Correspondent file photo / Robert Hayes YSU forward Cris Carroll attempts a 3-pointer while being guarded by Northern Kentucky’s Dan Gherezgher during the Penguins’ Senior Day on Feb. 22 at Zidian Family Arena.

YOUNGSTOWN — Coming off its third straight 20-plus-win season and its first Horizon League championship game appearance last season, Youngstown State had high expectations coming into this year.

Head coach Ethan Faulkner had picked up where former coach Jerrod Calhoun had left off and seemed to have momentum going into his second season toward attaining the program’s first-ever NCAA tournament bid.

However, YSU fell short of expectations this year to finish 15-17, the program’s first losing record since going 12-20 during the 2018-19 season. Despite that, athletic director Ron Strollo reiterated YSU’s confidence in Faulkner and his staff to get things back on track moving forward.

“Unfortunately, we underachieved there, and that could be for a variety of reasons,” Strollo said. “But I am very confident that the program is in great hands under Coach Faulkner and that staff. I think we’ve got a foundation that we’re going to be right back into it. We’ve already started working for next year and got a plan to get whatever was wrong this year corrected.”

The Penguins started the 2025-26 season with an exhibition win over the eventual MAC champion in Akron before then flying across the country to pick up a road win over Mountain West mainstay Grand Canyon.

Things looked like business as usual when YSU also began Horizon League play with a pair of victories. But in mid-December, things started to go downhill for the Penguins.

Beginning with an overtime loss at Robert Morris on Dec. 17, YSU proceeded to lose seven straight Horizon League games, its longest losing streak in conference play since dropping seven straight to open league play during the 2014-15 campaign.

“When we lose, I’m super frustrated, disappointed. A lot of that frustration is with myself,” Faulkner said during the season. “When you lose games like that, you go back and second-guess every decision you make as a coach, every single one of them — every play you call, every substitution you make, all those things. You go back, and you really try to evaluate that.

“Obviously, it’s been disappointing at times. But for us as a staff, for us as a program, we’re going to continue to show up and work and get better and learn from mistakes.”

As a result of the team’s struggles, the coaching staff made drastic changes to YSU’s defensive approach about midway through conference play.

Last year, YSU wanted to be aggressive and disruptive defensively by getting up on ball handlers and icing ball screens. As this year’s Penguins struggled with that, the team flipped to more of a containment approach by keeping the ball in front of the defender, not icing ball screens and playing more drop coverage with center Imanuel Zorgvol.

While the adjustment helped, Faulkner admitted later in the season that the Penguins should have made the defensive change sooner.

“Hindsight is always 50/50. I think as you go throughout the year — this is part of the era of college basketball, that when you’re recruiting through the portal, it takes some time to really figure out what you got,” Faulkner said. “As you do that and evaluate, looking back on it, it probably did take us too long to make wholesale adjustments.

“Obviously, we were always tweaking and making adjustments as you go. … if we could go back and do it over, sure. We would probably go back and make those adjustments sooner.”

Throughout conference play, when they were at their best, the Penguins demonstrated that they were capable of beating anyone in the league. YSU opened league play with a win over eventual Horizon League champion Wright State, beat Green Bay and Northern Kentucky at home and Purdue Fort Wayne and Oakland on the road.

“I think our best is plenty good enough to beat anybody in this league,” Faulkner said. “I think we’ve proven that multiple times throughout the course of the year.”

But the Penguins struggled with consistency on both ends of the floor for most of the season and could not string wins together because of that.

YSU was close — the Penguins played 14 games that were determined by six points or less — but they went 4-10 in those games.

“I don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference between any team in our league,” Faulkner said. “I think anybody can beat anybody. The last-place team in the standings can beat the first-place team in the standings. The competitiveness and balance of our league is as good as I’ve seen.”

Now, as the program heads into the offseason, YSU is once again facing a significant roster overhaul through the transfer portal with seven seniors out of eligibility.

Four underclassmen players have also already declared their intention to enter the transfer portal when it opens on April 7, including Zorgvol, redshirt junior guard Drew King and freshmen Connor Swider and Markus Navarra, both of whom redshirted this season.

Currently, that would leave the Penguins with four players (Tae Blackshear, Jaiden Haynes, Shaheed Solebo and Rich Rolf) remaining on the roster with which to build around for next season, in addition to the two high school recruits (Jacob Spurlock and Kaelen Destin) that YSU has signed for 2026-27. But any of those underclassmen players could still enter the portal before it closes on April 21.

“In this business, when you’re building a team, whether you’re building the team as the owner of a business or a coach, you gotta make sure you’re surrounding yourself with the right people,” Strollo said. “A lot of times, with the portal, it’s like speed dating. The more experience you get and the more mistakes you sometimes make, the better you get. You gotta learn from those.

“As you go through the roster, there’s a different story for each individual, and I think you’ve gotta evaluate those and learn from that. And I’m confident Ethan will do that.”