Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes Youngstown State’s Paige Shy drives to the basket during the first half against Purdue Fort Wayne. Shy scored 16 points in YSU’s win over the Mastodons.

YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown State had played 10 games this season that had been decided by single-digits. Make it 11.

With so many close games, these back-and-forth, low-scoring, grind-it-out defensive slugfests have become the Penguins’ calling card this season.

On Thursday night, YSU gutted out another nervy final few minutes, holding off Purdue Fort Wayne late to knock off the Mastodons 66-57 at the Beeghly Center.

“The defense has been there night-in and night-out just about all season long,” acting head coach John Nicolais said. “It’s a matter of just trying to get the offense to catch up. I’ll take us being in the 60s. We would love to score more points, but the way they feel right now, they feel a little more confident being deliberate on offense, so we’re rolling with it.”

With more than half their games this season going down to the wire, safe to say, the Penguins are used to it at this point.

“I feel like we’ve had a few of those this season, and each time after every game, we try to learn from it,” Paige Shy said. “I feel like towards the end, this game was a little shaky, but I do think that we did the right things that we needed to do at the right time and we got the result we wanted.”

With 1:46 to go, YSU led the Mastodons by 11 — one of its largest leads of the game. During the next three possessions, Erin Woodson and Audra Emmerson each knocked down threes for PFW and Woodson finished a three-point play. But, Shy went 5-for-6 from the line during that stretch to keep the Penguins afloat.

Then, with YSU clinging to a five-point lead with under a minute left, Haley Thierry managed to leak out behind the Mastodons’ full-court pressure on back-to-back possessions for a pair of fast break layups and an assist to Shay-Lee Kirby to help the Penguins put the game away.

“In the second half, they started pressuring us, and they were getting to the ball, and we got a little nervous when that happened,” Thierry said. “But once we read that, we told coach, let me go long and Paige said let me throw the ball (off the inbound) and she did and we scored off it. So using that momentum really helped us out.”

Thierry made the most of her second start of the season, filling up the stat sheet with eight points, four rebounds, five assists, two steals and a block.

“We were just trying to shake things up a little bit,” Nicolais said of Thierry getting the start. “She’s been pretty good at giving us a spark off the bench. We wanted to try a lineup change to see what that would look like with her being out there, and she played well (Thursday). She did a great job. She found people — I think she had five assists and one turnover — so she did a good job when the ball found her. If she wasn’t able to score, she got it to the next person that was open.”

Three players scored in double figures for the Penguins, with Shy, Dena Jarrells and Emily Saunders each finishing with 16 points. But like it has been all season, YSU’s defense was the difference maker, as the Penguins held the Mastodons to 32.8% shooting.

Amellia Bromenschenkel and Shayla Sellers had come in averaging a combined 24.7 points per game as PFW’s leading scorers. But YSU’s defense had them stumped, as the Penguins limited the duo to just two points in the first half. They finished with a combined six points on 2-for-19 shooting.

In their stead, Emmerson picked up the scoring slack for the Mastodons, tallying 10 points in the first half, despite picking up two early fouls, and finishing with 15 to lead PFW.

“Paige said she wanted to guard Bromenschenkel before we got started,” Nicolais said. “Usually we’re the ones giving out the matchups, but whenever a player tells you (they’d) like a chance to defend (someone) — and Paige did a great job, but the whole team helped defend her. It wasn’t just her trying to defend one-on-one.

“We did a good job of being in gaps, and (Bromenschenkel) likes to spin and wiggle a lot. So when she was going one way and starting to spin back, we had people in that area to make her a little bit more uncomfortable. We thought we did a pretty good job trying to neutralize those two.”

Looking forward, the Penguins will continue their three-game homestand Wednesday against Northern Kentucky at 6:30 p.m.

nmadhavan@tribtoday.com