Staff photo / Joel Whetzel. Youngstown State guard Megan Callahan drives to the basket against her former team, Robert Morris Saturday afternoon at the Beeghly Center. Callahan scored 12 points in the Penguins’ 59-53 win.

YOUNGSTOWN — It was the exact type of struggle you’d expect between the top two defenses in the Horizon League. But in that battle of No. 1 Youngstown State and No. 2 Robert Morris, the Penguins made just enough plays down the stretch to maintain their unblemished conference record.

Lilly Ritz scored 17 points and added eight rebounds, Chelsea Olson just missed a double-double with 15 points and nine assists, and YSU (14-1, 8-0) held off the upset-minded Colonials, 59-53, Saturday afternoon at the Beeghly Center. The 8-0 league mark is YSU’s first in program history.

“We knew it was going to be tough. It’s always tough against Robert Morris,” Olson said. “They’re really good defensively; they play together on defense. So I think just buckling down and executive on both ends defensively and offensively. I think that was key.”

It was another impressive performance for the stingy Penguin defense. RMU became the 10th opposing offense to score under 60 on YSU.

It wasn’t as if the Colonials weren’t hitting shots, though. RMU went 20-for-52 from the field. But YSU parlayed 17 forced turnovers into 23 points to help create separation, whereas RMU only scored nine points off 12 YSU giveaways.

The Penguins connected on 22-of-50 shots overall and 6-of-19 shots from beyond the arc. In addition to Ritz’s 17 and Olson’s 15, Megan Callahan scored 12 against her former school.

The 59 points Youngstown State amassed were the least it’s scored since Dec. 12’s 78-58 loss at Penn State.

“They’re in gaps. They like to deny a lot, which sometimes we struggle with and with getting open on the wings,” Olson said. “So I think that was the biggest thing, biggest adjustment going into the second half was just being able to get open on the wings.”

The other adjustment came in valuing possessions, says YSU coach John Barnes. After coughing up eight turnovers in the first quarter, YSU had just four the rest of the afternoon.

“I think the biggest thing was we took care of the ball in the second half. … When you play a team like (RMU) that plays really hard and that tough defense, the margin of error is small,” Barnes said.

Throughout the second half, YSU would grow its lead to as much as eight before the Colonials would come up with a critical bucket or two to rally back into the mix.

The Penguins’ biggest advantage came midway through the fourth, as a 9-0 run put them up 49-38. Olson hit back-to-back buckets in the paint and Ritz added a pair of layups and a free throw to key the spurt.

Ritz says the key for her was to match RMU’s physicality in the post.

“They were just very physical, and I think that’s the biggest factor when being a post player. You just have to kind of be physical back,” she said.

As it had all afternoon, though, Robert Morris had an answer to that YSU run. Simone Morris canned back-to-back 3-pointers to bring RMU to within five with 2:13 to play.

After Lexi Wagner sank her own triple to push the advantage back to eight, the Colonials began fouling. The Penguins didn’t fare well at the line — just 5-for-10 in the final minutes — but sank just enough to hold the Colonials off.

RMU’s Sol Castro had 11 points and eight rebounds, Morris chipped in 11 points and Ashya Klopfenstein added a double-double with 12 points and 10 boards.

The two teams will get to know each other well over the next couple weeks, as Saturday’s game was the first of three meetings between the schools. Originally, YSU and RMU were supposed to each play Wright State and Northern Kentucky this weekend. However, COVID-19 issues within WSU and NKU canceled the contests. YSU was awarded a forfeit win over Wright State, but the NKU game was ruled a no contest.

Instead of those games, the Horizon League matched the travel partners together for an impromptu Saturday contest. They’ll meet again in two weeks, as YSU visits the UPMC Events Center on Jan. 20 before RMU returns to the Beeghly Center two days later.

As far as preparing for the last-minute matchup goes, Olson said not much was different.

“When we knew what was going to happen, we kind of just locked in on Robert Morris and what they do, so not much of a difference. (It was) just making the switch quickly,” she noted.

Of playing each other again in a couple weeks, Barnes added, “As a staff, myself and the team, it’s just every game is treated like a new one, like it’s our first one. We have to do our best to win it, and that’s how we’ll approach them the next two times.”

jwhetzel@tribtoday.com