YSU ends regular season with 34-17 victory over Murray State
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Youngstown State took care of business on Saturday at Murray State.
The Penguins rode their balanced offense to a 34-17 victory over the Racers to finish off the regular season.
Now, YSU plays the waiting game as it awaits its FCS playoff fate. The FCS playoff bracket will be unveiled today at 12:30 p.m. on ESPNU. The Penguins haven't made the postseason since 2016.
Just like last season, YSU sits at 7-4 overall and 5-3 in the Missouri Valley Athletic Conference. Head coach Doug Phillips believes his team is worthy of a playoff bid.
"When you can win five games with our league, with the schedule we play -- we're looking at teams from other leagues that definitely don't have the strength of schedule that the teams in our league do," Phillips said Saturday. "You should be rewarded for having those tough teams in your league."
The Penguins wasted no time, marching down the field on their opening drive to start things off with a seven-yard touchdown pass from Mitch Davidson to Colt Sechrest. Davidson was 7-for-7 on the drive. Davidson started the game a perfect 12-for-12 before throwing his first incompletion.
It didn't take long for Murray State to answer, as Jayden Stinson hit Cole Rusk from 47 yards out to tie the game. The Racers then briefly took a 10-7 on a field goal.
But then YSU ended the first half with back-to-back touchdowns.
After a seven-play, 55-yard drive that ended with Brandon Serrano hauling in a three-yard pass from Davidson, YSU got its first turnover of the game on the ensuing Racers drive.
Marcus Hooker picked off Stinson and returned it into plus-territory for the Penguins. YSU scored three plays later when Davidson found Bryce Oliver wide open after his defender fell over for a 14-yard score, which allowed the Penguins to take a 20-10 lead into halftime.
"When you go on the road, you gotta have momentum swings where it goes in your favor just to get everything going," Phillips said. "I think that interception got our guys going in the right direction and got our offense going. "(MSU) had that fake punt that they were able to keep the ball and score on that touchdown drive. We needed some momentum and that gave us enough momentum going into the second half."
After the Racers missed a long field goal on their opening drive of the second half, YSU added to its lead. The Penguins ran the ball 11 times on a 12-play drive that was capped off by Dra Rushton, who plowed into the end zone on a three-yard run.
Led by their run game, which finished with 206 yards, the Penguins dominated the time of possession 39:37 to 20:23. Tyshon King finished with 152 yards on 23 carries, while Rushton had 57 yards on 17 carries in addition to his score.
"For us, it was about establishing the run more than anything," Phillips said. "We hadn't in the last two games been able to run successfully, so we wanted to come out (Saturday) in the second half and we were able to put a drive together. That's a credit to those guys up front with those tight ends and running backs just coming off the ball. Time of possession was huge in our favor. We know we can throw the football, but once in a while, it's gotta be intentional that we're able to run the football."
Murray State still wouldn't go away, however, as the Racers answered with an eight-play drive to once again make it a 10-point game.
After each team turned the ball over on downs to start the fourth quarter, Beau Brungard's 27-yard punt return deep into opposing territory set up Oliver's second touchdown reception of the day, which gave the Penguins their final 34-17 margin of victory. Davidson tallied four touchdown passes on the day.
"We probably made it closer than we needed to when they got the stop and we couldn't convert on a third-and-one and a fourth-and-one and that's inexcusable," Phillips said. "We gotta be able to convert those with our offensive line and our running backs. So that's an area we gotta get better at. I was disappointed, but I always say I want to see how our kids respond when we make mistakes. And they came out on the next drive and drove down there and scored a touchdown. So I love how they responded to that little bit of adversity we saw there."
nmadhavan@tribtoday.com