Friday, February 24, 2012
Photo
Youngstown State’s Damian Eargle (21) attempts to block a shot by Wright State’s Julius Mays (34) during the second half of their Horizon League game Thursday at YSU’s Beeghly Center. The Penguins downed the Raiders, 61-54. Eargle, who scored eight points and had 13 rebounds, also finished with five blocks to claim the Horizon League record for blocks for an entire season.
SEE ALSO: Big 2nd half aids Wright State vs. Penguins
By Joe Scalzo
YOUNGSTOWN
The Youngstown State men’s basketball team hadn’t scored in exactly three minutes and 47 seconds — “An assistant coach keeps that stuff for us,” Penguins coach Jerry Slocum said afterward — and a 10-point lead over Wright State had dwindled to four with under two minutes left.
So, with the win slipping away, Kendrick Perry, YSU’s baby-faced sophomore guard with the silky smooth game, took the ball on the left wing, spun around his defender, drove toward the foul line, found an opening in between three Raiders, rose up and dropped in a jumper.
It wasn’t as emphatic as his breakaway dunk midway through the first half. It wasn’t as pretty as his ball-cradling layup early in the second half.
It was merely the game’s biggest play.
“In moments like that, I just try to put the team on my shoulders,” said Perry, who led the Penguins to Thursday’s 61-54 victory over Wright State in a Horizon League game at Beeghly Center. “When I saw the opening, I tried to be aggressive like I always am.
“God was with me on the shot and I made it.”
Perry, the Horizon League’s leading scorer, finished with 23 points on just 11 attempts to go with five assists and three steals for the Penguins (15-13, 10-7), who still haven’t clinched a first-round home game in next week’s conference tournament.
Green Bay’s overtime win over Loyola Thursday night, YSU needs either a win over Detroit in Saturday’s finale or a Phoenix loss at UIC to earn its first home tournament game since 2008.
“The first thing I said going into the locker room after we won was, ‘Don’t be satisfied,’” said Perry, who entered the game averaging 16.7 points per game. “We have one day to prepare for a good Detroit team so we can relish the victory for probably the rest of the night, but tomorrow we’ve got to come in hungrier.”
Thanks to an ugly first half — for both teams — YSU fell behind 29-27 at halftime but took control early in the second, outscoring Wright State 16-1 over a 3 1/2-minute stretch to take a 13-point lead with 15:40 left.
The Penguins held Wright State to 25 percent shooting in the second half (7 of 28), thanks to Perry’s perimeter defense (he held WSU’s leading scorer, Julius Mays, to seven points — less than half his average) and Damian Eargle’s inside presence (Eargle had five blocks and 13 rebounds).
“I thought in the second half, we did a tremendous job defensively,” said Slocum, who said the team decided not to double team the Raiders in the post in the second half, instead staying home on their outside shooters. “That game was won on the defensive end of the floor.”
Eargle set Horizon League single-season records for blocks in a season, both overall (he has 113, besting the 111 by UIC’s Scott VanderMeer in 2006-07) and in conference-only games (he has 65, two more than Marquette’s Jim McIlvaine had in 1990-91).
“Oh for real? That’s what’s up,” said Eargle, who said he had no idea he was close to either mark. “Defense is real important especially when you have an offensive game like we did.
“Shots weren’t falling for us so we just had to play defense and let the offense come to us.”
Vance Hall scored 13 points to lead the Raiders (13-17, 7-10), who had won nine straight against the Penguins. No one else scored in double figures as Mays shot just 2 of 10.
The Penguins will need to duplicate that performance on Saturday. YSU beat the Titans, 64-61, in their Horizon League opener on Dec. 1.
“That’s gonna be a real good game,” Eargle said. “They have real athletic guys and they’re real talented, so it should be really close.”