D. J. Cole has seen his role expand greatly over the season.  Cole and his mates faced a tough task of playing without Kendrick Perry.  The Penguins rode Cole down the stretch, resulting in a game-winning bucket that gave YSU a 62-60 opening round Horizon League Tournament victory.

The win was the 17th of the season for YSU.  That was the first time a Penguins team has collected 17 wins in a season since 2001.

“I’m really proud of our guys”, said Jerry Slocum.  “Coming off of our worst effort of the year against Wright State, this was a tremendous game of character.  I thought it was Damain’s [Eargle] most solid performance of the year.”

YSU did the most they could with what they had to work with.  In the first half, the Penguins bench was outscored 10-0, but the real story was the poor handling of the ball.  YSU only had five turnovers on the stat sheet, but several times the offense was disrupted by a dropped ball, forcing the offense to reset with little time on the shot clock.

YSU got eight first half points from Kamren Belin, and seven from senior Blake Allen.  Loyola’s Christian Thomas poured in 12 points to lead the way.  Second team All-Horizon pick Ben Averkamp was minimized, only notching eight.  Averkamp has had big games against the Penguins here at the Beeghly Center in his career.

The Penguins held as big as an eight point lead in the first half, but eventually fell into a 29-29 tie at the intermission.

The absence of Kendrick Perry (above) was obvious.  The Penguins missed the junior in perimeter defense and. of course, lacked that ‘spark’ on offense that Perry has provided the last two seasons.  Granted, Shawn Amiker played good quality minutes, maybe his best game of the season, but the chemistry goes awry when your go-to guy is watching.

“We thought Kendrick was getting better”, said Slocum.  “He is not going to play at 80%, I assure you of that.  He has tried to practice and is favoring the injury and I am just not going to take that chance.  He better really be ready.”

The Ramblers jumped out to a 40-34 lead in the second half.  At the 12:08 mark, Amiker was the recipient of a nice pass from Eargle.  On the next possession, D. J. Cole drove through Loyola defenders to kiss a soft shot off of the glass for a deuce that tied the game at 43 apiece.  Cole would again drive to the hoop and convert, this time giving the Penguins a 45-43 lead with 10:58 left to play.

Baskets by Allen and Belin found YSU ahead 50-45 with 7:42 left to play in the game.

Allen buried a three from the corner with 5:52 left to play to give the Penguins an eight point lead.  With 3:22 left in the game, the Penguins again coughed away the big lead once again finding themselves ahead only by 3, at 59-56.  With 56.9 seconds left, Averkamp spotted up for a three.  Eargle stepped up to challenge the shot, to which Averkamp drew contact and got to shoot three free throws.  Averkamp sunk two of the three and YSU held a one point lead.

With 24.1 seconds left, Allen penetrated and hit Amiker, who was fouled.  Amiker hit one of his two free throws to make it 60-58 in favor of YSU.

Devon Turk drew contact on a drive with 12.7 seconds left.  Turk buried both to tie the game.  YSU inbounded and Cole saw daylight and went for it nailing the game winner.

“On a play like that, it goes from my mouth to their ears to their feet”. said Slocum.  “Spmetimes the plays are not executed when you go through all of that, but we did it.”

YSU strived for consistency throughout this game.  There were flashes of brilliance and moments of mutiny strung together over the 40 minutes of basketball played, really by both teams.

The Penguins got 15 points from Allen, 15 more from Belin, 10 from Eargle, and a sneaky 13 from Cole.  Eargle had 7 blocked shots to go with 8 rebounds.  The seven blocked shots were one shy of a Horizon League Tournament game record.  Amiker played very well, contributing 9 points and grabbing 9 boards.

“Shawn gives us energy”, commented Slocum.  “He gives us some size at the three spot that you normally would not get when playing three guards.”

Loyola got 16 from Thomas, and Jordan Hicks scored 12.  Averkamp managed 14, but credit the Penguins for keeping him out of the picture with stingy low-post defense.

The Penguins head to Valparaiso to face the #3 seed, Wright State on Thursday.