Memory of the Penguins’ final game haunts returning players

August 4, 2012 at 12:10a.m.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

When Youngs- town State senior tackle Andrew Radakovich thinks back to last season, he doesn’t think about the offense setting 19 school records or about leading the conference in almost every offensive category or even about going on the road and handing North Dakota State its only loss of an eventual national championship season.

Instead, one memory overshadows everything.

“Last year, I just remember sitting down at the end of the Missouri State game, knowing we gave up a chance to be in the playoffs,” Radakovich said of YSU’s 38-34 loss in the finale. “No one took it from us. We gave it up and that’s something I don’t want to have happen again.”

YSU coughed up a 17-point halftime lead in that game, a memory that was still on everyone’s mind as the Penguins opening training camp with their first practice on Friday.

“If you watched the season last year, even if you were just a freshman standing on the sidelines, you really understand how close we were and what we could have accomplished,” said junior quarterback Kurt Hess, a first-team all-conference selection and one of 11 returning offensive starters. “We really don’t want that to go unnoticed.

“Even though we’d like to forget it, it still burns in our hearts.”

The Penguins opened camp with their highest expectations of the three-year Eric Wolford era and player after player repeated the same mantra — nothing short of the playoffs is acceptable.

“It’s a big year and you can tell by the environment,” said senior RB Jamaine Cook, also a first team all-conference pick. “Everyone is so happy for camp to start. Nobody’s like, ‘Ah, we don’t want to be here,’ because we put in so much work.

“We want to get back to the playoffs. We want to get back to those [Jim] Tressel days and get a ring.”

To get there, YSU’s defense and special teams — which have struggled in Wolford’s first two years — must improve.

Six defensive starters return, although only two of them (senior DT Aronde Stanton and sophomore LB Travis Williams) started all 11 games last season.

The feeling is, if the defense and special teams can just be above average, YSU’s offense will be good enough to challenge for a conference title — and maybe a lot more.

“We’re not thinking about what outsiders think about the offense or the defense; we’re working together as a team,” Stanton said. “We know the offense is going to put up points.

“The key to the defense is getting off the field on third down and stopping people from scoring and making big plays off us.”

YSU’s defense struggled in all three of those areas in the second half of the Missouri State game, with the Bears completing the comeback with a touchdown pass with 10 seconds left. But Wolford is putting a positive spin on the loss, believing it made the Penguins hungrier.

“It was gut-wrenching and devastating and, at the time, I didn’t understand really how that could happen,” Wolford said. “But it was probably the best thing that ever happened to us.

“My feeling is this, if we would have won that game, we probably get in the playoffs and in the playoffs, because of our momentum, we probably would have won a couple games.”

Considering the Penguins played 21 freshman last year, Wolford believes those players would have felt entitled to get back to the postseason.

“It’s kind of like when you give everything to a child and all the sudden he has to work,” Wolford said. “It would have come too easy.

“This team is much more hungry than it would have been.”