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Women’s team is ready for reversal
YOUNGSTOWN
Home is where the heart is and it’s hopefully where the Youngstown State women’s basketball team can get back on track.
“We’re excited to play in front of our home fans and maybe start a streak and turn it around here,” Penguins junior forward Brandi Brown said.
What the Penguins have to turn around is a four-game losing streak, their longest of the season. The past week and a half also has been the only time YSU has lost consecutive games in the 2011-12 campaign.
“I think that we’ve hit some mental lapses in the past couple of games,” Brown said. “We started strong, but we haven’t come in with the right mentality to win games.”
The Pomona, Calif., native said that the Penguins have dealt with physical fatigue lately, but so does every team. She also cited mental fatigue, mostly on the defensive end.
In their last four losses, the Penguins have allowed an average of 77.5 points per game. In December, when they won three out of five, the Penguins surrendered only 58.8 ppg.
Facing Detroit tonight and Illinois-Chicago on Saturday, YSU runs into teams that average 64.5 and 64.2 points per game, respectively.
“The biggest improvement [we can make] is our defense,” Brown said. “Not letting one breakdown lead to ten breakdowns right after.
“It’s recognizing what’s wrong and fixing those things right away. Not letting them carry on and kind of string along throughout the entire game.”
Game by game or season by season, head coach Bob Boldon has called his two-year tenure in Youngstown “a process.”
“That process isn’t always comfortable,” he said.
Just two years ago, the Penguins didn’t win a game. Last year [Boldon’s first], they won six and this weekend they have a chance to match the win total of the past three seasons combined.
But can you really judge success on wins alone?
“Theoretically, it shouldn’t be true,” Boldon said. “We should be able to evaluate good play and bad play. That’s what we’re paid to do.
“You should be able to evaluate when you play well and lose as well as well as when you play well and win. That’s our job, to evaluate play regardless of winning or losing.
“And then it’s our job, when we’re doing things correctly, to make sure it results in a win.”
Coming out of this weekend, then through the rest of the season, Boldon wants to see the defensive improvements that Brown knows need to be made.
But his biggest concern lies on the offensive end.
“Taking care of the basketball,” he said. “If we can play the rest of the year and get our turnovers in that 10 to 15 range I think that would be a success.”
The Penguins average 18.2 turnovers per game.