YSU can’t find ways to win

It wasn’t a good weekend for the Youngstown State basketball teams.

With the schedule starting to wind down the two teams combined for four more losses Thursday and Saturday and all of them at the Beeghly Center.

Of the four contests only the final effort by the men’s team was worth talking about as the Penguins suffered an overtime loss to Detroit, 68-64, before a pretty good crowd of well over 3,000 fans.

Unfortunately the win by Detroit was their first in the Horizon League this season as the Titans had dropped 10 straight in conference play, including an 80-78 loss to the Penguins on New Year’s Day in Detroit.

Saturday was a night of first wins for the opponents as the YSU women suffered a 56-42 loss to Loyola of Chicago, which also recorded its first conference victory and snapped a 10-game losing streak.

One of the big problems for the men’s team is that they can’t shoot free throws. In their last three losses — if the Penguins had made their free throws — they would have won all three games.

Free throw shooting has to be one of the easiest shots in the game. Nobody is guarding you and you can take your time and line up the shot and just let it fly. The only really pressure foul shot would be when the game is on the line and the Penguins haven’t had any of those in the last three games.

The Penguins have missed at least 10 free throws in each of their last three losses and it’s not like they don’t practice shooting them all week long, especially now when they’ve been struggling so much.

YSU was 1-for-8 from the line in the second half Saturday and finished regulation in a 55-55 deadlock.

Sophomore Vytas Sulskis, who hasn’t been heard of much in recent weeks, almost pulled out a victory for the Penguins with his late heroics.

Sulskis scored the final eight points in regulation for YSU and didn’t miss a shot over that span. He scored two more in overtime before he finally missed in the final seconds of overtime, although the Penguins were down by four points when he took the shot.

The YSU women have taken control of the cellar in the Horizon League standings, with nine straight losses in league play and a 14-point loss to a team that had lost 10 straight and hadn’t won a league game before Saturday.

It was the Penguins’ final chance to get a victory in the month of January. They have one win in November and one win in December and now have just nine more tries in February before the regular season ends.

As if the Penguins don’t have enough problems they now have to go out on the road and their first game will be with conference leader Green Bay.

The Phoenix rolled over Valparaiso 76-46 on Saturday night. That’s the same Valpo team which defeated the Penguins by 43 points, 86-43, on Jan. 3.

Green Bay handed the Penguins a 62-42 loss on Jan. 10 at Beeghly Center.

It’s not like the Penguins aren’t trying to win.

They battled hard the entire 40 minutes against Loyola. They were all over the floor, but when the ball is not going into the basket it really doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. You can’t win if you can’t score and the Penguins just can’t find a way to score more points.

Today is the national signing day for college football and this could be a very exciting time for the Youngstown State football team.

YSU coach Jon Heacock already has four commitments from area high school standouts. One of them is Taylor Hill, a former Cardinal Mooney High standout who is already enrolled at YSU after transferring from Michigan earlier this month.

Sylvester Gibbs of Fitch, kicker Nick Liste of Niles and Kyle Stadelmyer of Girard have all verbally committed to the Penguins already and several others out of the area have made commitments.

Heacock is excited about the upcoming signings and expects to have a couple of more local standouts added to the list.

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