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YSU’s Brown, Boldon earn Horizon honors
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Youngstown State senior forward Brandi Brown (42) was named the Horizon League’s player of the year after finishing second in the conference in scoring and first in rebounding. Three years after going 0-30 as a freshman, Brown sparked the Penguins to a 21-8 mark and the second seed in this week’s conference tournament.
By Joe Scalzo
YOUNGSTOWN
Three years ago — almost to the day — Youngstown State women’s basketball coach Cindy Martin abruptly resigned, leaving behind a team that had just gone 0-30, but also a promising freshman named Brandi Brown, who was 2,500 miles away from her home in Los Angeles and facing the world’s most obvious question.
“Did I think about leaving?” she said Monday. “Well, yeah, the thought crossed my mind.
“Things were definitely dim that first year.”
Over the next month, she made one of the biggest decisions in the program’s history. She stayed.
“I had already developed a lot of relationships on this campus and I was already invested in my teammates,” Brown said. “So, going to another school was not a huge decision for me.”
Hiring a coach was. After being turned down by a handful of higher-profile candidates, YSU athletic director Ron Strollo sorted through a stack of 87 applicants and chose a 35-year-old Stark County native named Bob Boldon whose most recent head coaching job came at Lambuth, a (now defunct) NAIA school in Tennessee.
On Monday, Brown and Boldon received the Horizon League’s two biggest honors. Brown was named the league’s player of the year and Boldon was voted coach of the year after leading the Penguins (21-8) to their best season since joining the conference in 2001.
When asked if she thought this was possible after her freshman year, Brown said, “Yeah, I did. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I knew if I stuck it out, things could get better.”
Brown, a first team Academic All-America, is the first Penguin to earn conference player of the year since the Mid-Continent Conference chose Brianne Kenneally in 1999-2000. Brown led the conference in rebounding (11.3 per game) and was second in scoring (20.5).
“I’m really happy for her and really proud of what she accomplished,” Boldon said. “I think it’s very, very deserving.”
The Penguins were picked to finish eighth in the nine-team conference in the preseason poll. They finished second, helping Boldon become the first Penguin to earn coach of the year since Ed DiGregorio in 1998-99.
When asked what it means, Boldon said, “It means I’m really good at hiring assistant coaches. I’m very fortunate to work with the people that I work with on our staff and across the board.”
Freshman point guard Shar’Rae Davis, who finished second in the conference in assists per game (4.4), was named to the league’s all-newcomer team, the first Penguin to do so since Brown in 2010.
“Shar’Rae’s done a fantastic job for us,” Boldon said. “When I sat here for our first interview, I was very open in saying we don’t have a point guard that I like playing.
“We have a point guard that I like to play now.”