The Youngstown State Penguins women’s basketball team (12-5, 5-2 Horizon) used a big third quarter and a key defensive play near the end of the contest to pull off its biggest win of the season with a 58-54 triumphant victory over the Purdue Fort Wayne Mastodons (11-6, 5-3 Horizon) on Saturday afternoon at Zidian Family Arena at Beeghly Center.
YSU scored the first four points of the day with back-to-back buckets from the redshirt freshman duo of Sarah Baker and Danielle Cameron before PFW’s Lili Krasovec and Nika Lokica answered with consecutive shots of their own. Following a made shot by Sophia Gregory, the Mastodons scored the next five points on a Jordan Reid bucket and a Rylee Bess three to go up 9-6 at the 3:30 mark. The teams then traded two-point shots with a Hayden Barrier jumper, countered by a Krasovec layup, and answered right back with a stepback jumper from Casey Santoro to make it a one-point deficit at 11-10 with 1:48 to go in the first stanza. 20 seconds later, Bess hit her second triple of the quarter to make it 14-10 ‘Dons, and no points were scored in the last 1:27 of the opening period.
No points were scored in the first 1:58 of the second quarter until Baker exchanged buckets with PFW’s Alana Nelson to make it a 16-12 PFW advantage at the 7:44 mark. A minute and three seconds later, Santoro hit a three to make it a one-point game at 16-15.
However, the Mastodons scored the next five points on a three from Bess and a layup from Nelson to make it 21-15 with 6:24 to go before halftime. 10 seconds later, Cameron retaliated with a bucket of her own to make it a two-possession deficit at 21-17. Another minute and three seconds later, a Bess layup made it 23-17.
No points were scored for the next 2:47 until the Penguins made it a one-score game, at 23-21, with back-to-back buckets from Santoro and Brooke Adkins at the 1:28 mark. The score stayed the same until Reid closed out the first-half scoring with a three with 16 seconds to go before halftime, which made it 26-21 heading into the intermission.
The Penguins scored the first five points of the second half with a Gregory three and a Santoro layup to knot it up at 26 all just a minute and six seconds in. The score was tied again at 28 as Baker and Krasovec exchanged buckets at the 7:51 mark. 1:48 later, Nelson gave PFW the lead back with a three to make it 31-28. But YSU waddled back by scoring the next 10 unanswered points with a pair of made free throws each from Gregory and Santoro, followed by three consecutive layups from Cameron to make it 38-31 at the 3:23 mark.
Krasovec stopped the run with a layup to make it a two-possession deficit at 38-33 with 3:09 to go, but Youngstown State scored five of the last seven points of the quarter with two more made foul shots and – after a Krasovec layup – a three from Cameron to make it 43-35 after 30 minutes of play. YSU ended up outscoring PFW 22-9 in that period.
Forty-one seconds into the fourth quarter, Bess hit a three to cut the deficit down to five before Gregory – 1:23 later – countered with a layup to maintain the seven-point cushion at 45-38. Purdue Fort Wayne scored the next five points with a Lokica jumper and another three from Bess to make it a one-possession deficit at 45-43 with 6:54 left in the game. After Cameron and Nelson traded layups, a jumper from Santoro made it 49-45 YSU with 5:24 remaining.
Nelson then made a pair of free throws for PFW to go down by two after getting fouled by Adkins, but the Penguins scored the next four points with more made free throws from Santoro and another Gregory layup that made it 53-47 at the 4:21 mark.
After Nelson hit two more free throws, Gregory answered back with a layup off a nice pass from Erica King to keep YSU’s lead at two possessions, at 55-49, with 2:03 left. No other points were scored until Bess hit a big-time three to make it a one-possession affair at 55-52 with 40 seconds to go in regulation.
On YSU’s next possession, they ran down the clock before Cameron missed a layup. Then, Reid grabbed a defensive rebound before a timeout was called. Next, Lauren Lee caught the inbound pass, got fouled by Santoro, and hit both foul shot attempts to make it a one-point deficit at 55-54 with 10.9 to go. Bess then fouled out after fouling Santoro, who answered back with a pair of foul shots of her own to grow the Penguins’ lead to three at 57-54 with eight seconds to go. That is when Lokica’s inbound pass was tipped by Gregory over the head of Krasovec and into the hands of Santoro, who got fouled by Lee with just 4.3 seconds remaining. Santoro, who came into today tied for 52nd in the nation in free throw percentage (85.7 percent), then stepped to the charity stripe and made one of two at the line to put the cream cheese on the bagel.
“Honestly, I’m really happy about our response today,” Penguins head coach Melissa Jackson said after the game. “I really wanna talk about that first. I’m so proud of our team. This was a big bounce-back win for our program, and I knew we had it in us. Even coming out at halftime, I just felt really good today. About the zone, Purdue Fort Wayne…. really good offensive team, have a ton of respect for that coaching staff. Maria [Marchesano] does a heck of a job, and it’s a one-day, very short prep, right? So I knew with our younger group what was gonna be the best position to put them in to win a big-time basketball game, and that was a big reason for the zone and switching back and forth and keeping them off balance. Credit to our kids. They really locked in. We rebounded the basketball extremely well today, and that’s always a worrisome with the zone, but we made some big-time rebounds that allowed us to stay in the zone and ultimately win the basketball game.”
Youngstown State shot 42.3 percent (22-of-52) and 20 percent (3-of-15) from three-point territory. Santoro (7-of-8 FT) and Gregory (4-of-4 FT) were the only Penguins that reached the foul line on the afternoon, combining to shoot an impressive 91.7 percent (11-of-12) at the charity stripe.
Santoro led the Penguins with 18 points on 5-of-11 shooting from the field while pulling down seven rebounds. “I think a little bit lately, we’ve not been doing our best man-to-man, and I think we just kind of wanted to switch it up,” she said on the team’s defensive schemes. “I feel like we switch it up a lot between man, 1-3-1, and zone, and just kind of throw them off a little bit and get them thinking more than what they normally would be if we would just stay in one defense the whole time.”
Gregory recorded just her second double-double in her sophomore season with 15 points and 12 rebounds while shooting 5-of-6 from the field, but her third steal of the day – which came on PFW’s last inbound pass of the game – proved to be the difference maker. “It was huge,” she said regarding the team’s big victory. “The energy after the game [Northern Kentucky] obviously wasn’t very good. The energy the next day, it wasn’t great. Then we came out, and we were able to pull out a huge conference win, and that was huge. But we have to keep going after that, too.”
In addition to Baker and Gregory, Cameron scored 15 points while shooting 7-of-10 from the floor and had three steals as well.
Maria Marchesano’s Mastodons shot 31.7 percent (20-of-63) from the field, 25.8 percent (8-of-31) on threes, and 75 percent (6-of-8) at the foul line. Bess, a freshman, led all scorers with a career-high 20 points on 6-of-10 three-point shooting in 32 minutes off the bench; while Krasovec scored 10 points of her own.
Nelson – the conference’s leader in scoring (17.4 points per game), three-point shooting (42.9 percent), and minutes (34.4 per game) coming into the afternoon – was held to 13 points.
“Honestly, we know that 54 [Nelson], she’s the top scorer in our league,” Santoro stated on facing Nelson. “We just wanted to contain her and make it hard for her to score, and I feel like we did a good job of walling her off and making her shoot tough shots over us. Then for 23 [Reid] as well, just not letting her get down in the paint too deep and walling them off, and I think whoever guarded them did a really great job at that.”
Note: With Northern Kentucky also winning at Robert Morris 81-77 on Saturday, Youngstown State now stands alone in second place behind Green Bay in the Horizon League standings.
Up next: Youngstown State will hit the road for a matchup with the Wright State Raiders on Wednesday, January 15 for a 7 p.m. tip-off at the Nutter Center in Dayton, OH. The Penguins lost to the Raiders three times last season.
James Moon (CashApp): $JRMoon1991
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