Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes YSU’s Michael Akuchie shoots and scores his 1000th career point against NKU earlier this season.

YOUNGSTOWN — Say this for Youngstown State’s upcoming road trip — the opponents will be familiar to the Penguins.

For the second time in about as many weeks, YSU (10-8, 4-4) is set to face Cleveland State (11-4, 7-1) tonight and Purdue Fort Wayne (9-8, 4-4) on Sunday, having hosted them as part of its recently concluded homestsand. The Penguins took on PFW on Jan. 7 and CSU just two days later.

Those two matchups made up the front end of a frustrating four-game home series for YSU, which went 1-3 during the slate. Youngstown State fell 71-61 to PFW and 86-80 to Cleveland State in overtime. The Penguins also dropped a contest to Northern Kentucky before snapping their skid with a 90-87 win against Wright State last Saturday.

“A lot of familiarity,” YSU coach Jerrod Calhoun said of the upcoming two-game stretch. “Scouting’s certainly different because the kids kind of know their players. They know their actions, so just some minor adjustments along the way.”

In their first matchup, YSU led Cleveland State by eight at halftime, but rebounding and critical shots by the Vikings — and in particular, D’Moi Hodge — proved to be the Penguins’ undoing.

Cleveland State outrebounded YSU 48-32 in the contest and used 22 offensive boards to score 24 second-chance points.

Hodge, meanwhile, finished the game with 31 points, 27 of which came after halftime. Among those shots was a game-tying 3-pointer with 14 seconds to go, and Hodge scored 8 of CSU’s 11 points in the extra period.

“Just little things. We know we have to be better with our turnovers and especially our defensive rebounding,” YSU forward Michael Akuchie said of his team’s adjustments going into Round 2. “Those are things we emphasized last week in practice, yesterday in practice. Those are things we understand impact the outcome of a game a whole lot, so we understand we have to be better in those areas.”

As for the quick turnaround against familiar opponents, Akuchie said he’s used to having more time between meetings, but is “kind of glad we get this rematch pretty early on, just with how the last result was.”

Against the Mastodons, Youngstown State stayed in the mix throughout the contest, but turnovers and a strong second-half from Jared Godfrey helped PFW pull away.

The Penguins coughed it up 14 times, which PFW parlayed into 20 points off turnovers. Ten of those turnovers were steals by the Mastodons. Godfrey, meanwhile, shook off a 1-for-9 first half to finish with 18 points, leading all scorers.

Like Cleveland State, the Purdue Fort Wayne loss came down to the final four minutes or so, Calhoun noted.

“We’ve been practicing a lot of (situational basketball), making sure in certain situations we know exactly what we’re going to do,” he added.

The Penguins are entering an important stretch now, both in seeking to avoid a sweep and also in trying to keep pace in the Horizon League standings. YSU and PFW are tied at fifth overall in the league standings, and are in the hunt for a top four slot and in turn a first-round bye in the Horizon League Tournament, as well as a home quarterfinal game.

Oakland sits atop the league, while Cleveland State is second and Wright State is third. Detroit Mercy rounds out the top four.

“We know in our league, the one thing you don’t want to do is get swept, because that other team kind of controls your destiny,” Calhoun said. “So it’s a big week for us. It’s going to be a challenging week, but our guys have been locked in so far.”