Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes. YSU's Ethan Wright breaks a South Dakota tackle during the first half of the Penguins 27-17 loss at home on Saturday at Stambaugh Stadium.

YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown State may have started it, but South Dakota finished it.

Despite the Penguins jumping out to an early lead with a pair of touchdowns, the Coyotes scored 27 of the game’s next 30 points to hand YSU a 27-17 defeat on Saturday night at Stambaugh Stadium.

“We knew it was going to be a 60-minute game against this team — against any team in our conference, it’s going to be a 60-minute game,” junior defensive end Michael Voitus said. “We came out (in the second half), and we didn’t make plays. They made some plays. That’s what happens in a ballgame, and unfortunately we were on the other end of it. In the past we’ve been a team that has come out after half and played well. It seems as though that was flipped tonight.”

After a lackluster defensive performance last week against South Dakota State, YSU’s much-maligned unit earned itself some good will against the Coyotes.

Even though South Dakota gained 415 total yards, the Penguins managed to mostly limit the Coyotes from getting into the end zone. YSU recovered a fumble in the first half, forced South Dakota to punt three times and held the Coyotes to field goals twice.

“I thought we saw a different defense today than we had in the previous game,” head coach Doug Phillips said. “Proud of that, but there’s no moral victories. We prepared and worked hard and we wanted to win that football game, and we fell short.”

However, with the exception of the first two possessions, the offense could not build off the defensive stops to score points.

“Felt good offensively in that first half,” Phillips said. “Wish we could have continued that in the second half when we were getting some stops on defense. When we’re getting stops, now I need to see the offense take advantage of that.”

The first 20 minutes, though, belonged to the Penguins.

YSU won the coin toss and elected to go on offense to keep the Coyotes’ offense off the field.

“They’ve scored 87 points in their last three games in the first half of football games,” Phillips said. “So if we won the toss, we were going to take the football, and it worked in our favor.”

Sophomore quarterback Beau Brungard led the Penguins down the field 82 yards in 11 plays on their opening drive and capped it off with a 15-yard touchdown pass to tight end Brandan Serrano.

The defense forced a punt on South Dakota’s first drive, and YSU had a chance to build on its early lead.

Brungard and the Penguins did it again, going 81 yards in 13 plays this time, as Brungard scrambled and ran it in himself for an 11-yard touchdown.

On just those two drives, YSU’s offense gained 163 total yards. The Penguins had just 183 total yards the rest of the game and added a 39-yard Andrew Lastovka field goal right before halftime.

“You just can’t get complacent,” Voitus said. “It’s human nature to get complacent. You start succeeding, and you start having fun — maybe starting joking around on the sidelines a little bit too much. In our conference, and against an opponent like that, you can’t get complacent. You have to be able to put your foot down when you get them down, and we didn’t do that tonight.

After falling behind early, South Dakota turned to Aidan Bouman and the Coyotes’ passing game. Bouman threw for 153 of his 223 total passing yards in the first half, as he led South Dakota on a pair of touchdown drives to tie the game.

But then in the second half, the Coyotes leaned on their explosive run game, even in the absence of starting tailback Travis Theis. In his stead, Charles Pierre Jr. had 21 carries for 153 yards and two touchdowns for the Coyotes, including the go-ahead 50-yard touchdown run in the third quarter.

“They found some weaknesses in the passing game in the first half and were able to get it over top of us,” Voitus said. “Being a defensive lineman, we gotta get back there. We gotta be able to put more pressure on him. If he has time to get the ball 40 yards downfield, it’s on us as a defensive line. … In the second half, we had a couple missed run fits with some calls that we had and some calls that they had against it. That’s how they hit that big run and that tight end screen too.”

For YSU, Brungard finished 22-for-31 for 208 yards and a touchdown, while also rushing for 69 yards and a touchdown. Max Tomczak had 90 receiving yards for the Penguins.

After facing two top-five teams in back-to-back weeks, the slate doesn’t get any easier for the Penguins, as they play host to No. 9 North Dakota next Saturday at Stambaugh Stadium.

“It’s putting all those pieces together,” Phillips said. “I’m not giving up. We’ve got a lot of football games ahead of us, a lot of great football teams we’re going to play, and I think we can put a football team on the field to compete with all of them. But we gotta get back to work and improve upon what we did this week.”