Healing Penguins revved up

By Pete Mollica

YSU’s stretch run begins Saturday against Southern lllinois.

YOUNGSTOWN — Coming off a week’s layoff, the Youngstown State football team is heading into the most difficult portion of its 2009 schedule.

According to head coach Jon Heacock and a couple of Penguins starters, the week off came at a most opportune time as the team is refreshed and almost 100 percent healthy.

But Heacock and the players know that they are going to have to be at their best over the final five games of the regular season if they want to extend the season.

Saturday, the Penguins open a three-game stretch against the Missouri Valley Football Conference’s top three teams in the standings. It begins at Southern Illinois in Carbondale, Ill. The Penguins (4-2, 2-1) and the Salukis (5-1, 4-0) will kickoff Saturday at 4 p.m, at McAndrew Stadium.

YSU then will return home to take on South Dakota State (5-1, 4-0) in the annual homecoming contest on Oct. 31 in a 4 p.m. contest.

The Penguins will follow that with a road game at Northern Iowa (5-2, 3-1) on Nov. 7 in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

“It was a good week off,” Heacock said Monday. “The coaches spent a lot of time with their own evaluations and got in some recruiting, and we tried to keep up the same routine with the players.

“We spent a lot of time going over things that have and haven’t worked over the first six games of the season and we spent a lot more time on the things that have been working,” Heacock said.

“But the players seemed well rested and we’ve gotten a lot healthier over the week and we’re going to need all of that going into these final five games,” he said. “We’ve gotten ourselves into position to do what we hoped to do and that’s exciting.”

Junior cornerback Brandian Ross, who has three interceptions and made 13 tackles in the Penguins’ last game (a 31-21 win over Western Illinois), is excited about what lies ahead for the team.

“If you’re a true competitor and you love the game, this is just what you’ve been waiting for,” Ross said. “We know what we’re up against, but you still have to take things one game at a time.

“We know that we can’t afford to lose and that it’s almost like a playoff situation right now, but it’s not the playoffs and we know that we still have four games left after Saturday,” Ross said.

“We know we are the underdog on Saturday and we relish that,” he said. “We also know that they came in here last year and really gave us a good whipping and we haven’t forgot that.

“Defensively, we know that we have to stop the run and we’ve got an awful lot to stop there,” Ross said. “Southern Illinois is a very good football team. The week off did us a lot of good, I really felt refreshed at practice on Sunday.”

Senior offensive guard Brian Mellott, an Austintown native, said the Penguins knew when the schedule game out that these final five games were going to be the turning point in the season.

“It’s just the nature of the game,” Mellott said. “We haven’t played as well as we can up to now. But when you look back, most of it has been fundamentals, a missed block and missed tackle, things that hopefully been corrected.

“We have a lot of young players on offense and they are still learning, but they are also getting better each week,” Mellott said.

“Over the past couple of years, we’ve listened to the seniors telling us about the regrets that they’ve had over the seasons, but we’ve got 12 seniors on this team that want to finish this season with no regrets,” Mellott said.

“Yes, we will be the underdog in Saturday’s game, but you have to make that underdog mentality work for you,” he said.

mollica@vindy.com