointing for Slocum, especially the 77-54 Horizon opener at Cleveland State where the Penguins were never in the game.

During that five-game streak the Penguins were unable to put the ball in the basket with regularity. With the offense struggling to score, all of a sudden the Penguins stopped playing defense, which happened against Robert Morris and Akron.

It was apparent Slocum and his staff did some extra work with the team after the Akron loss, but now the real test begins Thursday.

Slocum believes there is still a lot of good basketball waiting to be played by the Penguins.

He knows seniors John Barber and Byron Davis are both good shooters, but the Penguins aren’t going to win too many games when Barber shoots 3-of-11 and Davis 6-of-13 like they did against Slippery Rock.

He has a good young shooter in freshman Vytas Sulskis, but the 6-7 forward from Vilnius, Lithuania needs to shoot more.

Saturday the Penguins got a career-best effort out of junior point guard Mikko Niemi, who came off the bench and not only scored six points, but dished out seven assists and took control of the offense while playing 23 minutes.

But the reason Niemi was in there was because redshirt freshman Vance Cooksey has been inconsistent over the past six games and has almost as many turnovers as assists.

Women’s stretch of
gameless days at 13

The YSU women are coming off their best performance of the season in their last game, but Thursday will mark 13 days since that 74-56 win at Akron.

Hopefully the Penguins will remember all those good things they did against the Zips, especially on defense and the outstanding job they did on the boards, led by junior transfer Tiarra Scott, who pulled down 21 rebounds as well as adding 25 points.

Scott was one of the new faces that coach Tisha Hill brought in this season and was expected to contribute immediately. It took her a while to get going, but hopefully the Akron game will be the turning point for her career here.

For the women, Thursday’s game will open Horizon League play and most of the league teams have been struggling.

There are only three teams with winning records going into the opener — Butler (10-1), Green Bay (8-3) and Cleveland State (6-5). YSU and Valparaiso have the next-best records at 5-6.

For both YSU teams a quick start this week is almost a necessity, since they are playing at home and the main key to being a contender in the league is taking care of your home court.

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