The Hillsdale College men’s basketball team’s season ended last Thursday despite the Chargers’ tight 65-61 victory over the Saginaw Valley Cardinals on Senior Night. The Northwood Timberwolves defeated the Lake Superior State Lakers in overtime to leave the Chargers on the outside of the GLIAC tournament for the first time in John Tharp’s eight seasons as head coach.
“People don’t realize that after seasons you’re haunted by things you wish you would have done differently as a head coach,” Tharp said. “We’ve gone through some things statistically and the statistics indicated we were an average basketball team and that’s what we were. We weren’t good enough in certain areas.”
After the final buzzer sounded at the Dawn Tibbetts Potter Arena on Thursday, Hillsdale coaches and players celebrated briefly before fixing their attention on a game 150 miles away that would decide their fate.
“That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever dealt with in basketball,” said junior forward Kyle Cooper, who led the Chargers with 20 points and nine rebounds against the Cardinals. “We won our game and we were really excited because we just beat a good team on Senior Night but all of a sudden we realized our season is dependent upon another team’s game. We were all sitting in the locker room wondering if we were meant to be happy or sad. We didn’t know what to feel.”
Cooper was named First-Team All-GLIAC on Monday. The Chargers’ leading scorer averaged 20.5 points and 10.3 rebounds over the course of the season. His 287 rebounds on the year were the most in the GLIAC.
Northwood’s game did not finish until approximately thirty minutes after the conclusion of Hillsdale’s victory, leaving players glued to their electronic devices hoping and praying for the Lakers to win.
“There wasn’t a whole lot of talking going on,” junior point guard Zach Miller said. “A lot of guys didn’t take off their uniforms. We just sat there waiting to see what happened and once we found out it was kind of surreal. We couldn’t believe our season was over, especially after winning.”
For four Hillsdale seniors, Thursday marked their final game in front of their home fans no matter the result, and their teammates honored them with a win.
“It was huge to win on Senior Night,” Tharp said. “We’re really proud of the men that those four seniors are and we hope that tradition of winning on Senior Night will be here forever.”
Michael Furlong, Ian Sheldon, Cody Smith, and Darius Ware were all honored with standing ovations in an emotional pre-game ceremony with their families. The four seniors combined to score 10 points and grab four rebounds in their final games as Chargers.
Thursday’s contest was tight for forty minutes, indicated by the game’s 10 ties and seven lead changes.
The Cardinals grabbed a five-point lead midway through the first half but the Chargers responded to take a two-point advantage into halftime.
Hillsdale jumped out to an eight-point lead two minutes into the second half. The Cardinals pulled back even with the Chargers with 9:20 remaining, but were unable to take the lead over the rest of the game.
The Chargers made seven free throws in the final minute of the game to hold on to the victory.
Hillsdale was the more efficient team offensively, making 53 percent of their shots to Saginaw Valley’s 40 percent clip from the field. The Chargers also made two more 3-pointers than the Cardinals on one less attempt.
Saginaw Valley hung with Hillsdale thanks to their 9-2 advantage on the offensive glass, leading to seven second-chance points. The Cardinals also attempted five more free throws than the Chargers and converted four of those extra five attempts.
Charger players will enjoy two weeks off before beginning off-season workouts after spring break.
“The spring is an opportunity for our players to develop individually through getting stronger and improving individual skills,” Tharp said. “As a coaching staff, we’ll self-reflect and look at every part of our strategy and how we play and re-evaluate a lot of different things and begin to make some changes.”
Players will lift on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons in addition to hour-long individual workouts in which two or three athletes will work on different basketball skills. The players will also participate in open gym two or three times a week in the evenings, according to Cooper.
“It’ll be really busy but it’s a great time to strengthen the bonds that you have and for redshirt freshmen to really feel like they’re becoming a part of the team,” Cooper said.
This season’s results will serve as next season’s motivation.
“It’s going to hurt this week watching the scores of those tournament games,” Miller said. “It’s all going to be motivation for us this offseason leading into next year.”
