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Penguins flat after big road win
YOUNGSTOWN
After a resilient, come-from-behind win on the road against Wright State, the Youngstown State men’s basketball team laid an egg at home on Thursday against Valparaiso, losing 78-62.
Valpo’s Alec Peters scored 17 points and pulled down 15 rebounds in the win while Cameron Morse led YSU with 18 points at Beeghly Center.
YSU (8-10, 2-3 Horizon League) hung around with the Crusaders for much of the first half. The Penguins shot 46.2 percent from the floor and went 5-10 from 3-point land in the first 20 minutes.
A Jordan Kaufman jumper with 5:10 left before halftime trimmed the Crusaders’ lead to two, but then the visitors went on an 11-2 run to take an 11-point lead into the locker rooms.
From there on, it was Valpo’s night.
Shane Hammink hit a 3-pointer to begin the second half. Valpo extended the lead to 23 late in the game, cruising to a road win.
“I thought we did a pretty good job on the defensive end,” YSU head coach Jerry Slocum said. “Our offense let us down again.”
Valpo (13-4, 3-1) shot 46.8 percent from the floor compared to YSU’s 41.8 but the Crusaders were helped in two key areas — free throw shooting and rebounding.
Valpo was 14-18 from the foul line while the Penguins were just 10-19. Valpo also outrebounded YSU 46-24 and grabbed 14 offensive rebounds.
“They’re bigger than us,” Slocum said. “Our guys battled hard on the glass.”
Francisco Santiago was limited to one point.
“He didn’t have a very good game,” Slocum said. “I didn’t think it was necessarily a lot of them, it was more us.
“[Francisco] has played at a really high level the last seven or eight games. I thought he had a really off night.”
Peters, a projected late first-round draft pick in the upcoming NBA Draft, said his team got off to a slow start, but once they figured out how to defend YSU, they were set.
“We had to switch a lot on their action because they’re running all over the floor,” Peters said. “We did our best to switch in order to keep their guards in check.”
After a loss to Oakland and a close win against bottom-feeding Detroit, Peters said his team came out with some extra energy tonight.
“We’re a team that hasn’t been shooting the ball well and anytime we see the ball going into the hoop it’s going to help out in the long run.
“We needed to get back on track. We showed bits and pieces of it tonight, but we need to put it together because we’ve done it against teams we’ve beaten this year like Alabama, BYU and Rhode Island.”
One of the lone bright spots for YSU was the play of Jeremiah Ferguson. He scored seven points in his eight minutes and was perfect on his three shots from the field.
“He plays at a different speed,” Slocum said. “He’s a kid that affects the game from a speed standpoint. He’s getting better every day at practice and his play tonight probably warrants him getting more minutes.”
YSU welcomes UIC (9-8, 2-2) to Beeghly Center on Saturday before having to play at Detroit on Monday.