Penguins fall behind early, can’t catch up in loss to Oakland

February 24, 2017 at 12:05a.m.

youngstown

Darth Vader’s stormtroopers likely would’ve had a more effective night shooting than the Youngstown State women’s basketball team did Thursday night against Oakland.

The Penguins (9-19, 5-12 Horizon League) shot just 30 percent overall and 14 percent from 3-point land in an 80-58 defeat.

Sophomore Alison Smolinski, who came into the game averaging 25 points per game the past two contests, shot a miserable 1 of 11 from the floor (all from beyond the arc) and scored just five points.

Overall the Penguins shot 4 of 27 on 3-point attempts.

“It’s extremely frustrating when we’re known as a shooting team,” sophomore Kelley Wright said. “We’ve got really strong shooters.”

The Penguins were led by Mary Dunn’s 14 points in 19 minutes of work. Wright and Melinda Trimmer each added nine points.

Oakland (17-11, 11-6) went to Taylor Jones often. She finished with 26 points while Nola Anderson and Leah Somerfield had 14 and 13 points, respectively.

YSU head coach John Barnes said if his players aren’t able to find their shooting rhythms, nights like this are what can happen.

“We’re so limited offensively if we’re not shooting [well] it’s not going to go well,” Barnes said. “Oakland has tons of talent. They can make a run and win the tournament with their talent.

“If we shoot poorly it’s going to end up like this.”

Things appeared to be pretty even early. Dunn grabbed what turned out to be her only offensive rebound midway through the first quarter and hit a layup to make the score 9-8 Oakland heading into a timeout. But the Golden Grizzlies held the Penguins scoreless for the final 5:06 of the quarter and by the quarter’s end it was 22-8 Oakland.

“It’s frustrating because Mary had that put-back and we were all really positive about it,” Wright said. “But then they came out and went after it and I don’t know if we were entirely prepared for it.”

Barnes said while the offense wasn’t firing, his team was also unable to rely on defense to keep things close — a trait past YSU teams had.

“The previous couple years even when we weren’t scoring we still had a pretty good defense,” Barnes said. “But defense is an area we’ve been struggling in this year. We’re missing shots and they’re still scoring and a one-point lead goes from there.”

At his weekly news conference leading up to Thursday’s game, Barnes said he was hopeful the Penguins would be able to put up more of a fight than they did on the road against Oakland on Jan. 22. The Penguins lost that game 80-54 after having only one day to prepare after a game on Jan. 20. But with four days to prepare this time, the improvement was negligible.

YSU was also outrebounded 50-33 and the Penguins surrendered 14 offensive boards that led to 21 second-chance points compared to just six themselves.

The two bright spots for YSU was a 14-of-17 (82 percent) shooting night from the foul line and a 18-13 edge in turnovers forced which the Penguins managed to turn into an 18-16 scoring advantage.

YSU finishes the regular season at noon Saturday against Detroit Mercy.