CLEVELAND — With Youngstown State’s post rotation down a player and battling foul trouble on Monday evening, the stage was set for the emergence of junior forward Paulina Hernandez.
In her return to former school Cleveland State, Hernandez had a career-high 18 points to help lead YSU to a critical 70-63 road win over the Vikings at the Wolstein Center.
“Obviously probably a lot of emotions for her coming back to CSU, and I totally get that, but we wanted to wrap our arms around her, and I’m so proud of her for really stepping up,” head coach Melissa Jackson said. “You see her versatility, scoring on the low block, scoring on rim runs, hitting the three, and obviously a big rim protector — I thought she was huge today, huge.”
Hernandez’s previous career high (14) came in YSU’s season-opening victory over Thiel. Since then, she’s averaged 5.5 points per game and had scored in double figures just one other time this season — an 11-point outing in the Penguins’ second game at North Dakota.
YSU’s two starting forwards, Sophia Gregory and Sarah Baker, each battled foul trouble against the big, long Vikings, especially early on. Plus, redshirt senior forward Faith Burch didn’t make the trip to Cleveland due to “personal reasons.”
“We didn’t expect to get into foul trouble, no one really expects that,” Hernandez said. “But stepping up, staying calm and being smart out there was important.”
That set the stage for Hernandez in her return to CSU, where she averaged 1.8 points and 1.4 rebounds over 55 games during her two seasons with the Vikings before transferring to YSU this past offseason.
“Definitely a lot of emotions,” Hernandez said of her return. “But I just had to stay calm. It’s just another basketball game, so just treat it like that. … I just knew the team had my back and Coach Jackson. That was definitely a big focus, playing for my team and myself.”
Like Baker and Gregory, Hernandez also battled foul trouble, but she made the most of her 21 minutes on the floor. She was 8-for-13 from the field and grabbed six rebounds.
“I think I had some really good passes inside, so I was just making the reads,” Hernandez said. “Transition was definitely something we focused on, and I think we succeeded at that.”
YSU and CSU went back and forth throughout the first half, as the Penguins held a slight 23-21 edge at halftime. But YSU started to build a lead throughout the second half.
“I thought we controlled the pace in the second half,” Jackson said. “I thought we pushed it a little bit more in transition, and you have to because in the first half, we were playing against that 2-3 zone, and it’s tough to score.”
Offense was hard for the Vikings to come by against the Penguins’ defense, especially with CSU without leading scorer Colbi Maples, who sustained an injury during the team’s recent multi-team event in Puerto Rico.
“I have a lot of respect for this program,” Jackson said. “Obviously their system is really good. They lose all that talent that they did last year, and they just reload because of the system and the coaching staff. So we knew they were going to be tough to guard. They’re No. 1 in our conference, 75 points per game. That first half, it was really tough for everybody to score, just really back-and-forth and grinding. But we stuck to the gameplan.”
The Vikings turned the ball over 17 times and shot 38.6% overall and 27.8% from beyond the arc against YSU’s defense.
Izzy Zingaro and Macey Fegan led CSU with 14 points apiece, while second-leading scorer Jada Leonard had 12 points. But after she scored the Vikings’ first eight points, YSU limited Leonard to just four points the rest of the night, as she finished 4-of-19 from the floor.
“Our gameplan was to front the post. Not a lot of teams have done that,” Jackson said. “I thought with our athleticism, our quickness, we could do that and then really sit and help side. But Leonard’s a really quick, athletic guard. I don’t know if we were quite ready for that, but then we adjusted a little bit. Then I went zone a little bit too. With all the foul trouble, I thought we had to do that — had to protect them.”
The Penguins led by just four at the end of the third quarter, but pushed their lead as high as 10 during the fourth.
Erica King’s lone basket of the game was a big one. With the Vikings pushing to make a run, King knocked down a three from the wing to put the Penguins up by nine with about five minutes left. Despite having just one field goal, King still had six rebounds and seven assists.
During the period, CSU hit back-to-back threes, but the Penguins answered with threes from Danielle Cameron and Casey Santoro to keep the Vikings at arm’s length. After starting 2-for-12, YSU finished the game 7-for-14 from three the rest of the way.
“I would say it was a bit of just getting our legs back under us,” said Santoro, who also finished with 18 points with four made threes. “They’re long, lengthy girls, and their zone is a little aggressive. So we just had to get used to the way they play and how we were going to get our shots off.”
Baker finished with 12 points in 18 minutes, while Cameron added 11 points. Gregory also had eight points, nine rebounds and five assists.
YSU now returns home on Wednesday to face Salem in its final non-conference game at 1 p.m. at Zidian Family Arena.
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