The women’s basketball team rallied in the second half to erase a six-point halftime deficit and pull out a crucial 68-53 G-MAC win against visiting Cedarville on Thursday night. On the road two days later, the Chargers fell 80-72 to Northwood despite a 22-point game by Grace Touchette and a 9-0 run in the fourth quarter. 

The Chargers played a rough first half offensively against Cedarville, going 0-for-8 from beyond the arc and shooting below 40% from the floor. Heading into the second half, the Chargers kicked their defense up with a full court press which allowed them to tie the game up in two and a half minutes and outscore the Yellow Jackets 25-11 in the third quarter. 

“The second half, we came out, and we were able to start generating our own energy and not really worrying about what the score was so much, “senior Arianna Sysum said. “If they hit a basket, we were unfazed, just go back down, just keep playing our game. We just weren’t hitting shots in the first half and then we were letting that affect us on the defensive end. But we turned that around.”

Sysum led the Chargers in scoring with 12 points, the only player in double digits. Grace Touchette added nine points and five assists. Sophomores Carly Callahan and Dani Salenbein chipped in eight points each. Senior Sydney Mills hit eight points and nine rebounds. All 11 players with game time added points to the board, including 29 points off the bench for Hillsdale.

“Obviously we didn’t shoot really well the whole game for the first time all season,” head coach Charlie Averkamp said. “But we won the game in different ways. We got to the rim, we finished around the rim, and a lot of different people stepped up and made plays. We had 11 players play and 11 people score and only one in double figures and so that, to me, was a true team win.”

The Chargers rallied in the fourth quarter against Northwood on Saturday after trailing by 11 with 5:14 to play. Callahan, sophomore Lauren McDonald, and junior Ashley Konkle put together a 9-0 run to bring the score within two points, but the Timberwolves hit another 3-pointer to extend their lead. Callahan sunk a 3-pointer with one minute on the clock to give the Chargers another chance at victory. Both teams added points within the final minute, but Northwood made a three-point play and went 5-for-6 from the line to put the game away 80-72.

“Basketball is a make or miss game and sometimes the shot doesn’t go in,” Averkamp said. “We got down 11 and came back and had a chance to go ahead. In our league on the road, you got to play a full 40 minutes. A couple of times now we’ve played about 35 really, really good minutes.”

Touchette scored a game-high 22 points for the Chargers and shot 4-for-7 from deep. Callahan hit a career high of 19 points. Lauren McDonald added eight points and four rebounds, and Dani Salenbein chipped in seven points off the bench.

Now 13-10 overall and 6-7 in the G-MAC, the Chargers face undefeated G-MAC number one team Ashland on Thursday, Feb. 2, at 5:30 p.m. in the Dawn Tibbets Potter Arena at home in Hillsdale before playing Ursuline on the road on Saturday. 

“As a team, our confidence is definitely growing. We can go into any game saying that we can win this game at this point,” said Callahan. “With Ashland being the number one team in the country, they have a target on their back. Going into it, we really have nothing to lose. So hopefully we can play loose and play aggressive against them.”