Program taking its lumps

Ever since practice began in October, Youngstown State’s first-year women’s basketball coach, Cindy Martin, circled the first week in January for the Penguins to be ready to take on the Horizon League.

Throughout the first two months of the season Martin continued to earmark the conference opening as the date the Penguins would become the team that she envisioned them to be.

All this while the team was winning just twice in 11 non-league contests and with disappointing performances in most of those games.

Well, Saturday was the day that Martin was waiting for, but her Penguins didn’t come anywhere near the performance she had expected. In fact, Saturday’s 86-43 loss at Valparaiso just might have been one of the team’s worst efforts of the season.

It’s true that the Horizon League’s women’s division is not what one would consider a powerhouse. Going into league play there were only two conference teams with winning records and Valparaiso wasn’t one of those.

The Crusaders are just a middle-of-the-pack team, although they did surprise a nationally-ranked Purdue team earlier this season.

The Penguins will face their second conference opponent tonight when they travel to Butler.

Once again the Bulldogs are a middle of the pack team, although they did knock off Cleveland State at home Saturday and the Vikings are considered one of the league’s top four teams, along with Green Bay, UIC and Loyola.

In another opening game Saturday, Detroit, who was ranked just ahead of YSU in the preseason polls, upset Loyola at home.

It’s true that the Penguins’ season didn’t end on Saturday with the loss to Valparaiso. There is still a lot of basketball to be played, but at the same time the Penguins show little signs of making any improvement. They are still making the same mistakes they made when the season began and their shooting may have gotten worse instead of better.

Nobody is pointing any fingers at Martin, although she’ll be the first one to admit that she’s responsible for the team’s play.

Martin inherited most of this team from former coach Tisha Hill. Six seniors, four of whom had been in the system for four years, returned this year. Injuries have sidelined two of them, including the team’s best returning shooter in Velissa Vaughn, who has yet to play a minute this season.

Martin brought in four players, three freshmen and a junior, and two of them were immediate starters. They were better than what was there, but still not good enough to turn the program around.

The Penguins probably won’t win at Butler tonight. They may not win on the road at all in the Horizon League this season, but they can still be respectable if they can take care of their home games.

That challenge will begin Thursday when the Penguins play host to Milwaukee in the opening game of a doubleheader with the men’s team. It will be the first of two doubleheaders in three days for the two teams, who will also play a twinbill on Saturday at Beeghly Center.

The men split their two road games, winning at Detroit and then losing a heartbreaker at Wright State, a game the Penguins should have won and one that could have propelled them back into contention in the conference. Instead they find themselves 1-3.

The first five minutes of the second half proved to be the difference as the Penguins, who held a 33-20 first-half lead, were outscored 13-2.

Sophomore Vytas Sulskis was almost the hero for the second straight game. After making four clutch free throws in the final seconds for the win at Detroit, Sulskis made a 3-point goal that gave YSU a 59-56 lead over the Raiders with less than two minutes remaining, but the Penguins couldn’t hold onto the lead.

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