Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes Youngstown State players gather for a team huddle during a game this season.

YOUNGSTOWN — This year, Youngstown State proved its historic 2022-2023 season wasn’t a one-off.

The Penguins continued to make history in 2023-2024, building on the program’s most-ever Division I wins and first Horizon League regular season championship last year.

With almost a completely new roster, YSU still finished this season with 22 wins, the second-most Division I wins in a season in program history, behind only last year’s total of 24 wins. It marked the first time the program has posted consecutive 20-win seasons since the 1963-1964 and 1964-1965 seasons.

It’s all been part of a process that first began when head coach Jerrod Calhoun first arrived in Youngstown seven years ago.

“Certainly expectations are a little different than when we first got here,” Calhoun said. “That’s what building a program is — as you have some success, you bring in really good players and you win and you sell out crowds, the expectations should go up. That’s really what building a program is.”

Before Calhoun took over in 2017, YSU hadn’t had a winning season since 2012-2013.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and roses at the beginning under Calhoun either. During his first two years, the Penguins won a combined 20 games and didn’t experience their first winning season until 2019-2020.

Since then, YSU has had a winning season every year, culminating with the back-to-back 20-plus win seasons over the past two years.

“I think we’ve taken the steps — from our NIL collective, making sure we’re the No. 1 collective in the conference, understanding that times have changed and getting out in the community and building great relationships to redoing our locker room and putting almost $300,000 into our locker room to have the best mid-major locker room in the country, to redoing our arena,” Calhoun said. “This has been a lot of hard work, but a lot of fun. To see that come full circle from year one to year seven, it’s a group effort. It’s a lot of work, and we’re certainly not done.”

CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR

With a rebuilt roster of 12 new players, YSU took its time finding its groove.

The Penguins opened the season with two losses, but then rallied to win nine of its next 10 games, which included victories in its first two conference games.

While back-to-back losses to Oakland and Northern Kentucky were a setback, YSU stayed in contention near the top of the conference standings throughout Horizon League play. The Penguins picked up a couple of road losses, but defended home court at the Beeghly Center, finishing the season with a 14-3 record at home.

In the end, seven of YSU’s 10 losses came by single digits. The Penguins were in every single game, with the exception of the 30-point loss to Michigan back on Nov. 10. YSU may have been snake bitten by a couple of narrow defeats that came on last second shots (NKU and Green Bay), but the Penguins also won several narrow games, including a pair of overtime victories over Milwaukee.

YSU ended its season by bowing out in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament.

However, with all the close games it played, and after finishing second in the Horizon League standings, the Penguins might look back on this season with a sense of “what if?”

“As a coach, you’re always going to have some regret about decisions you make when the outcomes don’t go your way,” Calhoun said towards the end of the season. “You could say Green Bay here, Northern Kentucky there, Oakland twice. But at the end of the day, we’ve won some very tight games too. We won two overtime games with Milwaukee. There’s been a lot of games that we’ve won that could have went the other way.”

“With our kids, I give them an unbelievable amount of credit. We brought in 12 new players. We only had three returning guys — Brandon Rush, John Lovelace Jr. and Tommy Fryda. If you had said you’re 14-6 (in the Horizon League), you have (22) wins with 12 new players, you would certainly give your guys an A-plus. So I’m beyond grateful for the guys we were able to get here. But could we have won a few more games? Absolutely. But that being said, I think we’re in a pretty good place.”

THE FUTURE

When it comes to roster building, YSU has found a recipe that’s worked in recent seasons.

While Calhoun and the Penguins find high school players that fit their system and bring them up through the program over time, YSU has built the core of its roster by finding older, experienced players from the transfer portal.

“You’re only as good as your players,” Calhoun said during the season. “We’re still going to develop high school players, we’re certainly going to look at junior college players, but we’re certainly not going to abandon what’s gotten us really good the last couple years, which is the transfer portal.

“We have different criteria for each position. One common theme is we’d like to get guys who have done it before, at this level, low-to-mid majors, that have the desire to come in and fit our system and that are about winning. I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned about the portal when you take guys that have won.”

To win its Horizon League championship last season, YSU brought in Adrian Nelson (NKU), Bryce McBride (Eastern Michigan), Malek Green (Canisius) and Brandon Rush (Fairleigh Dickinson) as transfers from the portal, plus Dwayne Cohill (Dayton) was a portal addition from the 2021-2022 season.

Then the Penguins did the same this year, adding Ziggy Reid (Merrimack), EJ Farmer (Toledo), Brett Thompson (Tennessee Tech), DJ Burns (Murray State), Bryson Langdon (NKU), Imanuel Zorgvol (NKU), Jaylen Bates (Florida A&M) and David Wilkerson (Spartanburg Methodist).

“I think we figured it out here in Youngstown, how to navigate the portal, what we’re looking for,” Calhoun said. “I think we’re an attractive place to come now. I think we’re one of the top places to play inside the Horizon League because I think we have a great fanbase. You walk into (the Beeghly Center) and it’s packed. So we’re attacking (recruiting) every day. … Because recruiting is really the lifeblood of the program.”

With Reid, Thompson, Burns and Langdon finishing out their eligibility, YSU will again be the in portal this offseason looking for new additions, especially if some current players decide to transfer to go play elsewhere, which is also a possibility.

The Penguins will continue to try to build on their recent success in search of the program’s first-ever NCAA tournament bid.

“We’ll take 24 hours and then it’s time to get to work,” Calhoun said after the season-ending loss to Cleveland State last week. “We gotta probably get six or seven guys. … There’s no time to waste. We gotta get into the portal and maybe get one more high school guy and see who’s coming back and who’s transferring. It’s portal season — gotta get excited about it.”

Have an interesting story? Contact Neel Madhavan by email at nmadhavan@tribtoday.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @NeelMadhavan.