Norse stay course to take down YSU

January 31, 2016 at 12:09a.m.

By STEVE WILAJ

YOUNGSTOWN

Coming off an impressive win against Wright State on Thursday, the Youngstown State women’s basketball team didn’t suffer a let-down performance Saturday afternoon against Northern Kentucky.

Actually, the Penguins were solid.

Problem is — as head coach John Barnes put it — the Norse “just played great.”

Downing YSU 88-77 at Beeghly Center, Northern Kentucky shot 58 percent from the field to drop the Penguins to 14-6 overall and 5-4 in the Horizon League.

“I thought they played really well,” Barnes said of the Norse (12-8, 4-5). “I thought they came out and shot extremely well. ... We jumped on them a little bit, but that wasn’t necessarily indicative of the game. Then they started making shots and that makes it hard to guard.”

NKU entered as the conference’s top-ranked 3-point shooting team and stayed true to form, connecting on 9 of 18 shots from behind the arc. Five Norse scored in double figures — Courtney Roush (20 points), Shar’Rae Davis (16), Kasey Uetrecht (14), Christine Roush (13) and Sarah Kinch (11) — and NKU rushed out to a 50-41 halftime lead.

“That’s not as well as we normally shoot it,” Norse coach Dawn Plitzuweit said. “But especially in this type of environment, our kids rose to the challenge and found a way to put the ball in the basket very efficiently.”

NKU shot 17 for 28 in the first half (60.7 percent), as Davis — the former Penguins starting point guard of 2012-13 — scored 12 points in nine minutes off the bench.

YSU, which was led by 18 points apiece from Sarah Cash and Janae Jackson, then trailed 69-60 after three quarters before falling behind by 14 points early in the fourth. The Penguins fought back to cut its deficit to 81-75 with 2:16 remaining, but that’s as close as they came.

“It takes a lot of energy to fight back,” Barnes said. “I thought we made a little run, but they kept scoring.”

YSU — which went scoreless for nearly three-and-a-half minutes in the middle of the fourth quarter — finished at 40.3 percent shooting for the contest, including 13 of 37 on 3’s. Nikki Arbanas and Kelsea Newman each scored 11 points.

“We didn’t do too well on defense today,” Jackson said. “We were doing what we can offensively, but on defense, it seemed like they were doing everything that they wanted to. We just have to be able to buckle down.

“It’s definitely disappointing. We beat Wright State (second in the conference) — and nobody thought we could, but we did — and then we come out and lose today. But it’s mental and we just have to bounce back.”

YSU has two more games remaining on its four-game homestand. The Penguins host Oakland on Thursday and Detroit on Saturday.