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It comes down to final four for Penguins

YOUNGSTOWN — They play tonight against Wright State with a tipoff at 7 p.m. On Saturday, YSU hosts Northern Kentucky at 2 p.m.

Next week, the Penguins have games Feb. 27 at Green Bay and Feb. 29 at Milwaukee, both starting at 8 p.m.

And that is it for the 2019-20 season for the Youngstown State University men’s basketball team, which stands 15-12 and 8-6 in the Horizon League.

The last time YSU won 18 games was the 2012-13 season. The Penguins went 18-16 that year and went to the second round of the CollegeInsider.com Tournament.

The Penguins went 19-11 in the 2000-01 season and were 20-9 in the 1997-98 season, making the final of the Mid-Continent Conference Tournament. That’s the last time YSU reached a conference final and was a game away from an NCAA Tournament appearance. The Penguins haven’t been to the NCAA Tournament since moving from Division II to I in the early 1980s.

On Saturday, YSU lost by eight at Oakland.

“We had an opportunity to get our 16th win, punch a postseason berth right then and there,” YSU junior Naz Bohannon said. “It obviously didn’t happen. We’ve got to wake up and be ready to play your whole, entire game. That still doesn’t deter from our mission.”

YSU is 10-2 this season when holding teams to 70 or fewer points.

“We take less 3s,” Bohannon said. “Our identity has to be defense. Holding a team to under 70 definitely gives us a shot.”

Consistency is a key word for the Penguins if they want to have a chance against the top two teams in the league — Wright State and Northern Kentucky — along with winning on the road at Green Bay and Milwaukee.

How can consistency help YSU when it goes on a 4- to 6-minute scoring drought?

“If I had that answer we’d be four games better,” YSU coach Jerrod Calhoun said. “Unfortunately, those are the things you try to keep getting better at. You’re certainly trending in the right direction with some of that. When I watch other teams, I see a lot of that same stuff. I don’t want to make excuses. When we have those lulls, we have to find a way to get to the foul line. We’ve got to be more aggressive in attacking close-outs, driving the ball to the basket, creating opportunities on the offensive glass, getting them in the air, trying to draw fouls.

“I think that’s how you stop some of those droughts. Better shot selection can help that. We’ve talked about that as a staff. Other times your defense is bad because your offense leads to that. You have to take good shots.”

How is this YSU team going to be remembered after this four-game stretch?

“We’ve got four games,” Bohannon said. “We can go out with a bang. It can change this week. We can win all four and go 19-12 and everybody will be talking about us. We can lose all four and be 15-16 and everybody will talk about us in a negative way.”

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