Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes. YSU's Juwan Maxey shoots and scores a first-half three against Detroit Mercy on Saturday at Calihan Hall. He would go on to score a team-high 21 points in the winning effort.

DETROIT — The city of Detroit has a special place in Juwan Maxey’s heart.

The Youngstown State junior guard grew up not too far from Detroit Mercy’s campus and played high school basketball just down the road at Renaissance, where he was named All-City three times and scored more than 1,000 points during his career.

He then spent his first two seasons at Macomb Community College, just about 20 minutes away, where he averaged 12.7 points per game.

In his return to his native city, with 40-50 family members in attendance, Maxey delivered one of his best performances of the season, knocking down six of the Penguins’ 16 total 3-pointers to lead YSU with 21 points in an 87-72 victory over the Titans at historic Calihan Hall.

“I knew coming home that I had to put on a show for my family,” Maxey said. “The ball was falling today, not just for me, but me and my fellow teammates. When we shoot like that, we’re going to be hard to beat.”

It certainly wasn’t Maxey’s first time on the Titans’ home floor. When he was a freshman at Renaissance, he played in the 2019 Detroit Public School League (PSL) championship at Calihan Hall.

Plus, the gym is also often used for workouts and pickup basketball, so Maxey has spent plenty of time on Dick Vitale Court.

“I love this gym — the greats have been here, so when you got that history, you want to try to do good,” Maxey said. “You just get that energy, and when your family’s here, you gotta put on. Just coming home, I had to put on for my city — let them know that I’m still here, I’m just gone for a little bit. Never forget where you come from, and I love my city.”

The Penguins shot 47% from deep, and their 16 made threes were their most in a game this season, which also tied for third-most in a game in program history.

“We knew we were going to have to because of the way they play defense,” head coach Ethan Faulkner said of YSU’s outside shooting. “They are overly aggressive to protect the paint and really swarm the ball on drives. So we knew we were going to have to get in there and play off two feet. The reason we shot the ball well is that we took the right shots. Sixteen assists on 27 made field goals, only turned the ball over nine times, got 11 offensive rebounds — so a lot of really good stuff offensively.”

Maxey and the Penguins’ hot shooting started early and never really let up.

YSU started the game by making each of its first four 3-pointers and five of its first six. Senior guard EJ Farmer hit three of those, while Maxey knocked down a pair.

The Penguins jumped out to a 15-2 advantage in the first few minutes and eventually extended that lead to 22 (30-8) midway through the first half.

“Everything just changed,” Maxey said. “We were holding our own on the defensive end. We were hitting buckets, they were not.”

It was one of the Penguins’ best starts of the season in Horizon League play, one that YSU has been searching for in recent weeks.

“I just thought our guys were really locked in,” Faulkner said. “They understood the magnitude of what we needed to do on this road trip, and that was to come up here and get two wins.”

After YSU built its largest lead of the afternoon (25) with under four minutes left in the first half, Detroit Mercy ended the opening period on an 11-3 run to cut the Penguins’ lead to 17 at halftime.

Then, whenever the Titans would make a push in the second half, the Penguins would knock down a timely 3-pointer to halt Detroit Mercy’s momentum.

It happened in the first few minutes of the second half when YSU had back-to-back threes from Maxey after the lead was cut to 11, and again with about 8:35 to go when Cris Carroll knocked one down from the top of the key.

“That was very important for us,” Carroll said. “They threw a punch at us, so we threw a punch right back and got things rolling.”

The Titans only got as close as 10 the rest of the afternoon, but were led by 24 points from Orlando Lovejoy.

YSU finished with all five starters in double figures. In addition to Maxey’s 21, Farmer had 17, Carroll had 16, Ty Harper had 11 and Nico Galette had 10.

“These teams aren’t going to quit, these teams are all really good,” Faulkner said. “I got a ton of respect for Orlando Lovejoy and the kind player he is. They just wouldn’t go away. To our guys’ credit, we had a ton of contributions from different people with guys just stepping up and making big shots when we really needed them.”

The win puts the Penguins tied for fourth in the Horizon League standings with Robert Morris at 10-5, with a home game against second-place Purdue Fort Wayne looming on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at Zidian Family Arena.