Penguins get set for road clash with Green Bay
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YOUNGSTOWN -- It's not quite the home stretch, but with each game and each week, the consequences continue to magnify.
Youngstown State will continue an important road trip this week as the Penguins visit Horizon League cellar dweller Green Bay on Thursday (8 p.m., ESPN+, 570 AM WKBN) before a Saturday matchup with Milwaukee (7 p.m., (ESPN+, 570 AM WKBN) -- a team the Penguins are tied with for first place.
"We've put ourselves in a pretty good position," YSU coach Jerrod Calhoun said. "We're playing good basketball at the right time, but it's a long year. There are 12 games left (of the regular season), and I think the big thing is to understand where you're at, where you're trying to get to and then the steps that you have to take to get there along that journey."
For its part, Youngstown State (14-5, 6-2 Horizon League) has played stellar offense nearly all season. Here lately, the defense has begun taking steps forward to supplement it. The biggest difference has been cleaning up the defensive glass and limiting teams to one-shot possessions by controlling rebounds, but Calhoun also says he's seen improvement in fast break defense and communication, too.
"Getting back and fixing our defense in transition, we talked about that quite a bit," he said. "We want to force three passes in transition on defense, that allows us to fix it, and they can't play with an advantage."
Limiting opponents' possessions and forcing more difficult shots will continue to prove vital for a YSU team whose offense that ranks No. 1 nationwide in points per possession and is firmly atop the Horizon League at 84.9 points per game.
That trend could continue as the Penguins continue to gel more and more. YSU's assist-to-turnover ratio has improved recently, and now sits at No. 1 in the conference at 1.28.
"Our passing in the last three or four games has really improved -- big assist numbers, low turnover numbers," Calhoun said. "That's where you're seeing the difference in points (per game). ... And I think as our guys get more and more comfortable, the assist numbers have gone up, the efficiency numbers have gone up. That's a compliment to our guys."
Among those aiding in that department is point guard Bryce McBride, who returned to the starting lineup ahead of the Robert Morris game Jan. 5 after Shemar Rathan-Mayes was injured in practice. In the last four games, McBride is averaging 13 points and 4.25 assists.
He and YSU will look to continue those trends as they visit a struggling Phoenix team Thursday. Green Bay (2-17, 1-7 Horizon League) enters on a nine-game losing streak, but Calhoun was quick to note how close the squad has come to knocking off a couple of the Horizon League's top dogs.
"They were in a five-point game at Cleveland State, 10-point game at Fort Wayne. I think they're playing really good basketball, so we have to understand that our defense has to be ready to go," he said.
In particular, he added, the perimeter defense needs to be locked in, as Green Bay is taking more than 22 shots from 3-point range per conference game. Forward Cade Meyer doesn't shoot many deep balls, but leads the Phoenix at 11.6 points per game. Clarence Cummings is scoring 10 per game and shoots 32 percent from deep, while Randy Tucker has taken the most threes of any Green Bay player (89) and scores 7.8 per game.
"I think their numbers are a little misleading in the conference. They're really shooting the ball," Calhoun said. "Non-league compared to the conference numbers are totally different. They have a lot of guys shooting the basketball from 3-point (range)."
And then, should YSU and Milwaukee, who hosts Robert Morris, each win Thursday, a colossal matchup awaits Saturday with first-place implications on the line. YSU and UW-Milwaukee are two of the four teams presently tied for first place. The other two are Cleveland State and Northern Kentucky.
"We'll be at the halfway point (of league play) 10 games in, and it will be really interesting to see where the teams are," Calhoun said. "But we have to worry about where we're at when we get back from this trip."