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YSU faces tough road test
By JOE SCALZO
YOUNGSTOWN
After watching film of the YSU football team this week, Missouri State coach Terry Allen said what everyone in Youngstown wanted to hear.
“They’ve got that old Penguin swagger back,” Allen said.
After being ignored by most of the country before the season, YSU (3-1, 1-0 Missouri Valley) now finds itself nationally ranked and in the conversation as one of the early favorites to win the league.
Not so fast, said Penguins coach Eric Wolford.
“We’ve only won three games,” he said. “There’s a long football season ahead and a lot of conference play to go.”
The first step is to prove they can win on the road.
YSU’s only other road game was the opener against Penn State, which it lost 44-14. The Penguins have since won three straight home games, including last weekend’s 31-28 victory over Southern Illinois. The Salukis had won 14 straight league games, best in conference history.
“We go into each game expecting to win,” said senior WR Dominique Barnes. “We’ve got a lot of confidence around here and around the community.
“[But] to win a championship in this conference, you’ve got to win on the road. Hopefully this weekend we can try to steal one in Missouri.”
MSU (1-2, 0-1) is coming off a double-overtime loss to Illinois State and another loss would probably end its conference title hopes. Then again, who knows? So far, the league looks wide open, with the two preseason favorites (Southern Illinois and South Dakota State) a combined 1-6 overall and 0-2 in the conference.
While Wolford wants to see his team contend for the league title, he’s not ready to put himself among the favorites, particularly on paper.
“From a talent perspective, I think there’s still some teams that have a significant advantage over others,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of separation there, talent-wise, when you look at it across the board.
“I still see teams at the top, then there’s a bunch of us right around the middle pack, that next tier.”
When Wolford was hired, he said he felt the Penguins’ two biggest problems were discipline and talent. He’s tried to improve both over the past nine months.
“I don’t know if there’s a special formula [to winning] other than just trying to do things right on a consistent basis,” he said. “I don’t think you have a magic wand and all the sudden you wave it and this is the way.”
Junior linebacker John Sasson said the team has bought into the new coaching staff and the players are worried about just doing their jobs and not trying to do too much.
“When you do your job, everything falls into place nicely,” he said. “We get a lot of confidence from our coaches and they instill in us that if we believe what they say, we’re going to win.
“That’s been going on for the last few weeks now, so we have a lot of confidence in what they’re saying.”
Now that the Penguins have handled being an underdog, it’s time to see if they can handle being a favorite.
Sasson thinks they can.
“I think we’ve got a little bit of a target on our back,” he said. “We can handle that.”