Staff photo / Neel Madhavan. YSU fifth-year guard Dena Jarrells drives baseline and draws contact from a Robert Morris defender during the Penguins’ 71-46 victory on Saturday.

YOUNGSTOWN — What a difference 72 hours can make.

After a letdown against Northern Kentucky earlier this week, Youngstown State made some defensive changes and bounced back in a big way Saturday, cruising past Robert Morris 71-46.

Normally a half-court, man-to-man defensive team, the Penguins debuted an aggressive 2-2-1 full-court press immediately after scoring on their opening possession against the Colonials. The move proved fruitful, as it allowed YSU to race out to a 10-point lead in the first five minutes of the game — a lead it would hold for the remainder of the afternoon contest.

“I think one of the reasons we decided we were going to start pressing right off the jump was to hopefully get (Wednesday’s loss to NKU) out of our minds,” interim head coach John Nicolais said. “Let’s just be aggressive and throw punches instead of allowing teams to punch us a little bit early on. So I think that was a big difference in the overall outlook in how things started.”

YSU first began experimenting with full-court pressure back before the season in October and November, according to Nicolais.

But throughout the season, the Penguins have been content to stick with their customary half-court, man-to-man defense in most games this year. However, with YSU sitting at 8-13 overall and 4-7 in the Horizon League, the team has been willing to implement and try different things to bring about a desired result.

“So we wanted to try to jump out and create a little bit of pressure and make them uncomfortable,” Nicolais said. “(RMU) is very set driven, so we wanted to make them chew up some clock in the back court. With the amount of games that we have left, we told them we’re not using the press as something if we’re down and trying to get back (in it). Let’s just be aggressive from the get-go, and see how things play out.”

With the early pressure, YSU was able to force the Colonials (6-15, 2-10 HL) into 12 first-half turnovers and 22 total turnovers for the game. The Penguins capitalized on that by scoring 30 points off those turnovers.

“I think our offense stemmed from our defense,” senior Malia Magestro said. “We obviously tried some new things on defense, and it worked for us. We got a lot of really good looks because of our defense. … We’re trying to do new things, trying to press up and get pressure on them and make them uncomfortable, and I think that’s going to be our new thing.”

Magestro had the hot hand early on and then again late for the Penguins. The former Kennedy Catholic star put together one of her best shooting performances of the season, hitting five of her six shots from beyond the arc to finish with 20 points.

Then everywhere in between, Emily Saunders was able to take advantage of her size mismatch in the paint to finish with a game-high 23 points on 10-of-12 shooting.

“Getting them in early foul trouble, I think that really helped,” Saunders said. “But also my teammates see me — I’m always going to say that — they were just seeing me and getting me the ball when I was open, and I think we played really good inside-out basketball today.”

Finishing games is something that YSU has emphasized in recent weeks, but has struggled with on a game-by-game basis.

Holding a double-digit lead to start the fourth quarter, the Penguins rode a 13-0 run to blow the game open and put the Colonials away. Pull-up three-pointers on back-to-back possessions from Magestro helped spur the run for YSU.

“In the locker room at halftime, Coach Nic was just saying, we played a great first half, but you can’t win by playing one half,” Magestro said. “So we knew we had to just piece it together. (We were) just really focusing on that and playing the whole time, so we could get some of the other girls (out there) and then everyone gets to play.”

With their three-game homestand in the rearview mirror, the Penguins now turn their attention to IUPUI, as they travel to face the Jaguars on Wednesday at 11 a.m.

nmadhavan@tribtoday.com

BOX SCORE

Youngstown State 71, Robert Morris 46

RMU 10 6 16 14 — 46

YSU 16 15 19 21 — 71

ROBERT MORRIS (6-15, 2-10 Horizon): Danielle Vuletich 3-7 4-4 10, Louelle Allana 2-7 0-0 6, Namoi Barnwell 5-9 0-0 10, Rebecca Dwomoh 1-3 0-0 2, Simone Morris 4-11 0-0 8, Natalie Johnson 1-4 0-0 3, Paris Kirk 0-2 0-0 0, Tuana Coskun 0-2 2-2 2, Madison O’Dell 1-4 0-0 3, Micah O’Dell 1-2 0-0 2. TOTALS: 18-51 6-6 46.

YOUNGSTOWN STATE (8-13, 4-7 Horizon): Emily Saunders 10-12 3-5 23, Malia Magestro 6-9 3-4 20, Dena Jarrells 3-11 2-2 8, Shay-Lee Kirby 1-6 2-2 4, Haley Thierry 3-7 0-0 6, Abby Liber 3-6 1-2 7, Mady Aulbach 0-1 0-0 0, Lindsey Linard 0-0 0-0 0, Mackenzie Hurd 1-2 0-0 3, Abbie Davidson 0-0 0-0 0, Bella Samz 0-0 0-0 0. TOTALS: 27-54 11-15 71.