Correspondent file photo / Robert Hayes Youngstown State head coach Ethan Faulkner (center) addresses his team in the huddle during the Penguins’ Horizon League semifinal win over Cleveland State on March 10 at Corteva Coliseum in Indianapolis.

YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown State head coach Ethan Faulkner didn’t mince words in the aftermath of the Penguins’ Horizon League championship game defeat to Robert Morris.

“This is a group that’s elevated our program,” Faulkner said, discussing what YSU had done this year during his first season as head coach.

That might be putting it lightly.

Beginning last summer, YSU completed a $3-4 million renovation of Zidian Family Arena, which included new seating in the gym, the men’s locker room renovation and the athletic training room renovation.

Then on the court, the Penguins set their Division I program record for the most consecutive wins with eight, won at least 21 games for the third straight season and reached the Horizon League championship game for the first time ever.

“Really felt like we laid a foundation for the way we want our culture to look moving forward,” Faulkner told the Tribune Chronicle and Vindicator on Thursday. “When you think about (all) that holistically, I think it’s another very positive step in the right direction for our program. Certainly more work to be done and much more to be accomplished, but a lot of positives to draw from the last year.”

YSU’s upward trajectory began during former head coach Jerrod Calhoun’s tenure. The Penguins averaged just 11.6 wins per season during Jerry Slocum’s run as coach from 2005-17.

But after Calhoun won just eight games his first season in 2017-18, YSU progressively got better. The Penguins won 12 games in 2018-19, 18 in 2019-20 and then combined to win 46 over his last two seasons from 2022-24.

Since he was elevated to head coach last spring after serving on Calhoun’s staff, Faulkner has been able to continue and build on YSU’s recent success.

In the last four years, YSU has 86 wins overall and 54 wins in conference play — both are first in the Horizon League over that span.

“I think it starts with having the right people in the room,” Faulkner said. “I think we’ve had really good dudes in our program that put winning above everything else. I think guys really got along, and I think our chemistry was good.”

During Calhoun’s tenure at YSU, the Penguins were known for their offense. But since Faulkner’s elevation to the head coaching job, he’s been able to take YSU’s defense to another level.

The Penguins dealt with some struggles on the offensive end at times, particularly early in the season and during a stretch through the middle of the year in January. But as a result, YSU leaned on its defense to help them win games.

“I think we just embraced being a very tough, hard-nosed defensive team,” Faulkner said. “I think our guys understood that for us to be the team we wanted to be, we were going to have to be really good on the defensive end of the floor, and that kind of became our identity.”

Some of the Penguins’ offensive struggles can be attributed to the absence of leading scorer and senior EJ Farmer, who missed 10 games this season, including four games in January with a lower leg injury and then the final six games of the season with a staph infection.

Farmer’s absence may have kept YSU from reaching its full potential this season, because when he returned, YSU’s four-game stretch that started with a road swing through Michigan against Oakland and Detroit Mercy and then the two games against Purdue Fort Wayne and Cleveland State were probably the best that the Penguins played all season, according to Faulkner.

“EJ was a big part of that — he had (four) straight 20-point games when he came back off that injury,” Faulkner said. “But I think everybody has injuries throughout the year. We’re not going to make excuses about that. But obviously EJ was a big piece of our team. He was our leading scorer. Certainly feel like in some of the games, we didn’t play as well when he was out and that he could have impacted winning in a lot of different ways.”

ROSTER TURNOVER

Despite its success this season, YSU has already seen eight players enter the transfer portal this week since it opened on Monday.

Such is life at the mid-major level in today’s era of college athletics.

“It’s extremely challenging. Everything has changed in terms of how the transfer portal works, how the landscape works,” Faulkner said. “That’s impacting what it looks like this time of year for mid-major programs. Whether we like it or we don’t like it, if we don’t adapt to it, then we’re not going to be able to continue to have the success that we have.

“We’re certainly going to be adaptable to the landscape, but this is going to be a year-to-year thing. We are going to be building teams year-to-year. We’re going to work like crazy to have continuity year-after-year. We’re going to work like crazy to keep our best players in our program, but in today’s era of college basketball, it’s extremely challenging to do for a mid-major program.”

However, the roster turnover isn’t limited to the Penguins.

Horizon League champion Robert Morris has already lost its entire starting lineup to the portal, while other conference foes have seen some of their best players depart, including Themus Fulks and Jamichael Stillwell at Milwaukee, Brandon Noel and Jack Doumbia at Wright State and Purdue Fort Wayne’s Jalen Jackson.

Since they’ve used up all their eligibility, the Penguins are set to lose Farmer, Nico Galette and Siem Uijtendaal, while the list of those in the portal for YSU includes sophomore center Gabe Dynes, fifth-year guard Ty Harper, junior guard Juwan Maxey, redshirt sophomore guard David Wilkerson, redshirt freshman forward Christian Kirkland, freshman guard Elijah Guillory, redshirt freshman guard Dante DePante and sophomore guard Kevin Hamilton.

The most significant losses on that list are Dynes, Harper and Maxey, who were each key pieces of this year’s team. Wilkerson is someone who gave the Penguins a spark at times at the point guard position off the bench, while Kirkland and DePante each played sparingly this season and Guillory and Hamilton both redshirted.

“At the end of the year, every kid across all of college basketball has decisions to make, and you’re seeing it all over the place. … I think our guys are making decisions to go into the portal for different reasons,” Faulkner said. “Some guys are making them for bigger roles at other places and some guys are making them for maybe more NIL money somewhere else.”

However, despite the departures, YSU has four players that are presently committed to return for next season, including junior guard Jason Nelson, junior forward Cris Carroll, junior center Imanuel Zorgvol and freshman guard Shaheed Solebo.

Nelson and Carroll were each vital pieces of this year’s team, while Solebo redshirted and Zorgvol had a medical redshirt this year after sustaining a season-ending injury before the year started.

“We feel good about the group that we’ve got coming back,” Faulkner said. “The people that have decided to stay in our program, certainly some key pieces from last year’s team, and some guys that I think our fans don’t know a whole lot about because of redshirts or injuries that are going to be major keys to our team moving forward.”

The Penguins also have commitments from sophomore combo guard Rontavious Blackshear, a 6-foot-6 junior college transfer, and two high school recruits — 6-foot-9 wing Connor Swider and 6-foot-3 combo guard Jaiden Haynes.

That leaves roughly seven or eight roster spots available for YSU to fill in the transfer portal.

“We’re going to do like we’ve done,” Faulkner said. “We’re going to continue to attack the transfer portal and evaluate players from all levels of college basketball that are in there that really fit our style of play and that are proven, productive players that we feel can come in here and help us get back to the Horizon League championship.”