The Youngstown State men’s basketball team (10-12, 3-8 Horizon) got the short end of the stick in a tough 65-64 loss at home against the Milwaukee Panthers (9-13, 5-6 Horizon) on Saturday afternoon inside Zidian Family Arena at Beeghly Center.
The Penguins have now lost eight of their last 11 contests, while Milwaukee’s victory snapped its three-game losing skid.
“Culmination of 40 minutes of basketball, the last possession of the game wasn’t the one that beat us,” Penguins head coach Ethan Faulkner said after the game. “We gotta take better care of the basketball, did not play well enough offensively. We had some spurts where we were pretty good defensively when we had them in the half court. They struggled to score, but they scored 21 points off our turnovers. Hard to overcome that in a one-point game.”
Cris Carroll led all scorers with 19 points on 6-of-15 shooting from the field, while Rich Rolf scored 14 points of his own. In the second half, Rolf recorded 11 of his 14 points and finished a rebound shy of a double-double. YSU outrebounded Milwaukee 37-32 and made a solid 75 percent (15-of-20) of their free throws, but the Penguins shot a poor 39.6 percent (21-of-53) from the field and 26.9 percent (7-of-26) on three-balls.
“It just starts in practice,” Rolf said. “Staying locked in for the two hours, two and a half hours we’re in practice leads to being locked in for 40 minutes. Sometimes we have lacks, we’re lackadaisical in the game and that just leads to mistakes. So we just gotta be locked in for 40 minutes.”
Bart Lundy’s Milwaukee squad was led by Amar Augillard, who recorded 16 points and seven rebounds. Strong offensive efforts from Stevie Elam with 14 points, 13 points off the bench for Isaiah Dorceus and 10 points for Chandler Jackson helped the Panthers push past the Penguins.
Out of the Panthers’ 13 steals, five players recorded two or more — three for Aaron Franklin, and two apiece for Augillard, Elam, Dorceus and Josh Dixon. UWM won the battles in points in the paint (32-28), points off turnovers (21-11), fast break points (17-8), bench points (19-10) and second chance points (11-7). The Panthers also recorded a plus-five turnover margin (16-11). As a team, they made 41.4 percent (24-of-58) of their overall shots, 30 percent (6-of-20) of their three-balls and 68.8 percent (11-of-16) of their foul shots.
Milwaukee scored the first four points of the day on a pair of free throws from Elam and a Franklin layup. After Carroll traded buckets with Esyah Pippa-White, Youngstown State scored the next 10 unanswered points with the first five coming from Carroll, followed by a Jason Nelson three and a dunk from Imanuel Zorgvol. As a result, YSU was up 12-6 at the 15:03 mark.
After back-to-back triples from Elam and Chandler knotted it up at 12-all, YSU’s offensive hot streak continued by scoring 10 of the next 12 points to go up 22-14, which concluded with back-to-back threes from Carroll and Rolf.
Dorceus then cut the deficit down to four at 22-18 with consecutive shots, but the Penguins would go on a 7-0 run with a Bryson Dawkins three and four made free throws in five attempts from Rolf to make it a double-digit game at 29-18 at the 4:24 mark.
The Penguins made half of their shots (8-of-16), including five first-half threes through the first 14 minutes of the day. But the Panthers scored 14 of the next 15 points in the last 3:12 of the half and began the spurt on an 8-0 run with an Elam three, a Dorceus layup, and an Augillard three-point play to make it a one-possession deficit at 29-26 with 1:02 to go. After Dawkins split a pair of free throws, Milwaukee took the lead at 32-30 heading into the locker room after consecutive threes from Augillard and Dorceus. In that same time span, the Penguins missed eight of nine shots from the field.
The second half of the game was a seesaw battle with Milwaukee being up by as many as six at 54-48 with 5:55 to go, but YSU scored six unanswered points with a Jaiden Haynes layup and back-to-back buckets from Rolf to knot it back up at 54 all at the 4:26 mark. After a basket by Franklin gave the Panthers the lead, the Penguins scored the next five points on Carroll’s three-point play and a pair of Haynes free throws to take a 59-56 lead with just 2:05 to play.
Augillard hit some foul shots of his own to make it a one-point game, but a three-point play by Nelson extended the Penguins’ lead to two possessions at 62-58 with 1:18 left.
Jackson then hit a big-time three to make it a one-point deficit before Carroll made two foul shots at the 39-second mark to put YSU up 64-61. Dorceus made a fast-break layup to get UWM within just one at 64-63 with 32 seconds to go. Then, Elam intercepted a Nelson pass and went coast-to-coast for the layup to finish the fastbreak and put the Panthers ahead at 65-64 with just 7.7 seconds on the clock. Carroll then missed a go-ahead triple with five seconds remaining to end the afternoon.
YSU’s 64 points was the second-fewest that Milwaukee has allowed in a game all season.
Up next: Youngstown State’s three-game homestand comes to a close when IU Indy comes to town for at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 30 tipoff at Zidian Family Arena at Beeghly Center.
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