YOUNGSTOWN — Coming off a road win over a top-10 team, Youngstown State wants to continue to build off that performance.
The Penguins know their success was a result of their preparation during the week. YSU wants that to carry over week-to-week so that it can maintain a high level of consistency throughout the rest of the season.
“The one thing we told our young men yesterday was, ‘Don’t look at the results, look at the process that got you the results,’” head coach Doug Phillips said. “It goes back to your preparation. It goes back to how you practiced on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. That’s the focus. If you do things right on those days, and you play with great pad level, then practice execution becomes game reality.”
Offensively, it’d be hard for the Penguins to be much better than they were last week.
YSU finished with 561 total yards, led by quarterback Beau Brungard’s 528 total yards (328 passing, 200 rushing). Plus, all of the receivers have started to find their stride as they’ve built chemistry with Brungard.
However, while the Penguins haven’t seen their running backs get going in the run game, the backfield has had plenty of success in the passing game.
“When you have a quarterback like Beau, check downs are really a long landoff, and we do a lot of checkdowns,” Phillips said. “To me, that’s a handoff. It might not go in the stats as rushing, but our running backs take full advantage of that — catching that ball five yards from the line of scrimmage and being able to get as much as they can.”
On defense, YSU relied on splash plays to quell Illinois State’s momentum last week.
Even though the Penguins gave up 35 points and 348 total yards, they sacked Redbirds quarterback Tommy Rittenhouse three times and picked him off twice.
“I think each and every game, our defense has come up with stops,” Phillips said. “We’ve earned confidence. We’ve earned confidence by going into a Big Ten stadium and going toe-to-toe with them. Earned confidence is being down 11 at Towson and being able to win that game. Earned confidence is — we lost to South Dakota State, but there were times in that game where we were executing at full tilt. We were stopping the run, and it goes back to that consistency.
“Now we’ve just gotta put it all together, and you’ve gotta be playing your best football at the end of October and November. I still don’t think the Penguins have played their best football, and it’s our job to make sure we’re playing our best football in the next five games.”
In order to maintain that consistency this week, YSU has to be sure not to overlook a winless Murray State team that has won just one Missouri Valley Football Conference game since 2023. After spending four of the last five games on the road, the Penguins finally return home to the Ice Castle at 2 p.m. (ESPN+/570 WKBN) on Saturday when they face the Racers.
This will be the first meeting in Youngstown between the two programs since 1987, when both schools were part of the Ohio Valley Conference.
While the Racers’ 0-7 record may not seem like much on paper, they’ve pushed some of the top teams in the conference, including both Illinois State and South Dakota State in the past two weeks. Murray State dropped a shootout with the Redbirds 46-32 earlier this month, then trailed the Jackrabbits by seven at halftime before SDSU pulled away in the fourth quarter.
“To me, every week starts fresh. We’re 0-0 and we’re fighting to get the win on Saturday just like they are,” Phillips said. “They’ve been close. You go back and watch them against South Dakota State — I thought they had a great game plan. They’re fundamentally sound. Coach Jody Wright, he’s a smart, great coach. … I really think from his experience at Alabama, his experience at South Carolina, his experience in the NFL, you can see it in the players that they have.”
What makes the Racers so dangerous is their offense, which has big-play capability and has topped 400 total yards in each game over the past two weeks.
As a result, the Penguins will need their offense to take advantage against Murray State’s defense, which is giving up 43.1 points per game.
“They’ve got some good running backs, a quarterback that can throw,” Phillips said. “Offensively, his passing yards are near Beau Brungard’s. They got some great receivers. So for us, every week’s a new challenge. The focus has to be on us though in how we prepare, how we practice. We just got off the field from a grit Tuesday. We’ll go in the film room and see, did we play with great fundamentals? Did we pay attention to the details of it? For us, it’s working on them, earning that consistency, which we haven’t done all year.”
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