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Youngstown State women roll past Cleveland State
By Joe Scalzo
YOUNGSTOWN
The Youngstown State women’s basketball team entered Thursday’s game against Cleveland State with a big advantage — literally.
The Vikings’ four-guard, one-forward starting lineup doesn’t feature a single player 6-foot or taller, which meant the Penguins were in the rare position of being taller than a conference opponent (at least in the frontcourt).
“Yeah, it doesn’t happen very often,” Schlegel said, grinning.
The 6-foot Schlegel finished with 25 points and 18 rebounds — one shy of her career-high — and fellow senior Tisha Walker (6-2) added 21 points to power the Penguins past CSU 79-65 at Beeghly Center.
Youngstown State led for all but 72 seconds and held a double-digit lead for the entire second half in improving to 6-0 at home.
“We definitely want to take care of home court,” YSU coach John Barnes said. “The [fan] support keeps growing throughout this year, which is exciting for the players and the coaches. Hopefully we’ll get more fans and keep winning for them.”
Cleveland State entered the game averaging 72.9 points per game — the second-highest total in the Horizon League — but shot just 34 percent from the field. Imani Gordon scored 19 points to lead the Vikings (9-6, 1-1), but shot just 6 of 19 from the field. Leading scorer Cori Coleman added 14 points but made just 5 of 17 shots.
“We talked about having a lot of energy coming into the game and I think it showed on the defensive end,” Barnes said. “We did a good job of keeping them out of the paint, making them shoot from the outside and try to rebound.
“We’re trying to be a very, very good defensive team.”
The Penguins (13-3, 2-1) out-rebounded the Vikings 47-29 and held a 40-26 advantage in points in the paint. They struggled a bit with their outside shooting, but Kelsea Newman came off the bench to score 12 points on four 3-pointers. Newman also had seven assists with zero turnovers.
“I think Kelsea Newman did a great job,” Barnes said.
The Penguins were coming off a 66-43 loss at Green Bay and Barnes said he was pleased with the way the team practiced all week, particularly on Monday when the team started classes for the spring semester.
“We normally play how we practice, so that was encouraging,” he said. “I was worried coming off the UIC-Green Bay trip, which was a hard-fought trip and we were worn out. But Monday we had a great practice and that continued throughout the week.”
Now the Penguins have a week off before playing host to Wright State, which won last year’s Horizon League tournament. YSU lost all three meetings to the Raiders last season by double digits, but WSU is without preseason conference player of the year Kim Demmings, who suffered a season-ending knee injury in the first 90 seconds of the opening game.
The Raiders (13-4, 2-1) have been one of the league’s best teams anyway.
“Wright State is extremely tough,” Barnes said. “They play a very up-tempo style, very fast-paced, so we’re gonna have our hands full to say the least. We’ll need that week to prepare.”