No sweat: YSU men top UIC, stop skid

January 25, 2015 at 12:09a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

Junior Bobby Hain dropped 37 minutes’ worth of sweat onto the Beeghly Center court on Saturday night in helping Youngstown State to its first Horizon League victory, then spent five minutes doing the same thing to his chair in the postgame press conference.

When told not to get it too wet for head coach Jerry Slocum, Hain smiled and said, “I don’t think he’ll care right now.”

He was right. Before Slocum sat down, he asked if it was the same chair. When told it was, he laughed, sat down and said, “That dude’s like a faucet. When he plays like that, it’s fine with me.”

Hain scored 21 points and grabbed five rebounds to help the Penguins beat visiting UIC 77-64 while cutting off any talk of the doomsday scenario (i.e. going winless in the Horizon League) before it could begin.

“No, we don’t try to think about that,” Hain said. “Every game, we’re just like, ‘Let’s get the next one. Let’s get the next one.’ Finally, this one came along.”

Saturday’s game was a reversal of the teams’ first meeting on Jan. 2, when YSU blew an 18-point, first-half lead en route to a 77-71 loss in Chicago. The Penguins (10-13, 1-7) fell behind by 12 points early on Saturday, only to battle back within two at halftime. Hain then started the second half with a three-point play and YSU never trailed again, outscoring the Flames 15-2 over the first five minutes.

“We just came out and brang it,” Hain said

UIC (5-16, 1-5) cut a 16-point lead down to eight with two minutes left on Paris Burns’ layup, but YSU sophomore Marcus Keene drained the shot clock and hit a fadeaway 3-pointer to put the game away.

“I’m really proud of their attitudes,” Slocum said. “I walked out of practice on Friday and I said to ... one of our assistants, ‘The way they’re practicing, the way they’re caring for each other, the way they’re positive,’ you would have thought we were on a seven-game winning streak. Because it never faltered.

“I can get emotional when I talk about that. Those kids deserve a lot, a lot of credit.”

The 5-foot-10 Keene finished with 19 points and a career-high seven rebounds, senior D.J. Cole snapped out of a mini-funk with 15 points, four assists and three steals and Osandai Vaughn had 10 points and seven rebounds for the Penguins, whose last win came on Dec. 31 against Northern Kentucky.

After the loss to UIC, the Penguins lost their next six conference games by at least nine points.

“This has been one of the toughest stretches I’ve ever had in 40 years,” said Slocum, who improved to 698-506. “With a group that’s giving you everything they have and you don’t make shots and obviously it’s not pretty.

“But tonight was a night when we finally made our shots.”

The Penguins shot 15 of 22 from the field in the second half (68 percent), while UIC shot just 36 percent from the field for the game. Jason McClellan led the Flames with 19 points, but leading scorer Jay Harris managed just 13 points on 4 of 16 shooting.

Hain said the Penguins “were all hyped” afterward.

“We were all happy and had a good time in the locker room,” he said. “It was the first one of many, hopefully. Many more.”