BRIGHT SIDE

By Pete Mollica

Penguins junior finds a home

Kelvin Bright’s road to Youngstown had some curves.

YOUNGSTOWN — Despite the 1-7 record for the Youngstown State men’s basketball team, there is a bright side to the story.

His name is Kelvin Bright and he’s a 6-4 junior from Silver Springs, Md.

It has been a long and wild trip for Bright from Silver Springs to Youngstown State, but he’s certainly glad that he made the moves.

After graduating from Silver Springs, Bright accepted a scholarship to Robert Morris University where he spent two seasons.

“I was red-shirted my freshman season and then played some my second season,” Bright said. “I wasn’t too happy with the way things were going there so I decided to take a year and go to junior college.”

Bright played last season at Hagerstown Community College where he had a big season averaging 24 points a game and ranked sixth in Division I NJCAA scoring and received honorable mention All-American honors.

It was there that YSU head coach Jerry Slocum found the talented player and brought him to Youngstown.

“Kelvin has been one of the steadiest guys on the team this season,” Slocum said. “He has really grown up these last couple of weeks and has played some excellent basketball.”

In the Penguins’ last two games, Bright has scored 24 and 21 points, respectively. He’s quick to point out that the Penguins lost both of those games.

“I’m not a guy that’s going to average 30 points a game and I don’t feel that I have to on this team because there is a lot of talent right here,” Bright said.

“We are a much better team than our record shows and it’s about time that we start playing up to our potential,” he said.

“It has been a lot of things that have gone wrong this year, but in most cases it has been our own fault, whether it was losing focus during a strech or just not being tough enough when we need to be,” he said.

“I’m happy with the way I’ve been playing these last couple of games, but we still aren’t winning and that’s what’s most important,” Bright said.

“We have a couple of big road games this weekend in North Carolina,” he said. “They aren’t going to be easy games, but they are games we feel we’re capable of winning if we can play like we know that we can.”

Bright has scored a team-high 113 points in the first eight games and an team-leading 14.1 average.

He’s also averaging three rebounds a game and has 11 assists and four steals, while averaging about 30 minutes of playing time.

The Penguins will play at High Point, N.C. on Friday night at 7 p.m., and then will close out the road trip Sunday at Charlotte, N.C. in a 2 p.m. contest against North Carolina-Charlotte.