Penguins rally for victories

Youngstown State head football coach Jon Heacock has watched his team rally in the last two games the Penguins have played.

Heacock is very happy with the wins, but he is very concerned about the way that his Penguins have fallen behind in both games.

Two weeks ago, it was a blocked punt after the Penguins’ first series against Austin Peay, which resulted in a touchdown. The Penguins found themselves behind 14-3 early before rallying for a 38-21 victory.

Saturday at Northeastern, trouble surfaced again on the Penguins’ first punt after their first series. The punt was returned 76 yards for an opening score and the Penguins found themselves trailing again 7-0 and 14-7 before they broke open the contest.

What concerns Heacock the most is the fact that the Penguins have spent hours upon hours during fall camp and the past two weeks working very hard on special teams play. The veteran coach is concerned about what has happened in the last two games.

“Two weeks and two punts that didn’t go the way they were intended,” he said. “I really don’t know what happened. We’re just going to have to evaluate the films and go from there, but we definitely have to make some improvements in that area.

“It really puts you into a difficult position and puts added pressure on the team,” he added. “Fortunately, we settled down, made some adjustments at halftime and we played a much better second half.”

The Penguins have posted the exact same score in each of their two victories. The 38 points is fine with Heacock, but he’d like to bring down the 21 points by the opposition.

But in all fairness to the defense, they really only allowed one touchdown to Northeastern. The other two scores by the Huskies came on the punt return and a drive off an interception thrown by YSU senior quarterback Brandon Summers at the end of the third quarter.

Summers, who has thrown five touchdown passes in the last two games, also has thrown four interceptions, two of them on Saturday. One was a poorly thrown pass, the other one went through the hands of one receiver right into the hands of a Northeastern defender.

Summers is still playing very well and as Heacock said after the game, “he just keeps getting better and better every day.”

Summers scored three touchdowns Saturday running the ball, one on a 73-yard open-field gallop in the closing minutes that shut the door on the Huskies. His other two runs were just for 1 yard each, but one of those came on a fourth-down play from the 1 where the Penguins were struggling to get the ball into the end zone. Everybody expected him to sneak it over, but instead, he quickly moved to the outside and waltzed into the end zone untouched.

The Penguins’ running game produced 227 yards, 73 of which came on Summers’ late TD run.

Senior tailback Kevin Smith again led the way with 72 yards on 22 carries and senior fullback/tailback Dana Brown added 63 yards on 11 carries.

The problem that now faces the Penguins is that after this Saturday’s Missouri Valley Football Conference opener with Indiana State (a team that hasn’t won in such a long time that nobody even remembers the last win), they’ll get into the meat of the conference games. They’ll all be tough.

First, the Penguins can’t afford to give up those touchdowns from special teams and they can’t afford to turn the football over two or three times a game. And the running game still has to get a lot better.

The Penguins showed a little bit of surprise element on Saturday when they used an end-around pass play to set up their first touchdown.

Senior wide receiver Aaron Pitts, a quarterback in high school, took a handoff from Smith and then rolled to his right and passed to Summers. The play covered 19 yards and set up Summers’ first touchdown run of 1-yard that tied the contest.

Penguins’ kicker, junior Stephen Blose, pulled off a perfectly executed onside kick to open the second half, which Heacock said gave them momentum for the rest of the game.

Junior Brandian Ross was there to recover the ball at the YSU 43. The Penguins didn’t score a touchdown after that, but settled for 36-yard Blose field goal.

XPete Mollica covers YSU athletics for The Vindicator. E-mail him at mollica@vindy.com.