Penguins hope to end slide at home

YSU men’s basketball coach Jerry Slocum believed he had a team this season that was good enough to qualify the Penguins to host a first round Horizon League tournament game.

After the weekend’s two losses the Penguins are now battling to stay out of the league cellar.

Slocum said earlier this year that one of his goals was to get the Penguins to a position where they would play host to a first-round tournament game. He also said he felt the Penguins would be a pretty good basketball team by the start of January.

Instead, YSU is 7-15 overall and 3-9 in the league. Only Detroit, which comes to Beeghly Center Thursday, has a worse league record. YSU won for the first time in Detroit, 70-66, Jan. 12, and the Penguins haven’t won since. Their losing streak is now six straight.

The Penguins’ biggest problem is learning how to win the close games. They’ve been in almost every one of their last six games, but just haven’t been able to get over the hump.

Dropped heartbreaker
at Illinois-Chicago

They thought they had it figured out last Thursday when they led Loyola by two points with only seconds to play before the Ramblers scored just before the buzzer to pull out a 69-68 victory.

Saturday against Illinois-Chicago they were within six points of the Flames in the second half, but then let the contest slip away again.

Slocum doesn’t have any problems with his team’s effort this season, but it seems to be just too many mental mistakes that keep the Penguins from getting into the win column.

The Penguins still lack that one go-to guy this season and the scoring has been very inconsistent. Seniors John Barber and Byron Davis led the way, but are still far from consistent leaders.

The same goes for freshman Vytas Sulskis and junior Jack Liles. Thursday night senior Dwight Holmes came up with a career night of 19 points against Loyola, but was nowhere near that Saturday.

The Penguins have only been getting point productions from six or seven players and the rest of the bench has been non-existent in the scoring column.

The Penguins also play host to Wright State Saturday. Unless the Penguins can turn things around and pull off a couple of wins there is no doubt they’ll be on the road in the tournament opener next month.

Who can figure out the YSU women’s team?

Thursday night they rolled up 92 points in a road win at Valparaiso, then turned around and struggled to get 48 points in a loss to Butler Saturday.

Women facing
big weekend

The win over Valparaiso was the Penguins’ first on the road of the season in the league, but at least they’ve been able to protect their home floor and with a 5-4 league record are still in the hunt in the league. But the Penguins have two big games coming up Thursday and Saturday when they take on league-leading UW-Green Bay and then UW-Milwaukee at Beeghly Center.

The Penguins have been getting a solid performance almost every game from junior Tiara Scott, but the rest of the team, just like the men, have been pretty inconsistent. Senior Heather Karner, the team’s top scorer, had just six points at Butler on 2-of-11 shooting. The Penguins, after shooting nearly 50 percent against Valparaiso, dropped to 32 percent against Butler and were just 4-of-14 from 3-point range.

This will be a big week for both teams. The men need to get out of its losing ways and the women need to get back into the thick of the race.

Newest Penguins not
indigenous to Valley

Wednesday will be the official signing day for football and the Penguins expect to have another good list of recruits for the upcoming season.

Coach Jon Heacock doesn’t expect to sign a lot of local players this year, probably just two or three from the immediate area.

Heacock will have several transfers coming aboard and he hopes most of them will be enrolled in school so that they can take part in spring practice.

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