YOUNGSTOWN — With lofty preseason expectations and a No. 9 ranking to live up to, Youngstown State met those standards in Thursday night’s season opener.
The Penguins took control early and never looked back, as YSU dominated Mercyhurst 43-10 to kick off the 2026 campaign at Stambaugh Stadium.
“I thought with the intensity, it was about our standard,” head coach Doug Phillips said. “A lot to learn from, a lot to get better, but it’s a starting point. It was 269 days, if you’re not counting, since the last time we played in the Ice Castle. We put a lot of time in during the offseason to make sure this team was ready to go for the ‘26 season. So we got it underway, but we gotta get a lot better.”
Fresh off winning the Walter Payton Award last season, Beau Brungard showed he hasn’t missed a step.
YSU’s fifth-year quarterback completed 20 of his 29 passes for 232 yards and three touchdowns. He also rushed 21 times for 119 yards and two touchdowns. His lone blemish of the night was an interception near the end of the third quarter.
With Brungard leading the way, YSU’s offense was effective and efficient against the Lakers. The Penguins scored touchdowns on each of their first five possessions going into the third quarter and finished with a balanced 252 rushing yards and 232 passing yards.
“We know what we’re capable of, and we just want to be an explosive offense,” said tailback Jaden Gilbert, who had a 24-yard rushing touchdown in the second quarter. “Everybody’s gotta contribute and do their 1-11s, do what we do best and we’ll be alright. … Just to be out there with my brothers and help get this win, it feels amazing.”
After battling its fair share of issues over the past two years, YSU’s defense faced many questions about how it would look under new defensive coordinator Ryan Riemedio.
While Mercyhurst doesn’t necessarily pose the same threat as what the Penguins will see weekly in Missouri Valley Football Conference play, the defense did what it needed to do against the Lakers.
Mercyhurst sliced its way down the field on its opening possession in the first quarter. But after reaching the 2-yard line, YSU stood tall at the goal line and held the Lakers to a 24-yard field goal by Rocco Marcantonio.
“It’s plus-4 when you get in the red zone, it’s a plus-4 opportunity,” Phillips said. “We hold them to a field goal, that’s plus-4 for the Penguins. To see the defense respond — they’re inside the 5-yard line — and to see them hold them to a field goal, that’s what we stressed all summer. If our defense can hold teams to field goals in the red zone, and if our offense can score touchdowns in the red zone, those are differences in the ball game.”
From there though, the defense settled in, as the Penguins kept Mercyhurst off the scoreboard until the Lakers scored a garbage-time touchdown against the reserves with under two minutes left in the contest.
The defense limited Mercyhurst to 241 total yards and an average of 4.7 yards per play, while also holding the Lakers to 3-of-9 on third down and 29 total rushing yards. YSU’s secondary also picked off MU quarterback Alex Gevaudan twice for the Penguins’ first two takeaways of the year.
“After we just settled in and got that first stop and forced that field goal, we just started playing freely, started understanding what they wanted to get to, started really trusting in ourselves and trusting our cause,” cornerback Dev Holman said. “We were able to settle in and get the job done and just shut them out for the most part from there.”
NOTEWORTHY DEBUTS
A handful of players made contributions in their respective debuts for the Penguins.
First, transfer receivers Bryan Hunt and Lynn Wyche-El each hauled in receiving touchdowns from Brungard. They both finished with 41 receiving yards on the night.
On defense, Darvens Tunis and true freshman Roderick Owens Jr. each had interceptions off Gevaudan. Transfer and former Austintown Fitch standout Cam Smith was second on the defense with five total tackles.
“I feel we have a roster with a lot of guys that have played a lot of football, those fifth-year seniors,” Phillips said. “But I also feel we got a lot of talented young men that are in their first, second or third year and those guys don’t want to sit around. They want to get on the field.”
THINGS TO WORK ON
After a fairly clean first half, Phillips noted some things in the second half that he wants to see cleaned up moving forward.
Brungard’s interception and the Penguins’ nine penalties for 79 yards stand out on the stat sheet. But YSU also had a punt partially blocked on special teams in the fourth quarter, and the first-team offense had two possessions in which it didn’t score points during the third quarter.
“We had a mishap on a punt. We should never have a mishap. We work punt too much to have a mistake like that,” Phillips said. “We know we can score points, but I always want a little more. When we had seven there in the third quarter, you know I want to do more. Coming out of halftime, I don’t care what the score is, I want to keep moving the ball, want to keep scoring points.
“I told our young men at halftime, I don’t want to see complacency. I’m not looking at the scoreboard. I want to see us execute each and every play, and those are things we gotta clean up. I’m sure that third quarter we’re going to look at, and there’s a lot of things we gotta get better at.”
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