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TRUE GRIT
Penguins shock Butler at Beeghly
By Joe Scalzo
YoungsTown
With just over 21 seconds left, in the most memorable game of a most forgettable season, YSU’s most experienced player, senior Vytas Sulskis, drove from the top of the key toward the foul line, lost his footing and, as he was falling, dished off a pass to the team’s youngest player, freshman guard Kendrick Perry.
Perry caught the ball, elevated on a step-back 3-pointer and, with a flick of his wrist, turned one of the biggest football towns in America into a hoops hotbed.
Well, for one night anyway.
Perry’s shot gave the Penguins the lead. Their defense gave them the game, as YSU stunned last year’s national runner-up Butler, 62-60, in front of more than 3,000 fans Thursday night at Beeghly Center.
“It feels good, it feels great,” said Perry. “Especially in that atmosphere.
“That, by far, was the biggest shot of my career.”
That shot also capped a terrific comeback for the Penguins (8-14, 2-10), who had lost eight straight Horizon League games in large part because of their tendency to fade down the stretch.
“In close games like that, we have, in the past, sort of given up,” said Perry, who finished with 11 points, four rebounds, three assists and just one turnover. “We knew we had to play 40 minutes.”
Butler (14-9, 6-5) had a couple chances to win in the final 21 seconds. The best came with about 10 seconds left, when the Bulldogs found senior Matt Howard underneath. But when the 6-8 senior bullied his way toward the basket, he turned into a Penguin double team led by the long arms of YSU’s 6-7 forward, Damian Eargle. The shot misfired, Eargle grabbed the rebound and Howard looked at the officials like a pro wrestler who just got hit by a folding chair.
“I thought they were going to call a foul,” said Eargle, who finished with team-bests in points (16), rebounds (nine) and blocks (five). “Thank goodness they didn’t.”
After YSU missed the front end of a one-and-one, Howard threw the ball away with five seconds left. Ashen Ward missed the front end of another one-and-one, but with no timeouts left, Butler’s Shelvin Mack wasn’t even able to get a shot off.
The Penguins finished the game on a 10-0 run, shutting out the Bulldogs over the final 3 minutes, 51 seconds. Junior guard Ashen Ward made three huge shots in the final minutes, including an awkward bank-in jumper underneath that made it 60-57 with 2:28 left. Just over a minute later, Eargle hit a jumper off an offensive rebound, cutting the deficit to one.
Mack then missed a 3 on the other end and Ward grabbed the rebound to set up Perry’s game-winning shot.
“The bottom line is this — I’m so proud and happy for our kids,” YSU coach Jerry Slocum said. “They have persevered. They’ve been in every close game all year long in this league, on the road, at home, we’ve been right there.
“Tonight when went up didn’t buckle, we showed mental toughness and we really showed some mental toughness at the defensive end of floor.”
Mack led the Bulldogs with 18 points and eight rebounds, Howard had 12 points and Andrew Smith 11. After losing standout forward Gordon Haywood to the NBA after last year’s tournament run, the Bulldogs have struggled this season, losing four of the last five.
“Butler is the premier team in this league,” Slocum said. “I know they’ve been struggling a bit, but they’ve got a heck of a basketball team and a heck of a coach.”
On Jan. 9, YSU played arguably its second-best game of the season, taking the Bulldogs to the wire before falling on the road, 84-79. That game gave the Penguins confidence for their second meeting, Perry said.
“We knew when we played them the first time that we were capable of beating this team,” Perry said. “It just came down to who wanted it more.”
It was a huge win, the biggest in years for the Penguins, and they did it without their second-leading scorer, Devonte Maymon, who’s missed the last three games after being suspended indefinitely for violating team rules. They did it with their best player, Sulskis, playing just seven minutes in the second half due to foul trouble. They did it despite getting just six points from their bench. They did it despite giving up eight 3-pointers in the second half. They did it despite coming off a 20-point loss to the league’s worst team, UIC.
And they did it against the league’s perennial power, a team that had won 10 straight against YSU and 19 of 21 overall.
Bottom line? They did it.
“It’s one of our biggest wins since I’ve been here,” said Slocum, who is 57-114 in six years at YSU. “But you know, we play Saturday. With this league, you get to enjoy them short-term.”