Keeping it going: Faulkner hoping to continue YSU’s success as season begins
YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown State is in the midst of one of its most successful stretches in program history.
The Penguins are coming off back-to-back 20-win seasons during which they won their first regular season conference championship in program history.
Now, as the Penguins are set to open the 2024-2025 season on Monday, first-year head coach Ethan Faulkner has an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality, as he looks to continue and build on what his predecessor Jerrod Calhoun accomplished with YSU.
“We’re excited about it,” Faulkner said about the start of the new season. “I think our guys are to the point where they’re ready to play against somebody else. Obviously, we’ve got our two scrimmages in, but I think that our team’s in a good place — certainly still got things we need to clean up on both sides of the ball. But definitely excited to get our season started on Monday and to see where we’re at.”
With Faulkner leading the way, the Penguins want to continue to play the same high-scoring, up-tempo style that they have in recent years.
“Both sides of the ball, offensively and defensively, we’re really trying to get our guys to understand our system,” Faulkner said. “Getting guys to understand what’s a good shot, what’s not a good shot — all those different things that I feel like most teams in the country are really trying to focus on right now in preparation for trying to be ready to play your first game on Nov. 4.”
Much like the rest of the country in today’s era of college basketball, YSU continues to build its roster out of the transfer portal on a yearly basis. It started with Calhoun and has continued with Faulkner.
With that, however, comes the reality that new players have to learn a new system.
As a result, Faulkner feels it’ll take time for the Penguins to find their groove, something that was also the case last season. YSU began the 2023-2024 season with a pair of losses and started 3-3 before then winning seven straight games heading into Horizon League play.
“I think it takes time,” Faulkner said. “We are certainly making progress, but I think we need to continue to improve in all those areas. When you recruit the way that we have recruited, and really just the day and age of college basketball we’re in, you don’t always have a lot of continuity as you bring new people in. It just takes time to get everybody on the same page. I think our guys have done a good job of embracing that and really trying to learn.”
The Penguins return six players from last year’s squad that went 22-10 overall and 14-6 in conference play.
Senior guard EJ Farmer (7.4 ppg) and sophomore center Gabe Dynes (3.9 ppg) highlight the returning group, which includes redshirt freshman Dante DePante, redshirt sophomore David Wilkerson, redshirt freshman forward Christian Kirkland and junior center Imanuel Zorgvol.
Wilkerson missed all of last season with an injury after transfering from Spartanburg Methodist, while Kirkland and DePante redshirted. Meanwhile, Zorgvol is expected to miss a significant amount of time after suffering a lower leg injury during preseason.
“Definitely need leadership out of those guys,” Faulkner said of Farmer and Dynes. “EJ, a guy in our program for two years and Gabe, been in our program two years — both of those guys are certainly going to take on bigger roles for us in terms of their minutes and what we need out of them in terms of production. Both those guys have made major improvements.”
YSU’s seven transfer additions are expected to contribute significantly, as well. Fifth-year guards Ty Harper (The Master’s), Nico Galette (Sacred Heart) and Siem Uijtendaal (Canisius) are the oldest players in the program, and each joins the Penguins with considerable experience after being major contributors at their previous schools.
Juniors Jason Nelson (VCU), Juwan Maxey (Macomb CC) and Cris Carroll (Coffeyville CC) each also bring plenty of scoring and experience that YSU will utilize this season.
Rounding out the roster are true freshmen Shaheed Solebo and Elijah Guillory and sophomores Nik Hendrix and Kevin Hamilton.
From top-to-bottom, depth and versatility are things that Faulkner will be able to lean on with YSU’s roster this season.
“I don’t know that we have a guy production-wise that’s going to put up numbers like a Dwayne Cohill or DJ Burns, but I think we have a lot of balance,” Faulkner said. “We have depth at every position. Certainly (Zorgvol’s) injury hurts at our forward position, but I think one through 10, we can play a lot of different guys — we can play big, we can play small, which excites me as a coach. We have some versatility to be able to do that.”
YSU opens the 2024-2025 season against Westminster (Pa.) on Monday at 7:35 p.m. in the newly renovated Zidian Family Arena at Beeghly Center. After that, YSU will be on the road for six straight games during the first month of the season.
“Scheduling has been incredibly hard for us,” Faulkner said. “I think with the success we’ve had, the scheduling piece of it becomes very difficult, particularly in getting home games and it shows with the schedule we have this year. Six of our first seven on the road, four home games in non-league (play). It’s certainly not something that excites me, and I know our fans want to be able to watch us play. But we’re going to have to be road warriors. … That’s where we have to have some urgency with what we’re doing in our practices, urgency to get better because all those games are going to be very difficult.”