YSU Sports

Penguins excelled through change

YOUNGSTOWN -- There were a lot of questions surrounding the Youngstown State women's basketball team entering this season. After all, with four new recruits and five transfers into the program, how couldn't there be?

But credit John Barnes, his staff and the roster for coming together the way it did. Though the Penguins reached a disappointing end in the Horizon League Tournament (a 63-52 loss to Oakland) and WNIT (a 68-59 loss to Kent State), they finished 24-7 overall -- the most wins in a season in 24 years -- and earned a regular-season Horizon League championship.

Not bad for a team picked seventh in the Horizon League preseason poll.

What was a major question coming in -- how the transfers would perform -- ended up being one of Youngstown State's strengths.

Lilly Ritz, who came in from Division II Wheeling, led that effort, providing an immediate impact in the post as Mary Dunn's replacement. Ritz spent much of the regular season in the conversation for Horizon League Player of the Year honors, averaging 16.9 points and 9.5 rebounds per game. Those were the third- and second-highest marks in those categories, respectively. They also were team highs at YSU. She wound up being an All-Horizon League First Team selection.

Out on the perimeter, Paige Shy (Marshall) and Megan Callahan (Robert Morris) regularly were starters or among the first off the bench to aid in YSU's 3-point barrage. Shy scored 8.1 points and added 4.5 rebounds per game, while Callahan used a mix of drives to the rim and 3-pointers to score 6.7 per game.

All three of them can return to YSU next year.

Those additions meshed well in the lineup with some of YSU's key returning pieces.

Chelsea Olson, the even-keeled, fifth-year senior, supplied 11.2 points and 6 rebounds per game, and also led the team in minutes at 32.9 per contest. She also led the Horizon League with 4.6 assists per game.

Meanwhile, sophomore Malia Magestro logged 10.2 points per game and provided a nice combination of drives and sharpshooting. Her 3-point percentage of 36.9 was second-best behind Lexi Wagner's 37.7 mark, and she and Shy each hit 1.8 treys per game.

The other strength was something Barnes predicted from the outset -- YSU's defense would improve from last year. The Penguins allowed just 57.2 points per game, the third-best mark in the Horizon behind eventual league champ IUPUI and Green Bay, who allowed 55.7 and 55.8, respectively.

Ritz and Mady Aulbach were at the forefront of those efforts. Aulbach routinely defended opposing teams' best guards and often held them under their season scoring averages, or at least disrupted them enough that their efficiency was down. Ritz, meanwhile, was sixth in the Horizon in blocks (0.9 per game) and fourth in steals (2.0 per game).

Put it all together, and you have a team that not only met its preseason expectations from outsiders, but excelled them.

That perhaps makes the way things ended all the tougher. YSU entered the Horizon League as the 2-seed, but ran into a tough Oakland team that seemed to have the Penguins figured out. The Golden Grizzlies were one of two conference teams to beat YSU twice, the other being IUPUI.

Despite that upset, the Penguins earned the Horizon League's automatic bid to the WNIT as regular season co-champs, and started out strong against Kent State.

Then, disaster struck. Olson went down with a leg injury and never returned, and what was at one point a 29-21 lead vanished as KSU took control the rest of the evening en route to its win Wednesday night.

As much as YSU's season probably deserved a better end, Olson certainly did. The senior was the personification of what the student-athlete experience is supposed to be about, and that's what makes her departure that much tougher.

That's also YSU's biggest question mark heading into the offseason. As of now, Olson is the lone departure from the Penguins' rotation, but the gap she's leaving is one that will be hard to fill.

Maybe Barnes and Co. can strike gold again.