YSU men’s hoops have high hopes

By Joe Scalzo

scalzo@vindy.com

Youngstown

YSU men’s basketball coach Jerry Slocum doesn’t do bold proclamations, preferring to leave those types of things to, say, the school’s football coach.

He likes to talk about getting better and working hard and commitment and leadership. Which is why, when he talked openly Thursday about finishing in the top third of the Horizon League this season, you knew he meant it.

“I’m not going to hide the fact that I like our balance, I like the work commitment, I like their attitudes, I like how they like each other,” Slocum said. “There’s really a lot of positive things.

“This is a group that can be there at the end of the year in the top third of the league.”

The Penguins return four of their five starters from last year’s 9-21 team, which came within a tip-in at the buzzer of defeating league champion Milwaukee in the regular season finale. Slocum believes the team was close to a breakthrough in the second half of the season, even if it didn’t show up in the standings, and carried that momentum into summer league play and fall practices.

“I don’t think there’s a guy [on the team] that’s not a better basketball player than he was at the end of last year,” Slocum said.

YSU competed in the Pittsburgh Summer Pro-Am in the offseason for the first time, playing teams such as Pitt, West Virginia, Duquesne and Robert Morris. The experience helped the players’ skills and their team chemistry, sophomore guard Kendrick Perry said.

“It definitely helped us gain an advantage,” said Perry, who averaged nearly 15 points per game last summer and was one of the league’s breakout players. “Teams like Butler can compete with those Big East schools, so holding our own against them really shows how we’re going to be this year.”

Perry and junior forward Damian Eargle were generally regarded as two of the team’s three best players by the end of last season — four-year starter Vytas Sulskis, who graduated, was the other — and they’re surrounded by a good mix of experience (senior guards Ashen Ward and DuShawn Brooks and junior guard Blake Allen) and promise (sophomore forward Josh Chojnacki and Fletcher Larson, who both top 6-foot-8).

The Penguins entered the 2009-10 season with similar expectations and went 2-16 in the Horizon League, done in by close losses, poor chemistry and a roster that never made the jump from promising to good.

When asked what’s different about this year’s team compared to that one, senior Ashen Ward said, “Collectiveness and dedication. I see guys in the gym before I am. We push each other in practice. You can just feel the sense of dedication.”

For all the optimism, YSU is still a team that’s finished last the past two seasons with 2-16 records. The league is as wide open as its been in years — no first team all-conference players return and only two second-teamers are back — but the players know they’ll have to back up the lofty talk on the floor.

“If I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t say it,” said Eargle. “Just come to the games and see what we do.

“I’m pretty sure after the first home game or the second home game, they’ll see we’re a real, legit team, a top-three team in this league.”