The Youngstown State Penguins men’s basketball team (9-10, 2-6 Horizon) couldn’t weather the road storm in their 93-83 loss in a rematch against the Wright State Raiders (12-7, 7-1 Horizon), the Horizon League’s first-place team, on Thursday night inside the Nutter Center.
YSU beat WSU seven-consecutive times prior, and it’s also the first time since 2022 that the Penguins have lost to the Raiders at the Nutter Center. Clint Sargent’s squad are now winners of seven-straight games.
Bryson Dawkins led YSU with 19 points, with 17 points and seven rebounds for Vlad Salaridze in his first start as a Penguin. Jason Nelson, Jaiden Haynes and Imanuel Zorgvol also contributed to the offense with 11 points each.
Drew King filled up the statsheet with four points, four rebounds and five assists off the bench. Dawkins and Salaridze both went 3-for-7 from downtown, while Zorgvol blocked four shots.
WSU’s TJ Burch, the Horizon League’s leader in steals with 2.8 per game, recorded career highs of 24 points and five rebounds to go along with seven assists and four steals.
Wright State also had three other players score in double figures. Kellen Pickett recorded 18 points, nine rebounds and two blocks, Dominic Pangonis contributed 17 points and Solomon Callaghan put up 15 points. Sam Alamutu made his first start of the season for the Raiders and recorded eight points, eight rebounds to go along with three steals.
Wright State scored the first seven points of the night with back-to-back layups from Pangonis and Pickett before Pangonis drilled a three-pointer. Eventually, Youngstown State figured it out offensively and scored 11 of the next 16 points — with Zorgvol scoring five of those points in that stretch — to get within one point (12-11) at the 14:04 mark.
YSU would get within one point on two more occasions with a Cam Polak three that made it 16-15, followed by Pickett and Zorgvol trading buckets to make it 18-17. Then Wright State scored the next seven unanswered points with a shot from Michael Cooper, a three-point play from Pangonis, and free throws from Burch to increase their lead to eight at 25-17 with 8:33 to go.
Moments later, the two in-state rivals traded two-point buckets for 2:57, starting with Dawkins, followed by Burch, then Salaridze and then Callaghan. Then Dawkins and Burch went back and forth twice to make it 33-25 WSU with 5:59 remaining in the first half. YSU scored the next six points on back-to-back threes from King and Dawkins to make it a one-possession deficit, 33-31, at the 4:58 mark.
Down 37-33, the Penguins tied it up at 37-all following made free throws from Nelson and a Haynes layup at the 2:40 mark. After a Pangonis layup, Nelson made a free throw before WSU followed it up with a Pangonis foul shot and an Alamutu layup to make it 42-38 Raiders with 1:31 to go before the intermission.
However, the Penguins waddled back to score the last five points of the first half with a Salaridze layup and a go-ahead three from Dawkins, giving Ethan Faulkner’s team the 43-42 lead going into the locker room.
33 seconds into the first half, Pickett nailed some free throws to put WSU back on top before Nelson’s three was followed by a Callaghan layup to tie the game at 46. After a Salaridze three, Wright State went on a 9-0 run, with a Burch layup and a Callaghan three followed by back-to-back layups from Pickett and Burch to go up 55-46. Just like that, the home team never trailed in the game again.
YSU got to within two at 69-67 after another three from Salaridze with 9:05 to go in the game, but that was as close as the Penguins would get for the rest of the night.
The Penguins shot 55.6 percent (15-of-27) from the field in the first half and 46.8 percent (29-of-62) overall for the game while hitting 43.8 percent (14-of-32) of their threes and 78.6 percent (11-of-14) of their free throws.
Wright State won the battles in rebounding margin (38-27), turnover margin (10-7), points in the paint (48-30) and points off turnovers (21-5). They shot 53.3 percent (32-of-60) from the field and 85.7 percent (24-of-28) at the free-throw line while making four of their five made threes in the second half (5-of-9, 55.6 percent).
Youngstown State continues its road trip against Cleveland State on Jan. 17 for a 2 p.m. tipoff at the Wolstein Center.
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