Staff photo / Greg Macafee YSU’s Dwayne Cohill skies above a pair of Green Bay defenders earlier this year for a layup.

YOUNGSTOWN — The mindset is simple for Youngstown State basketball as the postseason gets underway.

“It’s win or go home. That’s all it is,” guard Dwayne Cohill said.

The Penguins (23-8, 15-5 Horizon League) begin their Horizon League Tournament quest in the quarterfinals tonight, as Antoine Davis and the Detroit Mercy Titans (14-18, 9-11 Horizon League) pay the Beeghly Center a visit (8 p.m., ESPN+, 570 AM WKBN).

“Win or go home. There are seniors on this team that if we lose that game, we’ll probably never put a (Youngstown State) jersey on again, and we didn’t come here to do that,” Cohill said. “So that’s what it is for us.”

Youngstown State swept the regular season series, though neither game was a blowout. The Penguins topped UDM 84-79 on Jan. 12 at Callahan Hall, then beat the Titans 73-63 at Beeghly in a game in which YSU trailed by eight at halftime.

If YSU is to win a third time, it begins with slowing down the output of Davis, who sits just 27 points away from breaking the NCAA’s all-time scoring record. The fifth-year senior guard averages 28.4 points per game, built largely on a 41.9 percent mark from 3-point range.

YSU managed to keep Davis to 15 points in the second win over the Titans. UDM’s star guard was held to a 5-for-18 night overall and a paltry 2-for-12 outing from 3-point range.

That inefficiency, YSU coach Jerrod Calhoun says, is the goal once again.

“It’s hard to stop a guy that good, so when you say how do you stop him, we want him to be inefficient,” Calhoun said. “He may get 25 or 27 or 28 or 40. But what are those percentages looking like? How many shots is he taking? Every time down, he’s on our mind whether that’s with the ball, off the ball, ball screens. Whatever he’s doing out there on the court, we’re aware of him. We’ve got to contest his shots; we’ve got to make it hard on him.”

To do that, Cohill said the Penguins have to be sharp defensively from the outset.

“Just not letting him get off to a hot start,” he said. “You usually see his first couple shots going in, it’s going to be a long night for whoever is playing against him. … Just making him see length, see bodies, keeping people in front of him and making him take tough shots. He’s going to hit tough shots — he’s a great player. But he’s not going to beat us (by) taking 20 tough shots. So just making sure with the volume of shots that he takes, that at least 85-90 percent of them are contested, and I think we have a good chance.”

Behind Davis, Gerald Liddell supplies 14.3 points per game and 9.7 rebounds per game.

Meanwhile, on the defensive end, the Titans will deploy their matchup zone, keyed by length on the wings and size underneath.

It took YSU a bit to figure the zone out in the last meeting, as the Penguins shot just 9-for-30 in the first half of that game. But an 18-for-30 performance in the second half keyed YSU’s comeback victory.

Of attacking it again, Calhoun said, “We’ve got to knife the zone. We’ve got to screen the zone. We’ve got to throw down against the zone. We’ve got to get stops and get in transition so you don’t play against the zone. … We have to be able to execute. We’ve done that all year, but against this team, you have to be able to pass. Our assist-to-turnover ratio against them in the two games has been very good, so we have to value each possession.”

A win would advance YSU to the semifinals Monday in Indianapolis — a stage the Penguins have reached just once before in program history. Youngstown State’s last semifinal appearance came at the conclusion of the 2016-17 season, Jerry Slocum’s final year at the helm of the program. Youngstown State is 1-6 all-time in quarterfinal games.

“It’s business,” Cohill said. This is what we’ve worked for. The 31 games we played in the regular season, this is what it leads up to: March Madness. It’s March. Everybody says it’s time for March, everybody is talking about the tournament. That’s what we’re talking about — we want to do something that’s never been done. … We just have to handle business.”

jwhetzel@tribtoday.com