LADY HOOPS READY TO GO

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Youngstown State women basketball team's new coach Cindy Martin

By Pete Mollica

YSU first-year coach Cindy Martin has team working hard

The coach doesn’t consider this a rebuilding year and expects to contend for a league title.

YOUNGSTOWN — Since Cindy Martin was named women’s basketball coach at Youngstown State in April she has kept very busy getting her program ready for the start of the 2008-09 season.

Martin came to the Penguins after three very successful seasons at Indiana (Pa.) University, where she turned the Crimson Hawks around in her first season going from 9-18 to 19-9 and following up with 24-9 and 27-5 seasons and two straight appearances in the NCAA Division II tournament.

Now Martin faces another program that needs turning around as the Penguins have had 20-loss seasons in four of the last six years.

“When I took over in April my first priority was getting a staff in place, which we’ve done, and second was recruiting and we signed three players in the spring and we’ll have four new faces on the roster this year,” Martin said.

“Since then it has just been getting to know the girls that we have coming back,” she added.

Martin said since school began this fall she has been working the team on conditioning and fundamentals.

“We’re out there running every day and I like to use the track for that part of our conditioning,” she said. “When we’re in the gym it is working hard on fundamentals and a lot of work on our weak-side defense.”

Martin feels defense is going to be the key to the Penguins’ season.

“This isn’t going to be a team that will score a lot of points,” she said. “We’re going to run and be up-tempo, but you probably won’t see too many 20-point games from our players. But you might see six or eight players with eight to 10 points and hopefully playing good defense.”

And just what has Martin learned about her returning players in these six months?

“I know that they have a lot of heart and I know that right now they would probably run through a wall for me if I asked them to,” she said. “They want to win and they’ve all bought into this system, but the key is that we still have to get better.”

Martin said she is not considering this a rebuilding year.

“We have six seniors and we owe it to them to go out and get everything we can get. We want to be playing for the league championships at the end of the season.”

Martin is excited about her recruits. All are guards where the Penguins had the least depth and all are capable of stepping up and playing immediately.

The three are 5-foot-3 Macey Nortey of Long Beach, Calif., 5-8 Kenya Middlebrooks of Toledo and junior college transfer Jaquetta Westley of Joliet, Ill., who came from Spoon River Junior College.

The fourth new face is 6-3 junior center Rachael Manuel, who sat out last season because of the NCAA transfer rule. She transferred from Southern Mississippi.

Martin said the biggest difference between coaching in Div. I and Div. II is more off the court than on it.

“Basketball is still basketball whatever division, but here you have more height,” she said. “Off the floor this division provides much more financial aid for recruiting and for the first time I’ll also have full paid coaching staff.

Martin feels the Penguins’ schedule is a difficult one, but said she likes it that way.

“I’d much rather be playing tough non-conference opponents than a bunch of weak ones,” she said. “It will only make us better in the long run.

“This team probably isn’t going to have individual stars,” she said. “The team is going to be our star.”

mollica@vindy.com