The Hillsdale College men’s basketball team couldn’t find their way on the road this weekend.
Facing big halftime deficits in both games, the Chargers lost to the Northwood Timberwolves 75-60 on Feb. 4 and suffered an 87-60 rout at the hands of the Lake Superior State Lakers on Saturday afternoon to drop to 12-9 overall and 8-9 in the GLIAC.
Northwood torched the Chargers in the first half of the first game of the weekend, shooting 14-for-21 from the 3-point line in the opening period to establish a 45-23 advantage at the break. Northwood’s first 14 baskets of the game came from beyond the arc and the team didn’t make a bucket from inside the 3-point line until guard Maurice Jones converted a pull-up jumper to beat the halftime buzzer. Sophomore guard Stedman Lowry, who led Hillsdale with 18 points in the loss, called the Timberwolves’ offensive outburst “unbelievable.”
“I’ve literally never seen anything like that before,” Lowry said.
Lowry scored 15 of his 18 points in the second half, nine of which came on three consecutive 3-pointers to bring the Chargers within 14 points with 12:48 remaining. But the Timberwolves were able to maintain a comfortable lead throughout the rest of the game.
“It starts with us and how we played,” Chargers head coach John Tharp said. “We didn’t close out particularly well, something that we’ve really stressed. They saw a couple of them go in and then all of a sudden that basket gets a little bigger.”
Northwood made two more 3-pointers in the second half to finish 16-for-30 from beyond the arc for the game. Those 16 3-pointers were the most the Chargers have given up in a game this season.
“It wasn’t just that they were hitting these shots with our hands in their face, we were allowing them to penetrate into the middle of our defense and then kick out for catch-and-shoot threes,” said senior forward Kyle Cooper, who was held to seven points and 10 rebounds in the defeat. “That’s not a winning formula.”
On the offensive side, the Chargers shot 36 percent (22-for-61) from the field as a team and 38 percent (11-for-29) from 3-point land.
Saturday’s game at Lake Superior State didn’t go any better for Hillsdale, as the Chargers shot under 40 percent (20-for-51) from the floor for the second straight game and made just 18 percent (3-for-17) of their 3-point attempts in the 87-60 loss.
“We’re really disappointed in our fight and how we executed on both ends of the floor,” Tharp said. “We didn’t play our way, our style.”
While the Chargers were struggling to find a rhythm on offense, the Lakers got going early, making 50 percent (7-for-14) of their 3-point attempts in the opening period to establish a 41-20 halftime lead.
“Really our Achilles heel all year has been the other teams’ 3-point shooting,” said Lowry, who scored eight points in Saturday’s loss. “Slow starts have been a theme for us on the road.”
“We were trying to dig ourselves out of a hole in both games,” said Cooper, who finished with 10 poiners and six rebounds. “We just didn’t close out hard enough on the perimeter. When a team sees a couple go in early, confidence grows exponentially.”
The Chargers’ winless weekend drops the team into a three-way tie for the eighth and final GLIAC Tournament spot with five regular-season games remaining. One of those teams, the Michigan Tech Huskies, faces Hillsdale tonight at 8 p.m. in Dawn Tibbetts Potter Arena.
Following their matchup with the Huskies, the Chargers will host the 6-15 Northern Michigan Wildcats on Saturday at 3 p.m.
“It’s incredibly important that we get these two games on our home floor, and hope that you can build some momentum,” Tharp said. “The league is as good as it’s ever been, so we’ve got to respond the right way.”
Hillsdale has been focusing on fundamentals heading into the stretch run of the season.
“Truthfully we’re really just focused on trying to do some really basic things well,” Tharp said. “We haven’t been doing anything particularly well. We haven’t been really good defensively or really good offensively, we’ve been pretty mediocre in a lot of different things.”
The Chargers have enjoyed having a full week to prepare after finishing a stretch of five games in 10 days.
“It’s important because we went through that stretch where it felt like we had one day really to get ready for opponents, but more so we only had one day to get to fix things,” Tharp said. “We’re not the most confident group right now, and you’ve got to fix things, but you can’t destroy how kids are feeling.”
Following these two games, the Chargers will face three teams ahead of them in the standings to finish the season. But Hillsdale hasn’t started thinking about next week.
“The only thing we can do is focus on one at a time, and hopefully we come out of here with four or five wins if at all possible because that’s what we’re going to need,” Cooper said. “We’re going to need a huge effort if we want to see the season extended.”
