On December 29, 2022, Coppin State visited Akron in what could probably be described as a throwaway Thursday game late in the non-conference schedule for both teams. It was a tight contest – the Zips won in overtime after Reagan Bass dominated, as she often did for UA – but nevertheless, the sort of thing that is quickly forgotten amidst the league grind and, eventually, tournament season.
Still, that evening might end up having a profound impact on Youngstown State and the Horizon League two years later.
The Eagles’ star at the time was Jewel Watkins, who scored a team-best 20 points and often kept CSU afloat during moments where it looked as if the home team was ready to pull away. Zips coach Melissa Jackson maintained detailed notes, and a couple years later when she took charge of the Penguins, she knew she wanted the senior guard to join her in Youngstown.
“Ever since [the Akron-Coppin State game], she had been keeping tabs, in a way,” Watkins said. “I just felt like she believed in me, like I felt like I would thrive there.”
Watkins is just one example of how finalizing Youngstown State’s roster for this season was a bit unconventional, though only in the context of what people expect to see in the so-called “portal era.”
A common pattern has developed alongside the freedom of movement that student-athletes now enjoy: when a coach leaves, a ton of players follow closely behind, before the new coach replenishes the roster with some familiar veteran faces, in an effort to get wins on the board as quickly as possible. In recent seasons, Horizon League schools like Wright State, Detroit Mercy and IU Indianapolis have witnessed the cycle first-hand, but YSU has been a bit different, and that stems from how Jackson approached things after taking the job in March.
“The first goal was roster management, coming in and seeing what our roster looked like,” she explained. “Once we were able to get the players in that we wanted and solidified our signees, we built relationships with our players. I’ve always been a very big relationship type of coach, so that was critical, to get on the phone with them, get them to campus, really get everyone bought in.”
Ultimately, nearly all of the returning players and a massive freshman class, recruited by the previous staff, stuck around. Concurrently, Jackson strategically added a handful of portal pieces, but also didn’t see the need to completely overhaul things.
There’s a very good, perfectly old school, reason for that. Simply put, when Jackson calls herself a relationship-based coach, it’s not empty talk. She’s spent the last 16 years at Northeast Ohio mid-major schools between her decade and a half at Akron, and a 2023-24 season spent on Chris Kielsmeier’s staff at Cleveland State, and already knew most of her inherited YSU players and recruits in one way or another.
Some of those connections were a bit coincidental, as with Watkins, but others were much more direct. The Penguins’ two other transfer portal additions this past summer were redshirt freshman point guard Dacia Lewandowski, who signed with Akron when Jackson was the Zips’ head coach, and Faith Burch, a power forward who intersected with Jackson on last year’s Vikings.
Burch, in particular, is someone who projects to have a leadership role among an extremely young group of post players.
“Faith is like our voice for the team almost,” graduate guard Malia Magestro said. “She always brings energy and she’s super loud. So I think that’s really good to have, every team needs one of those people.”
“It was very important to bring in some experienced players through the portal, so we were able to do that with Faith Burch and Jewel Watkins,” Jackson added. “I think their leadership and their experience will really help our young kids grow.”
Those kids aren’t exempt from the relationship philosophy, either. The Penguins will carry six true freshmen this year along with redshirt Lewandowski, but all are from Ohio or bordering states, well within Jackson’s well-traveled recruiting circles. So getting them on board was usually a matter of re-opening a previous connection.
“Youngstown did sign a really big freshman class, a very talented freshman class, and a lot of those kids I actually knew through the recruiting process at Akron,” Jackson said. “I had offered them, had recruited a lot of them, so it was easy to get on the phone with some of them and re-recruit them to Youngstown State.”
One of those freshmen is Erica King, a product of the same St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron that produced another notable basketball player who often goes by “King.” Sophia Gregory, from nearby Alliance, OH, and Sarah Baker, a physical 6-2 Kentuckian, are rookie post players who have both impressed in workouts so far.
“Baker [was] somebody that I had offered very early at Akron,” the coach explained. “I knew her very, very well.”
“In the portal era, our roster’s very unique, with seven freshmen, a very talented freshman class,” she continued. “I feel like this class is going to be really special. They’re all very unique, they all bring different elements to the game, and elements to our team.”
Even Magestro who, along with Haley Thierry, is all that remains from Youngstown State’s 2021-22 Horizon League regular season championship roster, was an easy sell. Unsurprisingly, the Hermitage, PA native was also once recruited by Jackson, and buys in to her next-play mentality.
“I think Coach Jackson just brings a lot of positivity to our team, and almost instills this new level of confidence for all of us,” she said. “I think she’s really positive, and that’s really good to see as a player. When your head coach really believes in you and wants you to always keep shooting and just has so much confidence in you, I think that really helps.”
In the rare cases where a player might not have been familiar with Jackson or her staff, there was certainly a feeling-out process. But whether anyone knows Jackson from Akron, Cleveland State, or not at all is hardly relevant – after all, the shared task at this point is Youngstown State, both in 2024-25 and beyond. That’s why Jackson began her YSU career with what she hopes will be the foundation of everything the Penguins do on and off the court.
“When you walk into that room, it’s really just all about building your culture right off the bat, and so really instilling our five core values,” she said.
Five core values?
“Family number one, we talk a lot about that, commitment, passion, toughness, and gratitude. Gratitude’s my favorite word in the English language.”
It’s certainly early, and very few teams anywhere in the country don’t feel great about their relationships and their chances in September, but all evidence so far points to YSU’s unconventionally-assembled roster developing a cohesion appropriate for that first core value.
“It’s been really great, honestly,” Watkins said. “Everybody, all the coaches, all the players, everybody has fully bought in to what we want to do. Everybody’s trying to get better. It was a very easy transition, it’s a very comfortable environment.”
“I’m so excited about how our six returners really bought into our staff, our system, and then bringing ten new faces to Youngstown,” Jackson added. “That was really exciting, getting everyone on campus and in the gym, but also really building our culture and building the foundation of what we want Youngstown State women’s basketball to look like.”
