43
Penguins enjoying KP duty
Photo
YSU sophomore guard Kendrick Perry scored a career-high 28 points to help the Penguins snap a 23-game road losing streak Saturday night.
By Joe Scalzo
YOUNGSTOWN
The Youngstown State men’s basketball team plays the first of 13 home games tonight, which means, if you miss it, you’ll only have 12 more chances this year to watch Kendrick Perry.
He alone might be worth the price of admission.
The sophomore guard scored a career-high 28 points in YSU’s 76-69 season-opening win over Samford on Saturday, adding four assists, four steals and three rebounds.
“It’s not like it’s a surprise to us,” said Penguins coach Jerry Slocum. “In our scrimmages, he’s been doing the exact same stuff.”
Perry finished last season as one of the team’s best players, and its crunch-time scorer. His step-back 3-pointer with 21 seconds left sealed the win over Butler and he forced overtime against Valparaiso with a buzzer-beating shot.
Perry then made a big jump in his development while playing in the Pittsburgh Summer Pro-Am and many inside the program believe he has a chance to be YSU’s best player since Quin Humphrey graduated in 2007.
“He has whole [different] level, speed-wise,” than other players, Slocum said of Perry. “He’s probably as quick a kid, while [staying] under control, that I’ve coached.
“That’s hard for people to really prepare [for]. All the sudden they think they’ve got him cornered and he just has such good anticipation and basketball IQ [that he gets free]. And the other side of it is he shares the ball.”
Perry was second in the Horizon League in assist-to-turnover ratio (2.1) last season — teammate Blake Allen was first at 2.2 — and was first on the team with 4.1 assists per game.
He continued that trend on Saturday — he had two turnovers in 38 minutes — and said he enters this season with a better understanding of Division I basketball.
“First game last year, I guess I tried to adjust to the college game,” said Perry, an Ocoee, Fla., native. “This year, and after the tremendous offseason we all had, we’re all more focused this year and all more in tune with one goal of winning the Horizon League championship.”
YSU’s win over Samford snapped a 23-game road losing streak, a good sign for a team with 16 road games. Tonight, the Penguins play Notre Dame College (which is transitioning from NAIA to NCAA Division II), followed by a home game against UC-Riverside, which finished second-to-last in the Big West last season with a 12-19 record.
“It’s an important week for us,” Slocum said. “We’ve only got 13 home games so every one of those suckers needs to be important.”
The only downside to YSU’s opening win was the play of its bench, which combined to score just two points on a basket by sophomore Josh Chojnacki, who played 19 minutes — five more than the other five reserves combined.
“Minutes are earned in practice,” said Slocum, who noted that every reserve is either a freshman or sophomore. “Let’s face it — we’re very young.
“I’m not at the point where I’m discouraged or frustrated with them. It’s a point where they’ve got to grow up and mature quickly.”