Madison Chapman / YSU Athletic Communications YSU transfer guard Bryson Dawkins sprints up the floor while being defended by transfer guard Cam Polak (1) during a team practice on Thursday at Zidian Family Arena in Youngstown.

YOUNGSTOWN — Summer workouts and practices are already well underway at Youngstown State as Ethan Faulkner begins his second year as head coach at YSU.

After getting started on June 9, the Penguins, who return four players from last year’s team, are working to integrate their 11 newcomers into the program this summer, while also building and developing their chemistry with one another ahead of the 2025-2026 season.

“It’s been a great three weeks — really optimistic and encouraged not just by the players that we have, but the types of people we have,” Faulkner said Thursday. “We have just lived in the gym for three weeks, and we’ve gotten better. I feel great about our progress.

“There’s a lot to learn and there’s a lot to work on. We certainly feel like we’ve got a good roster in place — a very deep and versatile roster, and we feel like we’ve got some guys that can play a lot of different positions for us. But really what’s been most encouraging is, as we’ve got to know these guys better, really finding out that we’ve got an extremely high-character group and a group that loves ball and really wants to work.”

With some of its offensive struggles at the beginning of last season, YSU is trying to make sure it’s in a better position on that end of the floor by focusing on installing its offensive principles during these three weeks in June.

“I feel like we’re certainly ahead offensively of where we were at the end of June last year for many different reasons,” Faulkner said. “That’s something that we’ve been concentrating on making sure is that we’re getting a good solid foundation with our offensive concepts.”

With YSU’s free-flowing, read-oriented offensive system, chemistry and familiarity with one another are key in determining where the ball needs to go on any given possession.

“The focus has been on understanding the concepts and all the plays that we run through and just seeing how simple they really are,” senior transfer Bryson Dawkins said. “Understanding which teammates like to cut more and which like to pop more, and just understanding the personnel between each other are really the main things that we’re trying to get a better understanding of.”

After this first three-week session wraps up this week, the Penguins will break for two weeks for the Fourth of July holiday before returning for their last three-week session of summer on July 14.

Faulkner said they’ll then start working more on the defensive end of the floor once July rolls around.

Given their experience and familiarity within the program, Faulkner and the rest of the coaching staff have leaned on YSU’s returners — Jason Nelson, Cris Carroll, Shaheed Solebo and Imanuel Zorgvol — to lead by example and “set the standard” for what the Penguins are trying to do on and off the court.

Faulkner said needing those guys to play that leadership role was the focus of many conversations leading up to when the team returned to campus at the start of June.

“Me being a guard, you just want to be a leader and make sure everybody is where they’re supposed to be and everybody knows what’s going on,” Nelson said. “Last year, we made the (Horizon League) championship and all that, so we want to be the team to make it back and win this time — be the first team in Youngstown history that would do that.”