The Hillsdale College men’s basketball team lost its only exhibition game of the season 78-63 to D-I Valparaiso on Saturday night. With their first game of the regular season scheduled for Friday night, the Chargers are building on the good and learning from the bad in preparation for this weekend.
“There were positives for us to build on. There were negatives to clean up but that’s what we expected,” head coach John Tharp said. “We’re cautiously optimistic with things.”
Junior guard Stedman Lowry scored 13 points, and junior guard Ryan Badowski and sophomore point guard Nate Neveau each added 11 points. Sophomore forward Gordon Behr led the Chargers with 8 rebounds and no other player grabbed more than 4.
“We didn’t rebound particularly well,” Tharp said.
Valparaiso’s lineup features a lot of size inside, which the Chargers struggled to deal with.
“We won’t be playing teams with two 7-footers again, so that will help,” Lowry said.
The Chargers trailed just 28-24 with 5:27 remaining in the first half, but the Crusaders finished the opening period on a 17-9 run to lead 45-33 at the break. Hillsdale missed 7 free throws in the first half and missed 16 points at the rim.
“We did some really good things, we just didn’t do them in long enough stretches,” Tharp said. “When we broke down, we broke down for maybe a three-minute stretch where we turned it over. Our transition defense wasn’t great, and we didn’t rebound the ball.”
Valparaiso opened the second half on a 21-10 run to put the game out of reach.
“They jumped on us early in the second half, which wasn’t good,” Lowry said. “But nonetheless we were right there so there’s some little things to clean up and I think we’ll be fine.”
The Chargers have been working to improve their team defense and transition offense during the preseason. Tharp was happy with both on Saturday. Valparaiso shot 40 percent from the field and just 29 percent from beyond the arc.
“We played better team defense than we have over the last couple years,” Tharp said. “And we were pleased with our pace of how we played from a transition standpoint. We played faster than we’ve played over the last couple years.”
This year, the NCAA has put an increased emphasis on calling fouls in the post. The Chargers committed 23 fouls on Saturday.
“We fouled too much,” Lowry said. “But that’s an adjustment with the new emphasis.”
Because it was an exhibition game, Tharp tried various lineups throughout the game. Tharp was pleased with the performances of redshirt freshmen guards Dylan Lowry and Mike Travlos, who each scored five points.
“Dylan Lowry played pretty well off the bench,” Tharp said. “Travlos came in and gave us a great spark in the second half, made some shots for us, and he improved defensively.”
Tharp also said Badowski and Neveau played well. Badowski injured his thumb during the game, which means Hillsdale’s coaching staff has yet to come up with a starting lineup for opening night.
“We’ve got to see how Badowski comes out of this from an injury perspective,” Tharp said. “We have an idea of who it’s going to be.”
Regardless of who starts, Tharp believes it will take production from the entire rotation for the Chargers to win games.
“In order for this team to have any type of success, it’s going to have to be an unbelievable collective effort,” Tharp said. “There isn’t a superstar on this roster. And that’s not saying that we don’t have some good players. But it’s going to have to be just a great collective effort.”
The Chargers will face Malone on Friday night at 5 p.m. and Ohio Valley on Saturday night at 5 p.m. at Walsh University. Facing unfamiliar opponents, the Chargers are focusing on themselves.
“That’s the difficult thing about this time of year. We don’t know what we’re going to see,” Tharp said. “So we’ll focus on trying to be as sound as we possibly can.”