Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes. YSU running back Jaden Gilbert carries the ball while being pursued by two Mercyhurst defenders during the Penguins’ season-opening victory over the Lakers last week at Stambaugh Stadium.

YOUNGSTOWN — During his tenure at Youngstown State, head coach Doug Phillips has consistently preached the importance of the stretch of time between Week 1 and Week 2.

According to Phillips, that’s the period of time that teams can make the most significant improvement over the course of a long season. As such, the Penguins hope to take considerable steps forward this Saturday at 2 p.m. (ESPN+/570 WKBN) when they welcome Robert Morris to Stambaugh Stadium.

“I think starting the season and being able to get Game 1 in and learn from that, be able to get the film and see where we’ve gotta make huge improvements,” Phillips said Tuesday morning. “You’re never as good as you think on film and never as bad as you think when you watch film. … When you’re playing these early games, you’re figuring out, who are we? For us, it’s about that preparation these next few weeks that we got to get better.”

Most of the Penguins’ improvements need to come on the offensive side of the ball.

In last week’s victory over Mercyhurst, YSU created four turnovers, but didn’t score any touchdowns off those takeaways. Dathan Hickey and Justin Wimpye each picked off Lakers quarterback Adam Urena, while Hickey and Mike Wells each had fumble recoveries.

However, YSU scored just three points off those four turnovers — Andrew Lastovka’s 37-yard field goal after Wimpye’s interception on Mercyhurst’s first drive of the second half.

The Penguins want to play complementary football, where the defense gets the ball back to the offense and then converts by scoring touchdowns, while special teams does its job as well.

“You’re trying to do that every time, but it’s hard. You want to be perfect,” Phillips said. “Where we’ve got to make the most improvement, we had four takeaways and didn’t score any [touchdowns] from those four takeaways. That’s where we’ve gotta help. Complementary football is you gotta get points off turnovers. We scored 21 points, but none of them came off those turnovers.”

YSU also wants to see more explosive plays offensively, as well as improvement in the run game.

The Penguins had just two plays longer than 20 yards against the Lakers — quarterback Beau Brungard’s 31-yard run on the first touchdown drive and Brungard’s 37-yard pass completion to Max Tomczak on YSU’s third touchdown drive.

“We talk about explosives, explosives turn into touchdowns,” Phillips said. “There’s a series where we got a three-and-out by the defense … they punted the ball and Max gives us a great return to midfield. We hit an explosive on second-and-1 and we score a touchdown. To me, that’s complementary football. Defense did their job, got off the field. Special teams did a great job. Now the offense came, created an explosive and scored a touchdown.”

On the ground, the Penguins had 187 rushing yards. But 145 of those came from Brungard, who carried the ball 28 times, while only 36 yards came from the running backs.

In an ideal world, Brungard carrying the ball that many times and taking that many hits probably isn’t sustainable and YSU wants to get its running backs more carries.

“Sometimes in the game, you go into it with your gameplan and your reads. A lot of those are reads where he hands it off or keeps it, and maybe the read was for him to keep it, so it ends up being a lot of carries,” Phillips said. “Do we want to do that? No. We know it’s a long season and we gotta take care of our guys. We do, I believe, have a good running back room and we gotta get those guys involved also.”

A familiar face will return to Stambaugh Stadium when Robert Morris visits YSU on Saturday, as former Penguins offensive coordinator Troy Rothenbuhler is now with the Colonials.

“He’s a great coach. I had him for three years here,” junior center Van Keen said. “I like to say that I know him pretty well, and I bet he knows our personnel very well. But we also have a new scheme and we have things that we like to do that we think will do very well against them this week.”

Rothenbuhler joined RMU in March after spending the last five years at YSU. Phillips elected to make a coordinator change this offseason by bringing in Mike Yurcich.

Robert Morris struggled mightily offensively in its season opener at West Virginia last week, tallying just 123 total yards and scoring three points.

But the Colonials had a pair of bright spots against the Mountaineers, including forcing four fumbles and dominating the time of possession — a trademark of Rothenbuhler’s offense since YSU led the FCS in time of possession last season under his guidance.

“I would say we know what he’s going to do, but you can never predict that. So we’re just going to have to play to our fundamentals, play with grit and believe in each other,” Wells said. “Everyone has to do their jobs, and I think we can get the job done. Coach Troy is a great coach, so I feel like he’ll be ready, but we’ll also be ready.”