Junior Payton Adkins squares off against a defender. Courtesy | Emma Purdy

The Hillsdale women’s basketball team fell to Wayne St. University 80-67 in a home game Wednesday night.

Sophomore Savannah Smith and Seniors Kendall McCormick and Lauren McDonald led the team with 15, 14, and 13 points respectively. The loss leaves the team with a record of 2-3 to start the season.

Last week, the Chargers won their first home game of the season against Lake Superior State University before falling to Saginaw Valley State University on the road two days later.

Both games were defensive contests, as the Chargers held Lake Superior to 37% shooting and Saginaw Valley to 34% shooting.

Against Lake Superior, the Chargers trailed by three points with 0:49 left in the third quarter. A jumper by McDonald closed the gap to one before the end of the quarter. 

Less than two minutes into the fourth quarter, a McDonald free throw and layup from senior guard Caitlin Splain gave the Chargers a lead they would not relinquish.

Ten Chargers scored points against Lake Superior, with Splain leading the team with 17.

“One thing that we are very proud of in the past two games is the contribution from our whole roster,” head coach Brianna Brennan said. “We unfortunately got into foul trouble during both games which allowed many players to step up, get more minutes and give max effort when we needed them to.”

The Chargers took advantage of offensive miscues from Lake Superior State, scoring 27 points off turnovers and giving up 11 for Lake Superior.

“It’s always fun playing at home,” Splain said. “I don’t think we played our best game, but we got the job done. We had to battle through a lot of things that weren’t going our way.”

Although the Chargers outshot Saginaw Valley and held them to only 13% from beyond the arc, the Cardinals outrebounded Hillsdale 42-25 and dominated in the paint, scoring 28 points from close to the net as opposed to 16 points for the Chargers. 

Saginaw Valley also outperformed Hillsdale from the free throw line, shooting 81.3% from the line against the Chargers’ 69.2%.

Brennan said in spite of the loss, there are still positives the team can take from the game.

“We know that defense will always be a controllable for us, so we locked in and did a great job executing our defensive game plan vs. Saginaw,” Brennan said. “Saginaw was by far our best defensive performance this season. We were very connected throughout each defensive possession. It was exciting to see us play such tough defense throughout the game. Even though we lost, we still learned a lot from it and will use it as momentum to carry us into this week.”

The Chargers never led after halftime, but they never trailed by more than eight points.

Smith said the team has taken big steps forward over the past two games.

“Wednesday was not as good of a defensive game as we would have liked,” Smith said. “We definitely turned it around Friday and played our best defensive game this season so far. In general, from our Wednesday game to our Friday game we made a big jump in team chemistry and executing our game plan.”

Sophomore guard Annalise Pietrzyk agreed that the team defense was working well against Saginaw Valley.

“We just put together a defensively solid game,” Pietrzyk said. “We’re looking forward to putting together a good offensive and defensive performance at the same time.”

Smith led the Chargers with 17 points against Saginaw Valley and Pietrzyk scored a career-high 15 points.

“Another thing that stood out has been Annalise’s efficiency from the field in the past two games,” Brennan said. “She shot 2-3 vs. Lake State from the 3pt line and 4-9 against Saginaw to equate to 50% from the 3. That is a very impressive stat and she is just scratching the surface of the success she will have in order to help our team be its best.”

The Chargers will travel to Romeoville, IL for a game against Lewis University Nov. 23 to close out their stretch of non-conference play.