Youngstown State guards Francisco Santiago and Cameron Morse scored 32 of their combined 36 points after halftime as the Penguins rallied from a 15-point deficit to topple Wright State 80-75 Saturday afternoon at the Nutter Center.
“You don’t guard, you don’t win,” WSU coach Scott Nagy said. “You give up 60 percent in the second half, and most of those were layups, you don’t deserve to win.”
Wright State (11-6 overall, 2-2 Horizon League) lost for the second time in nine home games despite five players scoring in double figures, with two of them recording double-doubles in Justin Mitchell (18 points, 10 rebounds) and Grant Benzinger (12 points, 10 rebounds).
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“They had more energy and they out-toughed us in the second half,” said Benzinger, who scored all 12 of his points in the first half when he hit his first four 3-pointers to help Wright State build a 44-30 lead.
“It’s hard to swallow, but we’ve got to own it,” Benzinger added. “They just played better all-around in the second half.”
Santiago scored 18 of his game-high 20 points in the second half, while Morse tallied 16 of his 18 after the break as YSU (8-9, 2-2 HL) won on the road for the second time this year.
It was a Morse layup in the middle of an 11-0 run midway through the second half that wiped out the WSU lead and tied the game. And Santiago gave the Penguins the lead for good on a jumper with 3:36 remaining.
“I think we just got away from what we usually do, and we didn’t get our coverages down like we normally would,” said Steven Davis, who led the Raiders with 19 points despite 6 of 18 shooting. “We had some slip ups, and we let our offense affect our defense.”
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Mark Alstork added 12 points, and Parker Ernsthausen had 10 for Wright State, but it wasn’t enough to keep pace with the Penguins once they got rolling in the second half.
“We were in a pretty good spot at halftime, and I think our kids were satisfied with that,” Nagy said. “And satisfaction is the worst thing you can have as a basketball team.
“So you’ve got to be reminded of things you probably shouldn’t have to be reminded of. I’ve always said there’s only one good thing about losing — it reminds you how good winning is.”
Wright State still had a chance late in the game.
After Alstork hit a pair of free throws to cut the deficit to 75-73 with 47 seconds remaining, the Raiders needed a stop to get the ball back with a chance to tie or win.
But Morse drained the clock before driving in for a three-point play that put the Penguins up 78-73 with 19 seconds to go.
“It’s a tough loss,” Nagy said. “It means we’re going to have to make it up on the road, and that’s not going to be easy to do. We’re just going to have to have more sustained, most consistent responses.
“We’ve got to get these kids going,” he added. “We’ve got to play way better as a basketball team. It just felt like a bunch of individuals tonight. There’s some teams in this league that can do that and get away with it. We’re not one of them. We don’t have the depth and we don’t have the talent to just out-athlete people. We’ve got to do it with great teamwork and we just didn’t have that tonight, on both ends.”
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