Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes YSU’s Dwayne Cohill shoots a free throw Thursday evening at the Beeghly Center. Cohill went 10-of-10 from the free-throw line in YSU’s 67-66 loss to Northern Kentucky.

YOUNGSTOWN — Three consecutive losses, each more agonizing than the last.

Youngstown State’s frustrating stretch continued Thursday night, as the Penguins dropped a last-second heartbreaker to Northern Kentucky in Horizon League play, 68-67.

YSU (9-8, 3-4) initially appeared on its way to a thrilling rally, as the Penguins surged from a 66-62 deficit to take a 67-66 lead after NKU’s Jake Evans missed a pair of free throws and Tevin Olison sank a go-ahead layup with 9 seconds remaining.

On the other end, the ball went out of bounds with 2.4 seconds to go. NKU inbounded to Adrian Nelson, who had sprung loose after a screen on which the Penguins didn’t switch, and Nelson sank the game-winning layup with a second to play. A final heave from Olison fell short.

And while YSU coach Jerrod Calhoun acknowledged it was a costly final mistake, he was quick to note there were plenty of other missed opportunities.

“I don’t want to blame anybody; this is a team sport. There were so many possessions in the second half,” he said. “We’ve now had back-to-back games where we’ve dominated for 20, maybe 23 minutes of the 40. Unfortunately, it’s a 40-minute game.”

It’s that fact that’s perhaps the most disappointing for YSU right now. In each of their two losses, the prior being an 86-80 defeat against Cleveland State in which YSU led at halftime, the Penguins had opportunities to close the games out and earn much-needed conference wins. But in each of those losses, YSU has failed to land its knockout blow and allowed its opponents to jump back into the mix.

Against the Norse (6-8, 2-3), YSU led 28-24 at halftime and at one point in the first half was up 23-14, but couldn’t pull away any further before NKU began to heat up.

And as it was against CSU, the Penguins fell victim to an opposing guard heating up to lead his respective team back. The Vikings relied on D’Moi Hodge, while the Norse rallied behind Marques Warrick.

The sophomore was just 2-for-7 for five points at halftime, but drilled a trio of treys in the second half to score 15 points after the intermission and power the Norse back with his game-high 20 points.

“We should have been up a lot more. That’s the problem in the last two games, we should have been up 14 or 15 points,” Calhoun said. “When you let a team hang around that you’re holding to 20 points, that’s a tremendous defensive effort. We just couldn’t make any shots and score the ball, so you allow them to hang around, and they did the same thing Cleveland State did. They jumped on us in the second half.”

NKU, whose largest lead was six with 1:30 to play, had a few opportunities of its own to put the game out of reach, but Dwayne Cohill, who played the last 15 minutes of the game with three fouls, kept the Penguins in the mix. After Cohill picked up his third foul, Calhoun rolled the dice and kept him in the game.

From that point, the Dayton transfer scored 10 points to finish the game with 16, and many of those buckets came in important moments as YSU was teetering.

Olison scored 18 for the Penguins, while Michael Akuchie had 12 points and eight rebounds. Shemar Rathan-Mayes added 13 points and five assists for YSU.

Akuchie’s first bucket of the game, a 3-pointer, gave him 1,000 career points at YSU.

In the end, though, the efforts fell just shy. And now, as the losses continue to pile up, YSU’s position in the Horizon continues to slip. After entering the New Year in line for a top 4 seed in the conference postseason tournament, the Penguins now sit at sixth having dropped four of their last five.

“If you’re really going to move the needle, you have to win close games. At the end of the day, if you’re going to go win 19 or 20 games and do something a little big different in Youngstown, you have to win close games,” Calhoun said.

The Penguins will look to snap their skid Saturday as they play host to Wright State (9-7, 6-1), who topped Robert Morris in Moon Township on Thursday, 75-73.

“Life’s about being resilient, bouncing back, staying together, staying the course and not pointing the finger,” Calhoun said. “There’s a lot of things everybody could do better, and we have to figure this thing out.”

jwhetzel@tribtoday.com