What’s a Penguin to do?

The Penguins took their lumps last weekend and both basketball teams need to turn things around if they are going to get back into the thick of the Horizon League races.

The men struggled in Wisconsin, losing at Milwaukee Thursday night 76-69, and followed that up with a 66-58 loss at Green Bay Saturday. The women only played one game, but it was a poor defensive effort at Cleveland State Saturday that resulted in a 77-64 defeat.

Right now neither YSU team is playing very well.

Good teams don’t miss all the easy layups that both of the Penguins have been missing. Good teams don’t get beat on the offensive boards the way both teams have been doing recently.

The men allowed 17 offensive rebounds in the loss to Milwaukee. They only allowed seven at Green Bay, but still were outscored 32-17 in the paint and committed 17 turnovers against the Phoenix.

Road reputation not
much to hang hat on

Neither team has yet to beat a team in the upper half of the standings and the two teams have combined for just one road win in Horizon play and that was by the men at Detroit, the worst team in the conference. The women have yet to play at Detroit and if things don’t get better and quickly that might be the women’s only chance at a road win this year.

Tisha Hill’s women have four conference wins and all are against teams well below them in the standings and all were at home. Cleveland State came into Saturday’s contest with the same four wins that the Penguins had, but they clearly dominated the boards against YSU and that was the big difference in the outcome.

The men played well at times against both teams over the weekend and were within three points against Milwaukee before letting things get away at the end and they had closed the gap on Green Bay, but the Phoenix was near-perfect from the foul line in the final minutes to put that game away.

Women tied with
Wright St., Valparaiso

The women are 4-3 in the standings, which puts them into a tie with Wright State and Valparaiso for fourth place. Green Bay leads the standings at 7-1 followed by Milwaukee (6-2) and Cleveland State (5-2).

This year’s women’s Horizon League tournament will be held somewhat differently as the top two teams in the standings will have first-round byes.

The seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th seeded teams will play in the tournament’s opening round March 10 at the sites of the higher seeded teams. The winner of those two games will get to face the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds in the quarterfinals.

The other four teams, which is where YSU now stands, will square off in the quarterfinals with No. 3 seed playing No. 6 and No. 4 seed playing No. 5. The semifinals and final will be played on the campus of the highest remaining seed.

On the men’s side, Cleveland State and Butler are the top two teams in the standings, while Milwaukee and Valparaiso are right behind. YSU, at 3-7, is in eighth place in the standings and the Penguins desperately need a victory or two this week when they take on Loyola and UIC.

The Penguins have played 19 games this season so youth and inexperience are no longer an excuse, not that YSU coach Jerry Slocum has ever used it.

Slocum has continued to preach the importance of good defense and rebounding and positioning under the boards. The Penguins are not a big team and usually at a height disadvantage against almost everybody they play, so it becomes even more crucial to play good defense and get good position and not give up the easy baskets.

The Penguins hit 16-of-17 free throws at Green Bay Saturday. That’s a step in the right direction for a team that was last in the conference at the charity stripe.

As Hill said Saturday, there is still a lot of basketball to be played, but it certainly has to get a lot better than it’s been up until now.

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