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Penguins eye leader on court
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FLOORED: De'Andre Mays of Youngstown State and Butler's Shelvin Mack battle for the ball during Saturday's game at Beeghly Center. The Penguins fell 79-71 to their Horizon League rival.
The Youngstown State men’s basketball team came into this season with several new faces on the roster but a lot of high hopes. Many persons, including coach Jerry Slocum, believed this team was going to be a pretty good one as soon as all the new faces started to mesh.
Well, after seven games, the Penguins are 1-6 (0-2 in the Horizon League), and although they played much better Saturday night in a 79-71 loss to unbeaten Butler, they are still a long way from being a contender in the conference.
There’s always a concern that with so many new players learning to play together, that particular situation could be an issue.
What’s even more discouraging is watching Butler with practically an entirely new lineup. The Bulldogs don’t have a senior on the roster and have started three freshmen in all seven games, all of them victories.
The Penguins’ problems seem to be deeper. They don’t have a leader on the floor, somebody who can step up and hit the big shot, like in the final three minutes of Saturday’s game when they had closed to within four points.
During that stretch, the Penguins missed five of six 3-point shots. A couple of them should never have been taken, but the point is that nobody was there to step up and make the shots when they needed them.
Slocum knows the problems and he figures that over the next nine days he’s going to get some answers.
“We’ll take a couple of days off for final exams, but when we return we’re going to find out just who wants to play and who doesn’t,” he said after Saturday’s game. “Those that want to play will be the ones out on the floor.”
Slocum was disappointed in the play of sophomore guard Vytas Sulskis.
Sulskis, one of the better shooters on the team, especially from 3-point range, came into the team’s last two games off two impressive performances, scoring 24 and 22 points. He scored just two points in the loss to Valparaiso on Thursday and had eight Saturday.
“I don’t think that Vytas was at all prepared for the physical play of the Horizon League,” Slocum said. “He just didn’t stand up to contact that comes in this league. Everybody that we play got those same films of him in those two big games and he knew what he was going to get, but he didn’t handle it well.”
After the break for exams the Penguins will face one of the most difficult stretches of the schedule.
“We have to go to Kent State in the first game back and they are probably the most physical team in the MAC,” Slocum said. “Then we have to go down to North Carolina for two tough road games.
“It’s my job to get this mess straightened around and we’re going to work hard all this week to see that this happens,” he added.
While there does seem to be some optimism with the men’s team, the women’s team hasn’t shown many signs of life as they have struggled through the season.
The Penguins had one of their best shooting games of the season Saturday, and still suffered a 94-61 defeat to a pretty good Bowling Green team.
Unfortunately for the Penguins, they have five of their next six games on the road.
The Penguins (1-6) committed 23 turnovers against the Falcons and were never in the game.
However, they still have some time to get things turned around before opening Horizon League play in January.
Unlike the men’s team which will face stiff competition in the league, the women’s division of the Horizon League is not nearly as tough.
The Penguins are probably playing much tougher opposition now during the non-league season than they will once conference play begins.
Both the men and women have only one more home game remaining in the 2008 portion of their schedules. The women will play host to Akron on Dec. 20 at Beeghly Center at 2:05 p.m. and the men will take on Lock Haven on Dec. 29. at 7:05 p.m.
XPete Mollica covers YSU athletics for The Vindicator. Write to him at mollica@vindy.com.