Correspondent photo / David Dermer. YSU forward Cris Carroll brings the ball up the floor while being defended by USC-Upstate's Tyler Smith on Saturday at Zidian Family Arena.

YOUNGSTOWN — Senior forward Cris Carroll has been Youngstown State’s go-to scorer all season long, and Saturday was no different.

Days removed from a career-high 31-point outing earlier this week, Carroll did it again against USC-Upstate. He paced the Penguins’ offense with 27 points, as YSU held off the Spartans 74-65 at Zidian Family Arena.

“Honestly, I’m just in a flow state right now, just taking what comes to me,” said Carroll, who also led YSU with seven rebounds and five assists. “I’m really just staying the course. Whenever coach needs me to score, whatever it is he needs me to do on the floor while I’m on the floor, I’m going to do what I have to do to help my team win.”

It was an odd afternoon for the Penguins, who looked off at times with uncharacteristic mistakes and some scoring droughts. But YSU did what it needed to do against USC-Upstate, even as the Spartans mounted a charge in the second half.

“Mental lapses — I think that’s the one thing that I feel we have to work on coming back from break,” sixth-year forward Vlad Salaridze said. “We cannot afford to have these mental lapses where we kind of, I don’t know what — play purposeless basketball. But I feel like our effort was there, and I feel like the past couple games, our effort’s been great.”

The Penguins started off hot, building a 15-point lead midway through the first half thanks to an early shooting barrage that included 11 points from Salaridze, who has started to find his rhythm again after missing six weeks between preseason and the first few games with an injury. Salaridze finished with 14 points as the only other Penguin in double figures alongside Carroll.

“It’s just going to take some time,” Salaridze said. “I was out six weeks, so I’m just trying to get in and fit where I can. This team is getting better, and I’m just trying to contribute to that — just staying the course and just doing what’s asked of me. That’s been my mantra, honestly.”

The Spartans proved resilient, getting the lead back under double figures in the final minutes of the opening half. YSU went scoreless for more than four minutes until Rich Rolf ended the drought with a 3-pointer.

Then Carroll scored the Penguins’ last seven points of the half to push the lead back to 12 at the break, 40-28.

“Cris is playing exceptional basketball. What I’m most proud of Cris in tonight’s game is he had seven rebounds, five assists and only one turnover,” head coach Ethan Faulkner said. “The biggest area of improvement for our team is to rebound the basketball better, which we did tonight.”

However, USC-Upstate scored the first six points of the second half and continued to keep itself within striking distance throughout the second half.

“We just didn’t come out in the second half ready to play,” Faulkner said. “I don’t know if I can put my finger on why. We talked about trying to do what we did to get our lead, which was defend and run good offense. Just didn’t have the urgency that we needed to start the second half.

“To our guys’ credit, we responded to some adversity there when they made a 6-0 run at us. Put some different guys in the game that I thought gave us a little bit of an energy boost and kind of climbed that (lead) back up to 8-10 points, and for the most part, kept it there the rest of the half.”

The Spartans cut the deficit to as low as three in the second half, but YSU closed things out with layups from Carroll and Salaridze.

YSU has nine days until its next game at home against Detroit Mercy on Dec. 29. Faulkner said the team will have five days off for the Christmas holiday before the Penguins reunite to fully dive back into Horizon League play.

“We’ve been going at this thing as hard as we can go since the beginning of June,” Faulkner said. “These guys get very little time off in between then and now. Obviously this is an important time of the year to be with our families to enjoy the holidays. We also got some guys banged up, so we need to get off our feet for a few days. Then get back here with fresh minds, fresh bodies and be on a real mission — have some urgency to improve in some of the areas that we need to improve in with what we know is going to be a very difficult schedule coming up in league play.”