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Struggling Penguins next face Horizon co-leader CSU
By Joe Scalzo
YOUNGSTOWN
After twice watching the game film of Sunday’s 16-point loss to Oakland, Youngstown State men’s basketball coach Jerry Slocum took solace in one thing.
“At least there’s one coach feeling worse than I am today,” he said Monday, referring to Seattle’s Pete Carroll.
When no one immediately laughed, he said, “That was supposed to be a joke.”
The good news is, the Penguins don’t have to live with Sunday’s loss for the next seven months. The bad news is, they have to play at Horizon League co-leader Cleveland State on Wednesday.
The Vikings (13-10, 7-2) rolled past YSU 74-61 at Beeghly Center on Jan. 17 and are coming off a dominating 76-62 win over preseason favorite Green Bay on Saturday.
“We’ve had a lot of success against them over the years,” said Slocum, who is 6-13 against the Vikings but has beaten them in each of the last three years. “It’s a game that we have historically felt pretty confident about how they play us and we play them.”
In addition to its pressure/trapping defense, Cleveland State runs a lot of “junk” defenses against the Penguins, including box-and-one and triangle-and-two.
“Our kids have been pretty good [with those],” Slocum said. “I look for it to be a good game.”
In the first meeting, the Penguins focused on stopping CSU center Anton Grady and did a decent job (Grady had 11 points on 5 of 12 shooting with 10 rebounds). Problem was, guard Trey Lewis exploded for 29 points as the Vikings rolled up a 21-point lead late in the second half.
“I thought there was some miscoverages there,” Slocum said. “I thought we really did a poor job on some of our defensive rotations and just kind of lost [Lewis]. I don’t know how you do that, but we made some mistakes. A large part of that game, we had three sophomores and a freshman on the floor and I don’t think they understand that when you trap the post you have to rotate [back out].
“We left that dude uncovered and we’ve obviously got to do a better job on him.”
When asked what they plan to do differently, YSU senior point guard D.J. Cole smiled and said, “I can’t tell you the exact defense, but we’re going to pay a lot more attention to him.”
YSU (10-15, 1-9) is last in the Horizon League standings — UIC, at 1-7, is eighth — but Slocum said he isn’t worried about playing the spoiler role over the final six regular season games.
“I have enough work on my hands trying to get these guys better,” he said. “Over the next four or five weeks, that’s my focus every day.”