The Youngstown State Penguins women’s basketball team (20-8, 13-5 Horizon) had four players score in double-figures in a 75-55 road win over the Northern Kentucky Norse (13-15, 10-7 Horizon) on Thursday evening at Truist Arena in Highland Heights, KY. With their third straight win, the Penguins have clinched a first-round home game in the upcoming Barbasol Horizon League Women’s Basketball Championship Tournament.
It marks the first time since 2021-22 that YSU recorded both 20 wins overall and 10 or more road wins in a single season. It’s also the 14th 20-win season in YSU program history.
Casey Santoro led all scorers with 18 points (12 in the first half) and shot 4-of-7 from beyond the arc while pulling down seven rebounds, while Danielle Cameron and Paulina Hernandez scored 15 points each. Sarah Baker scored a baker’s dozen, but only saw 15 minutes of action due to foul trouble. Sophia Gregory scored just six points, but she pulled down a career-high 17 rebounds and dished out five assists.
Melissa Jackson’s Penguins finished shooting 47.5 percent (28-of-59) from the field overall, 39.1 percent (9-of-23) from three-point range, and 66.7 percent (10-of-15) at the foul line. Youngstown State, which lost to Northern Kentucky 61-49 at home on January 8, in their previous matchup, outrebounded the Norse 42-27.
Karina Bystry, the reigning Horizon League Freshman of the Week, led Jeff Hans’ NKU squad with 18 points. Maddie Moody had 11 points of her own, with eight points coming from Taysha Rushton.
Northern Kentucky shot an outstanding 82.4 percent (14-of-17) at the foul line, but they made just 20 percent (3-of-15) of their three-pointers and 34.5 percent (19-of-55) of their overall shots. The Norse, the Horizon League’s top offensive rebounding team, were held to just two second-chance points on six offensive boards.
Baker, a redshirt freshman who went to Ryle High School in Florence, KY, scored the first six points of the game within a 2:57 span. NKU’s Rushton and Bystry hit back-to-back triples to knot it up, but YSU scored the next 10 unanswered points to go up 16-6 at the 1:13 mark. It started with a Santoro three on YSU’s next possession, followed by a pair of layups from Cameron and another three from Hernandez.
However, the Norse responded with a 10-0 run of their own as Kamora Morgan and Anna Hamilton scored back-to-back buckets to end the first period trailing 16-10. Then, Bystry scored the first six points of the second period, which allowed the Norse to tie the game at 16 all at the 9:23 point. After a Baker bucket, Northern Kentucky took its first lead of the night at 20-18 with an Abby Wolterman layup and a pair of made free throws from Moody with 7:06 remaining.
The two squads then started trading buckets as Erica King’s three-pointer gave YSU a 21-20 lead, and the only other time that the Penguins trailed in the contest was 22-21 on a Rushton basket at the 4:02 mark. King then retaliated with her second triple of the quarter before Bystry’s layup at the other end made it 24 all, but Santoro responded with a trey-ball of her own to give YSU the lead back at 27-24 with 3:08 to go in the first half. After that, the Penguins never trailed for the rest of the evening.
YSU’s lead was cut down to one at 27-26 after two more made foul shots from Moody at the 2:17 spot, but the Penguins closed the half scoring nine of the next 11 points to go up 36-28, with Santoro’s three-point play capping off the stretch 14 seconds before the intermission.
NKU cut the deficit within five points twice in the first three minutes of the third quarter, with the first time coming on back-to-back buckets from Moody and Bystry to make it 37-32. Then, the second time came courtesy of a three-point play from Bystry to make it 41-36. But back-to-back three-pointers from Cameron and Santoro in a 1:13 span grew YSU’s lead to 47-36 at the 5:27 mark.
Bystry and Cameron then traded a pair of free throws with 4:32 remaining in the third to maintain the Penguins’ 11-point lead at 49-38, and the ladies from Youngstown led by double digits for the rest of the evening. The advantage grew to 55-40 with consecutive shots from Gregory and Hernandez. NKU’s Kymora Morgan made two foul shots before Hernandez’s layup made it a 57-42 Youngstown State advantage with 53 seconds to go before the end of the period.
YSU’s lead grew to 21 at 73-52 on a fastbreak layup from Gregory and Hernandez’s second three-pointer of the night with 3:44 left in regulation, and the largest margin was 22 at 75-53 when Brooke Adkins scored her lone bucket of the game exactly two minutes later. NKU’s Alma Rashelbach, a junior from Israel, scored the evening’s last bucket 1:09 before it came to a close.
Up next: Youngstown State will look to keep its winning ways going with one last regular-season road game at Purdue Fort Wayne on Saturday for a 2 p.m. tip-off at the Gates Sports Center.
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