Posts Tagged ‘Monica Touvelle’

The Youngstown State women are headed into the hardest part of their schedule, and it got off to a rough start at the Beeghly Center on Thursday.  Loyola built an early ten point lead and never led by less than that until very late in the game, cruising to a 82-77 win over the Lady Penguins.

YSU made it interesting late, but the Ramblers weathered the storm for the win.  When asked if his team may have pulled it out if there were a couple more minutes to play, Coach Bob Boldon remarked, “If it would have went twenty minutes longer, they probably would have scored 100, I’m not sure what we would have ended up with.”

In the first half, Loyola continuously took advantage of an aggressive Penguins defense by working the ball to either wing and throwing cross-court passes to wide open shooters.  Three-point shooting was the key to the Penguins woes on offense in the first half.  YSU shot a dismal 3-18 from long range.  Kelsea Fickiesen hustled for the Penguins  in the first half and seemed to be in a higher gear than her teammates.  Fickiesen had seven rebounds, three on the offensive end, to keep the Penguins in the game.

“We were not getting our shots to fall early on”, said Fickiesen.  “When you shoot and miss a couple of shots, you have to keep shooting.”

In the second half, Loyola’s Monica Albano, who torched the Penguins for over 50 points in two games last season, caught a little fire.  The Penguins did a good job keeping Albano in check with only two first half points.  However, Albano was able to score 15 second half points.  Every time that YSU looked to be making a move, Albano would make a shot or pass that contributed to the lead growing.

The Penguins continued to scratch and claw to that magic ten point barrier but could not get past it. Heidi Schlegel had a nice put back off of an offensive rebound, and then hit a three to cut Loyola’s lead to 50-37 with 14:10 left to go.  With just over nine minutes to go, Monica Touvelle hit a three to pull the Penguins to within ten at 58-48.

Loyola just kept answering everything the Penguins did right on offense with buckets on their next possession, almost on cue.  With 5:07 left, Brandi Brown hit a pair of free throws to keep YSU in the right neighborhood at 69-58.  Typical of the way the night went, the Ramblers scored on their next chance to nullify any Penguin gains.  Simone Law was eating the Penguins alive in the paint.

With the Penguins down 73-60, Brown caught a Kenya Middlebrooks pass on a fastbreak chance and scored.  Loyola again responded when Katie Kortekamp breezed to the hoop for an easy bucket.  Middlebrooks connected on a three with 1:35 left to cut the lead to 77-68.  Fickiesen hit a three with 23.7 left to make it a 79-74 game.

Youngstown State (8-7, 2-2) got 26 points from Brown, including an impressive 12-13 from the free throw line.  Middlebrooks and Touvelle contributed nine points each.

“You can’t make that many mistakes and expect to win”, said Coach Boldon.  “You get what you deserve.  We lost to a very good team, although their record may not show it.  They exploited our defense.  They were very well coached and their offense was significantly better than our defense..”

Loyola (7-9, 2-3) was led by Law who finished with 21 points.  Albano knocked down 17 points.  Troy Hambric had another 12 for the Ramblers.

The Penguins welcome a talented UIC team to Youngstown for a 2:05 game on Saturday.

Butler used a 19-5 run in the second half and got 14 second-half points from Devin Brierly in a 73-64 win over the Youngstown State women’s basketball team on Thursday evening at Hinkle Fieldhouse.

YSU grabbed its first lead of the second half at 49-48 with 10:08 remaining, but the Penguins did not make another field goal for almost four minutes. By that time, Butler had gone on a 12-2 spurt to take a 60-51 lead. The Bulldogs had one 3-pointer in the first 30 minutes and five in their final stretch, four of which came from Brierly.

Brandi Brown had 23 points and 12 rebounds, both of which were game highs. Heidi Schlegel and Monica Touvelle both finished with 11 points. Brierly had 19 points to lead four Bulldogs in double figures.

Butler led by as many as seven early in the second half and held a 48-43 advantage with 12 minutes left. YSU scored the next six points and took a 49-48 lead on Melissa Thompson’s bucket in transition. Butler called a time out, and Mandy McDivitt hit a trey to start the decisive run.

Butler shot a season-high 50 percent and was one point shy of its highest scoring total of the campaign. YSU shot 35.8 percent and was outscored 32-18 in the paint and 19-8 in second-chance points.

Youngstown State will play at Valparaiso on Saturday at 2:35 p.m. Eastern. The game will be broadcast live on 570 WKBN.

The last time Youngstown State University beat Cleveland State was January 27, 2007.  On the last day of 2011, the Lady Penguins put together a good team effort, defeating the Vikings, 70-48, and headed into 2012 tied for first in the conference at 1-0.  It also marked the first time YSU has won a conference opener since 2008.  It’s a shame that 2011 is almost over, a year that will surely be earmarked as a giant step forward for the Lady Penguins basketball program.

In the first half, the Penguins opened up with a 14-2 run with 11:27 left in the half. Monica Touvelle (below) went 4-4 from three-point range and led all scorers with YSU heading to their locker room ahead comfortably, 35-22.  Brandi Brown had seven rebounds and six points in a half that saw all active members of the Lady Penguins see some minutes.

“It’s nice to get everyone involved”, remarked Coach Bob Boldon after the game. “They have all done the work in practice all week and deserve to be on the floor.”

In the second half, the Penguins started strong and held a 48-34 lead with 10:54 remaining in the contest.  Boldon’s offense looked lethal at times with just a couple of lapses in the second half.  Cleveland State cut the YSU lead to eleven at 50-39 with 9:23 left on a Shalonda Winton drive to the hoop.

An earthquake shuttered the Beeghly Center during the second half but play continued. “Was that an earthquake?” said Brown.  ” I am used to those being from California, I just thought someone fell.”

With the score 51-40, Brown drilled a three from the corner that got nothing but net. The Penguins held a 54-42 lead with five minutes to go.  Brown would extend the lead to 63-42 with just under three minutes left draining a pair of free throws after being fouled driving the length of the court with a steal.  The Vikings nevr got closer than 15 after the six minute mark of the game.

Brown finished the game with 23 points and 12 boards to notch her fifth double-double of the season and the 32nd of her career.  YSU also got an array of statistics from everyone including Touvelle’s four three-pointers, 16 points and five rebounds from Heidi Schlegel, and six assists from Macey Nortey.  The Penguins shot 42.6 from the floor and cashed in 28 more points off of Vikings turnovers.

“It feels good to go into a New Year with a win”, said Brown.  “We really executed well as a team and it was a good win for us.”

Cleveland State got 17 points from Winton and eleven more from Imani Gordon.  The Vikings slipped to 5-7 and 0-1 with the loss.

The Lady Penguins (7-5, 1-0) head West to face Butler on Thursday and Valparaiso on Saturday afternoon.

Kenya Middlebrooks scored 13 of her career-high 27 points in the final four minutes as the Youngstown State women’s basketball team rallied to defeat Akron 78-72 on Sunday afternoon at James A. Rhodes Arena.  The Penguins scored 51 points and shot 60 percent after halftime and overcame a 13-point second-half deficit to improve to 6-4 on the season. They’ve now matched their win total from last season and have won five straight road games for the first time since 1997-98. Akron dropped to 5-6.

Youngstown State trailed 60-47 with nine minutes remaining and by eight with five minutes left. Melissa Thompson hit a 3-pointer at the 4:35 mark to start the rally, and Middlebrooks made two free throws after the media timeout to make the score 67-64. Akron upped its lead to 71-65 after two Taylor Ruper free throws at the 3:30 mark, but YSU closed out the game by outscoring the Zips 13-1.

Brandi Brown‘s 3-pointer cut the deficit in half, and Middlebrooks scored the next five points to give the Penguins a 73-71 lead with 1:45 left. Ti’eshia Stubbs made 1-of-2 from the free-throw line to make the score 73-72 with just over a minute left, but Middlebrooks hit her sixth 3-pointer of the game to push the lead to 76-72 with 50 seconds remaining.

Middlebrooks had a steal on Akron’s next possession, and she rebounded Akron’s miss with just over 20 seconds remaining. She made two free throws with 6.6 seconds left for the final margin.

Brown finished with 15 points and 14 rebounds, including 10 of each in the second half. Thompson added a career-high 12 points after having 11 points total in the first nine games.  Hanna Luburgh had 20 points to lead three players in double figures for Akron.

The Penguins outshot the Zips 43.5 percent to 35.7 percent and held the rebounding edge 44-40. Youngstown State made 13 3-pointers, which was two off of the school record. Ten of those triples came on 16 attempts in the second half.  Macey Nortey and Kelsea Fickiesen combined for 11 of YSU’s 19 assists.

Youngstown State battled through a sloppy first half to only trail by four at halftime. The Penguins scored 10 straight points early in the period but trailed by as many as nine before closing the gap late.  Akron hit a triple on the first possession of the game, but the Penguins scored the next 10 points to take a 10-3 lead on a Middlebrooks trey with 17:15 remaining.  After the fast start, YSU got out of sync offensively and committed eight turnovers in the first nine minutes. Akron used that to its advantage and went on a 12-1 run to go up 15-11 with 8:04 left.

Youngstown State’s next game will be at Stony Brook on Dec. 27 at 7 p.m.  Merry Christmas Lady Penguins!

*Story Courtesy of YSU Sports

Coming off of a Thanksgiving weekend road trip, Youngstown State returned to the Beeghly Center and showed no sign of any road fatigue.  The Penguins seized an early lead and coasted to a 80-55 victory over MAC-opponent, Western Michigan to go to 4-3 on the season.  Last season, the Penguins put up a total of six wins.  To have four in seven games says a lot about just how far the program has moved forward in such a short time.

The win was the first for YSU at home this season.  It was also the first time a Lady Penguins team has won by more than 20 points since 2006, when they defeated Buffalo by 34.

Youngstown State never trailed in the game.  In the first half, they had a lead as big as 13 points with 7:52 until the break.  The most impressive part about the first half was that the Penguins scored 30 points and Brandi Brown only had two of them.  The knock against the Penguins going into this season (picked to finish 10th out of 10 teams), was that there was no balance around Brown.  Those same voters then turned around and elected Brown as the Horizon League Preseason Player of The Year.  The fact that the Lady Penguins could account for 28 points in a half without Brown disqualifies all of the preseason inaccuracies and negative speculation of the league voters.

In the first half, Monica Touvelle and Liz Hornberger had six points each. Tieara Jones and Devan Matkin had four each, and Macey Nortey and Heidi Schlegel had three each – pretty balanced scoring.  Brown did make her presence known with eight rebounds.

Brown (above), who played most of the game with her left nostril stuffed full of gauze, was used sparingly in the second half.  She scored six points in the first five minutes of the second half and finished the game with 12 points and 14 rebounds in just 30 minutes.  It didn’t seem like a double-double, but the numbers don’t lie.

“Last year, it was pretty much as Brandi goes, this team goes”, remarked Coach Bob Boldon.  “We play better when we play more balanced.  With all of the attention on Brandi, it is nice to see the other players step up.  We have played good offensive games, and we have played good defensive games.  This was the first time this year we had both.”

With 9:10 left in the game, Youngstown State increased their lead to 61-34 on a couple of threes by Schlegel.  The Penguins finished with 80 balanced points.

“I was really happy that we played so well as a team”, said Schlegel.  “We had four players in double figures and we are playing as a team rather than individuals.  Off the floor, we are really gelling as a team and that is helping us on the court.”

The Penguins got 15 points out of Schlegel.  It is nice to see her playing instead of sitting, she adds another dimension and plays bigger than her size.  Nortey had a very solid night finishing the game with 11 points and 6 assists, was 7-9 from the free throw line, 2-3 from the floor, had three steals, and even gathered a rebound.

Brown and Nortey, native Californians, recently traveled home to play a couple of games over the holiday weekend.  Sports information director for basketball, John Vogel, talked about the trip and spending time with both families.

“It was a very rewarding Thanksgiving weekend on the road”, commented Vogel.  We spent tome with both Macey and Brandi’s families and some of the other parents made the trip.  It was nice to see that kind of support that far away from home and the players enjoyed it as much as the parents who made the trip.”

The Penguins welcome Bowling Green as part of a doubleheader on December 6 at Beeghly Center.  Tipoff for that game is at 5:15.

The Youngstown State University Lady Penguins took the floor at home for the first time this season.  Playing in their fourth game of the year, and coming in with a 2-1 record (33% of last years win total), the Penguins fell to American University of the Patriot League, 48-41.  It was a struggle on offense for the ‘Guins from start to finish.

“It is early in the year and the offense we run takes time”, said Coach Bob Boldon.  “Nobody is more frustrated than me.  The only thing we didn’t miss was a half court shot.  If you are going to compete and win games against good teams, you have to shoot better.”

In the first half, American raced out to an eleven point lead with seven minutes to play.  Youngstown State cut the lead back to five points by intermission and trailed 25-20.  Brandi Brown, the Horizon League Preseason Player of The Year, and Devan Matkin each scored six for the Penguins in the opening stanza.

In the second half, the Penguins reeled off the first five points to make the score 26-25.  The home team surged ahead at the 13:11 mark of the second half, taking a 28-27 lead, their first since it was 2-0 a minute into the game. Tieara Jones got an offensive rebound and battled through three Eagles to get the lead for the Penguins.  At the 10:31 mark, Monica Touvelle hit a three to open a two-point lead for YSU.

The Penguins really struggled on offense, shooting 27.8% from the floor, 18.5% from three, and 50% from the line.

“Defensively, we are getting a little better each game.  Offensively, we seem to be getting worse each game”, noted Boldon.  “We were swapping four players at a time because we are out of shape.  I do like our depth, it gives us the freedom to make more moves, and we will continue to play a lot of people.

With YSU trailing 36-35 and 5:44 left in the game, Heidi Schlegel was fouled on a steal but missed both of the free throws.  To that point in the game, the ‘Guins were just 2-8 from the charity stripe.  Brown hit a shot with 3:40 left in the game to give the Penguins a one point lead.  Lisa Strack went to the line for American and hit both ends of the one-and-one to put the Eagles back in front by a point.

Dobbs connected for three to stretch the Eagles lead to 41-37 with 2:16 left in the contest.  Kenya Middlebrooks got to the line and hit a pair of free throws to cut the Eagles lead to two at 41-39 with 1:34 remaining.  Arron Zimmerman then hit a three-pointer to hoist American into a five point lead with 1:14 left to go.

Brown finished the game with 14 points, one short of the 1,000 point career mark, and 9 rebounds for the Penguins (2-2). Matkin and Middlebrooks finished with six points each.  The Penguins committed 21 turnovers in the loss.

Dobbs gathered 14 points for the Eagles. Stephanie Anya gathered 10 rebounds.  The Eagles had 25 turnovers, but the Penguins only scored 15 points off of those chances.

The Penguins head west to compete in a holiday tournament, which Boldon addressed with mixed emotions.  “It is nice in the sense that Brandi and Macey will get a chance to play in front of their families.  Obviously, I would rather spend the holidays with my family at home, but it is nice to allow their families to see them play.”

Youngstown State’s Kenya Middlebrooks made two free throws with 9.8 seconds remaining to lift the Penguins to a 57-56, come-from-behind win at Bucknell on Wednesday evening at Sojka Pavilion.

The Penguins trailed by 17 early in the second half and were down 56-48 with two minutes left. Brandi Brown‘s three-point play cut the margin to five, and, after a Bucknell turnover on a five-second violation, another three-point play by Middlebrooks made the score 56-54 with 1:53 left.

Brown went 1-for-2 from the line with 14.4 seconds left, and Tieara Jones grabbed the offensive rebound to keep possession. Middlebrooks was fouled on a jumper, and she sank both free throws to give YSU its first lead since the score was 13-12 10 minutes into the game. Bucknell’s Amy Zehner missed a 12-foot jumper from the right side as time expired.

Middlebrooks scored all 10 of her points in the second half, and Brown scored 12 on an off night shooting. Zehner, an impressive freshman, led all scorers with 25 points.  Youngstown State is now 2-1 on the season and has won back-to-back non-conference games on the road for the first time since November 2004.

Up 30-19 at halftime, Bucknell scored eight of the first 10 points of the second period to take a 38-21 lead with 16:28 left. YSU went on an 11-1 run to cut the margin to 39-32 with 12:01 remaining, and five points in 20 seconds by Kelsea Fickieson got the Penguins within five with 6:26 to go.

Bucknell scored the next five points to go back up by 10, and a Zehner jumper at the 3:29 mark put the Bison up 56-46. That accounted for their final points of the night.  Heidi Schlegel‘s lay-up after an offensive rebound started the run with 3:15 left, and the three-point plays by Brown and Middlebrooks came just over a minute later.

YSU was 7-for-32 for 21.9 percent and had two field goals in the final 12 minutes. That included going 5-for-18 from inside 10 feet. Bucknell countered by shooting 48.1 percent, making 13-of-27 from the field.

YSU shot just 31.3 percent but hit three more treys than Bucknell and outscored the Bison by eight from the free-throw line. Bucknell shot 51 percent in a losing effort, largely because of being outscored 28-8 off turnovers. Bucknell had 25 turnovers to YSU’s 14, and the Penguins turned the ball over just three times in the second half.

Youngstown State will host American in its Beeghly Center opener on Monday at 7:05 p.m.

** Story courtesy of YSUSports.com

The Youngstown State women’s basketball team had its highest offensive output since the 2007-08 season and held off a late charge in a 91-81 at IPFW on Sunday afternoon at the Gates Sports Complex.

Brandi Brown scored 18 of her 22 points in the second half, and Kenya Middlebrooks had 17 of her 21 in the first half for YSU, which improved to 1-1 for the season. Heidi Schlegel added 17 points, which shot 51.8 percent from the field.  YSU last scored in the nineties when it had 92 points at Valparaiso on Jan. 31, 2008.

The Penguins led by as many as 24 points with 10-and-a-half minutes remaining, but IPFW made a late run to make the final score close. Although YSU led by double digits the entire second half, a jumper by IPFW’s Anne Boese cut the score to 73-61 with 5:46 to play. Boese then hit a trey with 2:55 left to make the score 82-72.  The Mastodons didn’t hit another field goal until the 1:09 mark, and YSU had upped its lead back to 13 by then.

Boese, who scored 20 points in the opener at Cincinnati on Friday, didn’t score her first points today until there was 18:45 left. She finished with 12 points, and Erin Murphy led the Mastodons with 21. IPFW was 23-for-26 from the free-throw line.

YSU led by 17 early in the second half, but two Hillary Moore free throws made the score 48-37 with 17:53remaining. The Penguins then went on a 19-6 run, capped by a Brown lay-up with 12:04 to play, to go up by 24.

Youngstown State built a 44-29 halftime lead behind 17-first half points from Middlebrooks. The junior guard was 6-for-9 from the field, including 4-for-6 from beyond the arc. She had nine points in less than a four-minute span as YSU went on a 10-0 run to gain separation.

IPFW’s last lead came when Rachel Mauk hit a layup to put the Mastodons up 7-4. Monica Touvelle hit a three to tie the score to spark a 7-0 run, and YSU never trailed again. A Middlebrooks try at the 9:11 mark capped a 10-0 run that gave YSU a 23-12 lead.

Moore’s free throw with 4:33 left made the score 32-23, but Liz Hornberger hit a triple on YSU’s next possession to push the score to 35-23. The margin was never single digits again.

Eleven of IPFW’s 29 points in the first half came from the free-throw line.

Five different Penguins shot better than 50 percent, and nine different Guins had at least one assist. Middlebrooks added five steals.

Youngstown State will wrap up its season-opening three-game road swing at Bucknell on Wednesday. Tipoff inLewisburg, Pa. is set for 7 p.m., and the game will be carried live on 570 WKBN.

The Youngstown State women’s basketball team played well enough defensively but shot just 19.6 percent in a 69-37 loss at West Virginia in the 2011-12 season opener on Friday at the WVU Coliseum.

The Penguins trailed 26-15 at halftime because of a strong defensive effort that held the Mountaineers to 30-percent shooting. WVU shot 59.3 percent in the second half in outscoring the Guins 43-22 in the final 20 minutes.

WVU, which held a big size advantage, posted 12 blocks. Sophomore guard Taylor Palmer had 33 points on 12-of-23 shooting, including 8-for-16 from beyond the arc. The rest of the Mountaineers combined to go 0-for-10 from 3-point range.

Brandi Brown had 12 points and eight rebounds for Youngstown State but was just 3-for-15 from the field. Monica Touvelle, Heidi Schlegel and Melissa Thompson had five points apiece.

YSU dug itself a 13-0 hole until Touvelle’s 3-pointer with 12:50 remaining broke the scoreless stretch. WVU led by double digits until Macey Nortey scored on YSU’s first possession of the second half. That made the score 26-17, but WVU scored the next 10 points and held the Penguins scoreless until the 15:45 mark.

Youngstown State will stay in Morgantown tonight before heading to Fort Wayne, Ind., to play IPFW on Sunday.

The same people who vote on where Youngstown State would finish in the Horizon League this season, also vote for who the best player in the conference is.  Brandi Brown was named the preseason Horizon League Player of The Year, but her team was picked, by the same people, to finish tenth out of ten teams.  Second year coach, Bob Boldon, enters this season optimistic that his team is better for the opening tip this season than they were a year ago.  Down the stretch, the Lady Penguins were hot, and nobody wanted to play them because they came around a corner few thought they could.  The strong finish included three home wins and a buzzer loss in the opening round of the Horizon League Tournament.

This just in – Brandi Brown is really good.  The thing that the Penguins need is consistency from her supporting cast to be successful.  Brown became the first scoring leader in conference history to not be voted onto the league’s first team, thus the Penguins will enter this season with sizeable chips on their shoulders.  Is it a case of as Brown goes, so do the Penguins?

“Yes, that is true”, remarked Boldon. “Last year, Brandi shot the ball 150 to 200 times more than anybody else.  I don’t know if it will be that drastic this year, but she is going to shoot the ball more than anyone else is, Brandi is a really good player.  We need to more consistently provide her help.  It seems that last year when a couple of other players stepped up and had good games, we won.  Brandi is still going to take the last shot, everything will run through her. We still need to improve on scoring when she doesn’t have the ball. She will be a big part of everything until she graduates.”

“We all felt responsible for Brandi not being on the first team last year simply because we underachieved as a team,” Boldon said. “(Being picked to finish 10th) hurt some people’s feelings because they felt like they turned the corner a little bit,” Boldon said. “They thought we should have gotten some more respect from the voters. Whatever fuels us is good for me. There were some people who felt like we weren’t ‘that team’ anymore.”

The Penguins lost Boki Dimitrov to graduation.  Makala Gasparek and Maryum Jenkins will not be playing this year either.  Enter a new group of players, to be custom-molded by Boldon and tidy up a slick spread-motion system. Newcomers Kelsea Fickiesen and Ashley Lawson add some depth at the guard positions.  Junior transfer Devan Matkin further deepens the guard pool.  Second-year guard Melissa Thompson should see more time this season.

Familiar faces to continue the march forward include Kenya Middlebrooks and Liz Hornberger.  Middlebrooks, a senior, and Hornberger, a sophomore, both ranked in the league’s top-10 in three point shooting percentage.   Another sophomore, Monica Touvelle, returns with a wealth of experience, making appearances in all 30 games last season.  Heidi Schlegel could really be a big player for Boldon.  The redshirt freshman played in the first seven games before injuring her foot and missing the remainder of the 2010-11 campaign.

Tiera Jones and Macey Nortey, both seniors, round out Boldon’s active roster.  Jones really came on last year and was very productive when she could stay out of foul trouble.  Nortey is a ball of energy and a vocal presence with a do-what-it-takes attitude.  They should both play a role in the fortunes of this year’s campaign.

“We want to continue to improve on what we did last year”, said Boldon. “The new people we brought in are good shooters and we spent time this offseason working with the players who are returning, and as a result, they have become better shooters as well.  It is a collective movement.”

“There are still a multitude of things that we can teach the players”, said Boldon.  “However, it has been easier this season because the system base was already installed, so we are at a higher starting point.  Our returning players do not know it all, but the turnaround time with them will be quicker this season.  It is more about refreshing them than starting from scratch.”

Boldon’s team opens the season on Friday night at West Virginia.  They then travel to IPFW and Bucknell before returning home for the 2011 home opener against American University on November 21.  This team will not compete for an outright championship this season, however, I would be surprised if they did not win at least 13 games. This year will be more about being competitive and winning games they should win.  With the lack of respect shown by that grand voting panel of Horizon League Wizardry, that means they will finish about 2-28…  I say 14-16.  Hopefully better.

Boldon outlined his short and long-term goals.

“Long term, you start to think about the Horizon League Tournament.  You want to try to get yourself into a favorable position, out of that seven, eight, nine, or ten slot.  We would love to be in a position to host a home game in the tournament.  Short term, we failed to build off of our successes when we had them last year.  We had a little success and got so happy with ourselves that we did not get better.”