Staff photo / Neel Madhavan. YSU sophomore forward Sophia Gregory drives and finishes at the basket against Oakland on Saturday at the OU Credit Union O'rena in Rochester, Mich.

ROCHESTER, Mich. — In order to scratch, claw, fight and rally their way to victory on Saturday, the Youngstown State women’s basketball team needed every ounce of “grit” it could muster.

The Penguins weathered an early surge by Oakland, settled in and dominated the second half to pull away for a 72-60 victory over the Golden Grizzlies at the O’rena and earn Melissa Jackson her 100th career victory as a head coach.

Given her team’s identity this season and how the game unfolded, Jackson would have it no other way.

“I think this team all along has shown how gritty they are, their resiliency,” Jackson said. “I really like this team. I think they’re a special group, so that definitely means a lot for me to get my 100th victory with this group.

“But it makes you think about all the great players you’ve had in the past, the great staff members, the administrators — (the late) Larry Williams, who hired me at Akron, (athletic director) Ron Strollo, who gave me an unbelievable opportunity here at Youngstown — just a lot of people in my career. But it’s not about me. It’s really about the great players and the great staff members. That’s a lot of wins that they have worked hard for.”

One of the “Five Pillars” of Jackson’s YSU program is gratitude, so the Penguins were more than willing to give back to her by pulling out the win on Saturday.

As Jackson entered YSU’s locker room after the game, the players and coaching staff erupted in celebration as a cacophony of cheers, applause and other noise that sounded like firecrackers filled the air.

“She’s an incredible person on and off the court,” sophomore forward Sophia Gregory said. “She has a lot of knowledge. She’s one of the smartest basketball people I know. She’s a great person, and being able to do this for her, to give back to her after everything she’s done for us, it’s an awesome feeling.”

The Penguins’ (16-7, 9-4 Horizon) success this season has put a target on their back among the rest of the teams in the Horizon League. They know they’re going to get every team’s best shot, and they got Oakland’s (8-14, 5-7 Horizon) in the first half.

Within the first few minutes, the Golden Grizzlies had already knocked down four 3-pointers, racing ahead to take a 16-8 lead. YSU was keeping pace, but couldn’t string together enough baskets and stops to make a run due to some early turnovers.

“This is their home court. We kind of figured they’d come out shooting threes,” Gregory said. “We beat them the first time and they had a ton of fire in them. I thought we still held our ground in the first quarter, but we’ve had a couple tough losses and I think we’ve learned from those losses that once someone punches us, we need to punch back and I think we did just that.”

By the end of the second quarter, Oakland had built its largest lead, 34-24. At halftime, the Penguins narrowly avoided disaster when the officials waved off Makenzie Luehring’s halfcourt heave at the buzzer to trail by seven.

Luehring and Layla Gold combined for six 3-pointers and 25 of the Grizzlies’ 36 points in the first half. The second half, however, belonged to YSU.

The Penguins adjusted defensively by putting Gregory on Gold and Erica King on Luehring as much as possible. The move limited Gold to four points in the second half, but Luehring still provided a chunk of Oakland’s offense by finishing with 20 points.

“Gold was on fire to start, so definitely covered her a little bit differently,” Jackson said. “Luehring, we keyed on her the whole game — tried to trap her on ball screens, make somebody else beat us. I think we went to that a lot at the end of the game there. Forced her to be a passer. If I was going to lose this game, it was not her going to be beating us.”

King knocked down a three at the end of the third quarter to give YSU its first lead of the day, but the Grizzlies answered with a three from Jasmine Dupree-Hebert at the buzzer to regain the advantage heading into the final period.

The Penguins pulled away in the fourth quarter, opening the period on a 14-2 run to take the lead for good, as they outscored Oakland 26-13 in the final frame.

“I think it was our defense,” Jackson said. “We put the press on, got some turnovers there. The 10-second call, I think, was huge. We continued with that. We continued to try to trap (Luehring), I think she’s a really good player. She had 20 on us, but I think it was a tough 20. I just tried to put them in situations to be aggressive. I thought they needed that.”

YSU leaned heavily on its post all afternoon, as Gregory led the way with 15 points, while Sarah Baker had 11 and Paulina Hernandez added 7. Casey Santoro and Erica King rounded out the team’s double-figure scorers with 14 and 12 points, respectively.

Hernandez and Hayden Barrier each gave the Penguins a big scoring boost off the bench, combining for 14 points.

“I thought Hayden came in and was really aggressive. I thought she definitely gave us a spark defensively and then hit some shots,” Jackson said. “I thought Paulina was really aggressive. I saw their ball screen coverage and went to her on the bench and said, ‘You better let that thing fly’ because that’s what they were giving us. I think our group is starting to learn to win in different ways and that’s the sign of a good team.”

At the end of January, YSU sits in at least a tie for second in the Horizon League with Purdue Fort Wayne. The Penguins now begin February with three straight home games that begin against Milwaukee on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at Zidian Family Arena.