By Brian Yauger
With Yale University storming back, the Youngstown State University women’s basketball team fell for the second consecutive game, 58-56, with the loss the Penguins fall to 4-2.
“Just disappointing,” Penguins head coach John Barnes said. “We put ourselves in a great position and let it fall apart. It’s unfortunate but it does happen. We’ll have to try and bounce back for the next one.”
A big fourth quarter for the Bulldogs rallied them past YSU, outscoring the Penguins 22-7 in the final ten minutes. A strong Yale defense kept the Penguins from making shots and posed trouble in YSU’s passing game.
“We work against pressure and zone a lot,” Barnes said. “We know what to do. They were tipping our passes from the beginning of the game, you know what I mean, we struggled to make a pass without it getting tipped and we just had terrible turnovers down the stretch and when you turn it over out front it’s a layup on the other end.”
The Penguins had the lead for the brunt of the game, leading at one point by 17 points and keeping the Yale offense at bay, holding their leading scorer, Roxy Barahman, to 12 points, less than half of her season average.
“We need to take our energy from the first three quarters and keep our heads up,” senior forward Sarah Cash said. “We were making shots and weren’t turning the ball over as much then, but when we started to struggle we started to lay down and hang our heads a little bit and they went on a run.”
The two teams each pulled down 42 rebounds, junior forward Mary Dunn grabbed eight boards for the Penguins, and Chelsea Olson, the team’s leading rebounder on the season, had nine rebounds.
Six-foot-five freshman forward Camilla Emsbo scored the basket that sparked Yale’s rally, a 14-point run that would give the Bulldogs the lead.
“She’s definitely a good player,” Dunn said. “I mean, we were prepared for that, and I think that’s another part of us just like taking it off a little bit, because she wasn’t doing that in the beginning, so we were like ‘oh we’ve got her covered’, and we didn’t at the end so we needed to play all the way through.”
Sarah Cash led the Penguins, scoring 17 points, and shot 100 percent from the field during the first half. Dunn put up some numbers as well, scoring 14 points finishing second on the team.
“I think the biggest thing is that we got complacent,” Dunn said. “You can tell that the pace of the game changes in a blink of an eye. That’s something that we’re definitely going to learn from and make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
YSU looks to move on from these two losses and get back to their hot start against northeast Ohio rivals, The University of Akron on Wednesday at Beeghly Center at 7 p.m.
“4-2 is not a bad record, but you lose one like this and it certainly doesn’t feel too good,” Barnes said. “I’m disappointed in the loss to say the least. It’ll take forever to get over this one but we have a really good Akron team coming in next week and if we’re not moved on and moved forward from this one then that’ll be even tougher than this one than this one was.”