YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown State finds itself searching for answers after suffering its fifth straight loss in Horizon League play on Wednesday.
It came down to the final possession for the second time in the last three games, as Purdue Fort Wayne did enough down the stretch to hand the Penguins a 71-69 defeat at Zidian Family Arena.
“Obviously you don’t ever expect to continue to lose. We’re a program that’s built this thing to where we feel like we can compete at the top of our league on a consistent basis,” head coach Ethan Faulkner said. “We’re just not playing well enough basketball to do that right now. All these games, for the most part, are going down to the wire. It’s a game that the margin for error is small — we’ve said that over and over.
“We have to play better basketball on both sides of the floor. We cannot continue to have self-inflicted wounds, whether that’s with turnovers, whether that’s with defensive rebounding — those things have been hurting us for a while now.”
The defense continues to be a concern for the Penguins (8-9, 2-5 Horizon), which allowed PFW to shoot at least 50% in the first half, just like Oakland and Northern Kentucky had in the past two games.
The Mastodons (10-8, 4-3 Horizon) shot 50% overall in the first half, but cooled down considerably in the second, shooting 30.4% to finish at 41.7% overall. However, PFW still made 10 3-pointers
In the first half, there was a stretch where Purdue Fort Wayne made 10-of-11 shots. Plus, all 10 players that received minutes for the Mastodons had already scored by halftime, which was tied at 42.
“First half, we had some breakdowns in the ball screen, which led to a lot of open threes for them,” Faulkner said. “Thought we got that corrected at halftime and played a much better defensive half.”
With its struggles stopping the Mastodons, YSU needed to score on the other end to match them.
True freshman Jaiden Haynes and sixth-year Cam Polak came off the bench to give the Penguins a spark, providing the bulk of that early on, combining to score 21 of YSU’s 42 first-half points.
Haynes was the Penguins’ leading scorer for most of the opening half, until Polak went on a heater, hitting three straight 3-pointers. Haynes ended up finishing with 12 points, while Polak added 11.
“We need those guys to play well,” Faulkner said. “Jaiden’s been playing well for a couple weeks now. Thought he was dynamite in this game. He couldn’t play the last 10 minutes of the game because he hit his head on the floor when he took that hard fall, which was a really critical piece to the game after that because I thought he was doing a lot of really good stuff for us.”
With the game tied to start the second half, YSU opened with a four-point possession to seize early control. But PFW kept things tight.
With just under eight minutes left, the two teams were tied at 60. The Mastodons then went on an 8-2 run to take a six-point advantage.
But the Penguins had one last effort in them, despite having difficulties offensively in the second half. YSU followed with a 6-0 run, which ended with an offensive rebound and dunk by Imanuel Zorgvol to make it 69-69 with under a minute to go.
On PFW’s last possession, YSU forced an initial missed shot, but the ‘Dons came down with the offensive rebound and Corey Hadnot II was able to draw a foul with 22 seconds left. He made both free throws and the Penguins called timeout to draw something up with about 11 seconds remaining.
“Tie game, we get a stop and can’t come up with the defensive rebound,” Faulkner said, “which leads to two free throws later in the possession.”
YSU looked for Cris Carroll on the final possession, but his three from the top of the key in the final seconds fell short of the basket.
“Trying to get to a quick-hitting ball screen action, hoping to give us enough time to get a shot off, as well as have a chance to go offensive rebound the ball,” Faulkner said. “Fort Wayne did a good job defending it, and it didn’t really create much of an advantage. So again, we gotta be better at situational basketball. All these games are going down to the wire, and that’s on me to help us do that.”
Carroll scored 10 points in the second half to finish with 14 to lead the Penguins. Zorgvol had 10, as Hadnot led the Mastodons with 14 points.
“Offensively, we gotta continue to take care of the basketball,” Faulkner said. “We keep saying that over and over. Another night where we have 12 assists, 16 turnovers, and all of a sudden, we can’t make a shot. I thought we had some great, clean looks tonight that didn’t go down, but we gotta continue to fight until we get back on the right track, and we will do that.”
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