BEAVER TOWNSHIP — If the Youngstown State men’s basketball team expects to duplicate their success of a season ago, they will do so with only four returnees and 11 fresh faces on their current roster.

Gone are 10 players who scored all but 17.2 of their 76.4 points per game last year, a campaign that produced the program’s first ever trip to the Horizon League’s tournament championship game, a third straight 20-plus win season and sixth consecutive winning campaign under first-year head coach Ethan Faulkner.

Stumping for Faulkner at Monday’s Curbstone Coaches meeting – Faulkner was unable to attend due to a scheduled team practice – associate head coach Dwaine Osborne told the group gathered at Avion Banquet Center that the staff is excited about the roster that they have been able to assemble since the completion of last season.

“We are really excited about this year’s roster. This is a talented group or they wouldn’t be playing at the Division I level and we would not have sought them out,” Osborne said. “They are great kids and it has been a really fun summer and fall with them. Their experience and age is exactly what we needed so we can be as old and experienced as possible.”

Cris Carroll (9.2 points) and Jason Nelson (8.0 points), the only two players who scored for the Penguins last year, along with Shaheed Solebo (redshirt freshman) and Imanuel Zorgvol, the latter one of two seven-footers on the team a season ago – Gabe Dynes, who played in all 34 games and blocked 104 of the team’s 179 shots at 7-foot-3 was the other, and is now at the University of Southern California – who suffered a leg injury during pre-season practices and missed the entire year, are the four returnees.

This year’s roster features three sixth-year players (Cam Polak, Tyler Robinett and Vlad Salaridze), a fifth-year player, Derrick Anderson, a former Boardman Spartans standout, four seniors (Nelson, Zorgvol, Bryson Dawkins and Carroll), three juniors (Rich Rolf, Drew King and Tae Blackshear) and four freshmen (Solebo, Jaiden Haynes, Markus Navarra and Connor Swider).

There are no sophomores on this year’s squad.

“Whether it’s the few returning players or a good chunk of the transfers from various levels of play, this year’s roster has plenty of experience,” Osborne said. “Vlad Salaridze has played in over 100 Division I games, Rich Rolf, is a veteran who has played in a bunch of D-I games, Cam Polak is coming from Division II and has played in a ton of games while Tyler Robinette is the same. Not only has Tyler played in a ton of games, but he has played deep in national tournaments and won two NAIA national championships.

“It’s the players who have this experience that help you, not only to manage things that are going on in the game but they have a feel for how your body is affected over the course of the season and how to take care of it. They understand what it is like to have to deal with travel and you put that together with academics, they’re just experienced so what we are super excited about is not only the quality of players we have, but the person that we have, too.”

Taking the little steps to get better every practice, every game, is going to be the key.

“Every stop you make you try to make things better and that is Ethan’s [Faulkner) mindset,” Osborne said. “That’s the mindset passed down to our staff and obviously that trickles down to the players so the best way to improve, when talking from a team perspective, is for each individual just to improve. How can we be a little better than last year, each of us and that includes me as an associate head coach. How can I be better than I was last year for the sake of the program? If we can all improve individually, that will help the collective to be better and that is the objective.

“Practices have gone great thus far. The guys are working really hard and a lot of what we are trying to do now, in terms of growing our team, is to develop cohesion as well as making sure they have a great feel for what it is we are trying to do conceptually, both offensively and defensively.”

A challenging non-conference schedule that includes road tests at Pitt (season opener on Nov. 3), perennial tournament qualifier Grand Canyon (Nov. 7), St. Bonaventure (Nov. 15) and Toledo (Nov. 19), neutral site games with UNC-Greensboro (Nov. 23) and Georgia Southern (Nov. 24) at the Jacksonville Classic, and a home game with USC-Upstate (Dec. 20) is expected to prepare the team for another tough Horizon League slate.

“Our schedule is difficult and challenging once again,” Osborne said. “It is a schedule that will help prepare us for league play so we want to go out, play hard and compete well early. We don’t go down the schedule and check things off as wins or losses, that’s a part of why we went to Syracuse last year and played so well. We treat every game the same and that is like we expect to win, like we are the better team if we just execute and do the things we want to do so it’s a matter of developing your mindset as much as anything else.

“In conference play, Milwaukee has been picked to win it all in most of the pre-season polls. They are the favorites so they will be a good test once again. The entire league is going to be highly competitive, much like last year when so many games could go either way. Look out for Robert Morris again, too, because they are the defending regular season and tournament champions. We remain focused on just getting better today, then being a little better tomorrow to give ourselves a chance to be where we would like to be at the end of the season and into March.”

Next Monday, Melissa Jackson, YSU head women’s basketball coach, will serve as guest speaker.