Youngstown State University is turning into a home game winning juggernaut.  After years of struggling to compete in the Horizon League at home, on the road, in the Giant Eagle parking lot on 224, or at a neutral site, the Penguins have finally hit stride in the comfort of the Beeghly Center.  Sunday afternoon, the train kept rolling as the Penguins disposed of Green Bay, 77-47, with little resistance.  The win was the largest ever conference margin of victory (30 points), previously 25, for the Penguins.

“We were up by 13 at the half”, said Jerry Slocum.  “The maturation of this team has to be to put the hammer down when they get the chance to.  Coming out to start the second half, we were up 14, and it went from 14 to 20.  Our guys seized the moment with their defensive play.”

In the first half, the Phoenix held a two point lead a minute into the contest, it would be their largest and final lead of the day.  Youngstown State used an array of weapons to compile a lead as big as 18 points in the half, and eventually settled on a 38-25 margin at the break.  Blake Allen continued to produce for YSU, knocking down ten points to lead all scorers.  Kendrick Perry contributed eight and DuShawn Brooks six more to punctuate a strong half on both ends of the court for the Guins.  Coach Jerry Slocum had the luxury of using his bench frequently as eight different Penguins scored in the opening half.

“It’s a growing point and we talked at halftime about finishing”, said Perry.  “We preach about taking care of home court and I feel we are doing a good job of that this year.”

In the second half, the Penguins did something they have had trouble with in the recent past, holding a large lead.  Through the first five minutes of the second half, YSU outscored the Phoenix, 11-7, to maintain the double-digit margin.    At the 13:55 mark of the half, the Penguins held a 51-35 advantage.  Slocum was very careful not to mass-substitute at any point always having three starters on the court while getting Shawn Amiker (above), Josh Chojnacki, Nate Perry, D J Cole, and Fletcher Larson, were able to log some valuable game minutes with various combinations of the starting five.

In between the substitutions, the glue (starting five) of the Penguins kept everything tight.  Brooks was hitting threes, Ashen Ward was hustling and getting the dirty work done, and Allen and Perry did a good job working both the shot clock, and the Green Bay defense.  With 8:43 left in the game, the Penguins held a 67-43 lead.  The other Perry, Nate, hit a couple of threes to stockpile the lead to 70-45 with 7:38 remaining.

“I wanted to bring guys in to get them time with the ones”, said Slocum.  “Someone looked over at me and said we were up by 25.  I didn’t really care about the score as much as I did getting the bench some time to battle.  The bench players did a good job defensively for us.”

With the loss, Green Bay dipped to 3-6 in Horizon League play.  The Phoenix got XX points from Alec Brown and X rebounds from Kam Cerroni.

Youngstown State (11-8, 6-3) got 16 from Allen, 15 from Kendrick Perry, 12 from Ward, 12 from Brooks, and six from Eargle.  Eargle also had 8 rebounds and continued his streak of recording a block in every game this season early on, adding a few more to his record-nearing total.  Noteworthy in the victory was the good play Slocum got out of his bench, Nate Perry and Amiker are starting to look more confident each time they enter a game regardless of the situation or score.

The Penguins welcome Cleveland State Saturday as part of a doubleheader, which will start a half hour after the YSU women’s game that tips at 4:30 p.m.