Fresh off of victories against the top two teams in the G-MAC, the Hillsdale College Chargers couldn’t quite complete a trifecta by defeating the third-place Cedarville University Yellow Jackets on Monday.
The Chargers (9-7, 7-5 G-MAC) led by as many as nine points late in the second quarter and held a 35-33 advantage at halftime. A rough third quarter, however, resulted in Hillsdale being on the wrong side of a 80-75 score when the final buzzer sounded.
Hillsdale had beaten Ursuline College, undefeated in the conference at the time, on Jan. 6 and first-place University of Findlay on Jan. 13, heading into the game against Cedarville.
Head coach Matt Fritsche said the lack of time to prepare for the Yellow Jackets (13-3, 8-2) was tough for his team.
“It was a really quick turnaround to play here on Saturday [against Findlay] and get back down to Cedarville on Monday night against teams that were polar opposites,” Fritsche said. “We didn’t want to overwhelm our team with information, we wanted to give them a little bit of freedom and let them rest on the day in between, but we probably should have been a little bit more adamant about the information we had available for our kids.”
Hillsdale shot 40.3 percent from the floor, a dip from its previous two games. In comparison, Cedarville shot 50.9 percent and 42.9 percent from three-point range. Shooting percentage proved to be the difference in a game decided by just five points.
“It’s never fun losing knowing you just missed shots,” junior forward Makenna Ott said. “We did all we could do. The past couple of games, we’ve been missing shots. They haven’t been falling for us. Our time will come when we start hitting them. Cedarville hit a lot of shots, credit to them for that.”
Junior guard Allie Dewire, along with Ott, led the way with 19 points each. Junior forward Brittany Gray added 18.
“Having three players score in double digits is really good,” Ott said. “That means we’re sharing the ball really well and that we’re able to score and take advantage of the matchups we have. With our team, any game could be like that.”
Hillsdale, the top rebounding team in the conference, was out-rebounded by Cedarville, 39-32. Fritsche pointed out, however, that the Chargers grabbed 13 offensive rebounds on 43 missed shots, and held the Yellow Jackets to seven offensive rebounds on 26 missed shots.
“The thing we want to look at is percentage of offensive rebounds,” Fritsche said. “Percentages are the statistics we pay attention to more than anything. If we miss a lot more shots, they’re going to have more rebounds. We actually won that battle, even though it looks weird.”
Since the beginning of the season, Hillsdale has improved ball security. On Monday, the Chargers turned the ball over only six times, resulting in just two points for Cedarville. On the contrary, Hillsdale’s defense forced 11 turnovers and turned them into 20 points the other way. Fritsche said an improved offensive motion has eased the early-season turbulence of taking care of the ball.
“They’re trusting each other a lot better,” Fritsche said of his team. “We had plays the last three games that really focused on making plays for other people. When the ball moves like that for us, we’re really hard to guard. That’s been the improvement most of all: our movement on and off the ball.”
Fritsche credited the work ethic of the entire team for the offensive uptick.
“The reason our motion has gotten better is because our practices have been really good,” Fritsche said. “The kids that are not playing as many minutes are pushing and sometimes beating the kids in practice that are playing minutes.”
Cedarville’s run came in the third quarter, where they outscored Hillsdale 24-13. Gray pointed to the need for the defense to tighten up in order to prevent opponents from swinging the momentum.
“Defense stops a run,” Gray said. “Our coach tells us that. Defense wins you offense. We play better on offense when we take care of our defense. That’s our mindset.”
The Chargers are currently in the middle of the conference in terms of defensive rankings, but their strong rebounding usually offsets a hot-shooting team. The Yellow Jackets simply made a few too many shots for the Chargers to overcome.
Despite Hillsdale’s rebounding prowess, Ott said the team doesn’t work on rebounding during practices.
“We never practice rebounding,” Ott said. “We literally just go out there and do it. It’s something we take pride in and it’s definitely one of our strengths. We’ve been very physical and we just work at it. We’re a very strong team compared to a lot of other teams, so having that strength and being able to get those rebounds is just effort and and working hard for it.”
Fritsche described the conference as one with a lot of “parody”, where many teams are clustered at or near the top.
Hillsdale’s victories against Ursuline and Findlay and down-to-the-wire game against Cedarville have the Chargers believing they can hang with any team in the G-MAC.
“I think we can beat anybody in the conference,” Gray said. “I feel that we have the talent, and Cedarville, we lost to them twice but I feel that if we see them a third time, we’re going to get to them.”
The Chargers are back in action on Thursday evening, when they travel to West Virginia to take on Ohio Valley University (0-13, 0-9). Tip off is at 5:30 p.m.