Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes. YSU's Ty Harper snags an offensive rebound away from CSU's Tevin Smith during the first half on Sunday at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland. Harper scored 11 points with five rebounds to help the Penguins earn a 68-60 victory at Cleveland State.

CLEVELAND — Youngstown State’s years of misery at the Wolstein Center are over.

After building a 13-point second-half lead, the Penguins fended off a late Cleveland State rally and held on to beat the Vikings 68-60 on Sunday afternoon for their first road win over CSU since 2018.

“It’s a hard place to play, and a lot of that’s got to do with them being really good over the last several years,” head coach Ethan Faulkner said. “I got a lot of respect for Coach (Daniyal) Robinson. As long as he’s the head ball coach here, they’re going to have a chance to compete for league championships.

“As far as tonight, I just thought our guys competed at an extremely high level. Don’t know that the game on either side of the ball was aesthetically pleasing offensively. But I hope the two fanbases understand it, these are two heavyweight defensive teams that were just really trading punches on either end of the floor, and to give our guys credit, we made enough offensive plays to get it done.”

While the Vikings’ pressure defense was able to force the Penguins into 18 turnovers, YSU was able to overcome that by holding CSU to 35.5% shooting, which included the Vikings making just three of their 20 attempts from beyond the arc.

“A lot of times you don’t see games where you win with that many turnovers,” said fifth-year forward Nico Galette, who led YSU with 19 points. “But I think that shows how good we were defensively, still getting those stops even though they were getting extra shots up.”

At the start of the first half, it looked as though CSU’s defense had the Penguins flummoxed, just like it did during the first meeting in Youngstown on Jan. 11.

But YSU settled down, and despite trailing by six with about five minutes left till halftime, the Penguins closed out the first half on a 14-5 run to take a three-point lead into the intermission.

“When the punches come or whenever the mental mistakes come, we knew coming out of the half, if we fix those things, then the whole game would be way different for us,” fifth-year guard Ty Harper said. “That was just a big emphasis for us, getting those little things down and then making sure we come out on top.”

To start the second half, YSU then picked up where it left off.

With Cris Carroll and EJ Farmer — who led the Penguins in scoring in the first half with 10 points — in foul trouble for a stretch, both Ty Harper and Jason Nelson gave YSU a much-needed scoring boost.

“Basically, we gotta pick each other up,” Harper said. “If one’s down, the other person gotta step up. So that’s what we did. We just basically stepped up and did what we needed to do to help not just us, but the whole team win. It just made everything easier for us on the offensive end and the defensive end because they were more tired because everybody else was scoring. It was just a good, connected team effort.”

Harper scored nine of his 11 points in the second half, while Nelson scored all 11 of his points after halftime, which included knocking down a three to push the Penguins’ lead to double digits near the 14-minute mark.

“Ty was really good for a long stretch — we were trying to get him the ball and get him in space,” Faulkner said. “They pressure you so much, it’s hard to run your sets. It really just becomes a basketball player’s game where you gotta try to strategically get some guys some space to drive the ball and let them go be basketball players.”

After a driving layup by Nelson, YSU had its biggest lead of the game (13) roughly midway through the second half.

Then as the Vikings started to make their run, Nelson had two fast-break assists that led to layups for Juwan Maxey (10 points) that helped keep CSU at arm’s length.

“To Jason’s credit, more than his scoring, I thought he played with incredible poise,” Faulkner said. “Their pressure is real. It’s relentless for 40 minutes, and at the point guard position, you gotta play with an incredible amount of poise to run your team against that pressure. He did a really good job of that.”

With 4:35 left, CSU’s Chase Robinson knocked down a three that cut YSU’s lead to 60-58.

However, the Vikings could never quite clear that final hurdle, as the Penguins held them to just two points the rest of the way.

“They made their run at us. They’re a good basketball team, they’re not going to quit playing,” Faulkner said. “We had a couple sloppy turnovers, and they made some tough shots during that stretch. But again, to our guy’s credit, we responded and made enough offensive plays down the stretch to get over the hump. Then defensively down the stretch, we were really good.”

The win leaves the Penguins now tied for second in the Horizon League standings with Robert Morris at 12-5, just half a game behind the first-place Vikings, who fall to 12-4.

YSU now returns home for a nationally televised game against fourth-place Milwaukee on Friday night at 9 p.m. at Zidian Family Arena.

RADIO MILESTONE

Sunday’s game marked Penguins’ play-by-play broadcaster Robb Schmidt’s 700th career game at Youngstown State.

“There’s nobody more passionate about our program than Robb,” Faulkner said. “I love him to death. He’s been so good to me and to our program. For him to have been here and been around for that many games, he’s seen about everything you can see with Youngstown State men’s basketball. So congratulations to him.”