For a few minutes on Tuesday night, it looked like the Hillsdale College men’s basketball team was doomed to suffer through last season’s growing pains again.
But after giving up a double-digit lead in the second half, the Chargers pushed back, holding off the eighth-ranked Indianapolis Greyhounds for a 92-87 season-opening victory at Nicoson Hall.
“I’m really proud,” head coach John Tharp said. “When they took that lead all the momentum was theirs and we all took a deep breath, and guys made some really big plays for us.”
The Chargers shot almost 60 percent from the field in the first half to take a 42-29 lead into the break, but the Greyhounds went on a 24-10 run in the second half to take a one-point lead with 8:43 remaining in the game. The Chargers, however, did not break beneath the pressure from a nationally-ranked team playing on its home floor.
“We just needed to calm down, slow down, and recollect ourselves,” said senior forward Kyle Cooper, who posted a double-double, leading the Chargers with 32 points on 12-of-17 shooting and grabbing 10 rebounds. “We got back to what got us the big lead in the first half, running good motion on offense, really getting strong on defense again, and not giving up second chance points like we started doing.”
The Greyhounds put up 18 more shots than the Chargers, thanks to a 17-4 advantage on the offensive glass. But as a team, the Chargers shot 54 percent from the field, far better than the Greyhounds’ 39-percent clip. Tharp said his team’s hot shooting was a “combination of a couple different things.”
“One, we got some easy buckets in transition,” Tharp said. “Two, when we did move the ball, we got really good shots and they made them.”
Sophomore guard Stedman Lowry joined Cooper in making more than 50 percent of his shots, scoring 22 points thanks in large part to 4-of-6 shooting from 3-point range. Senior center Jason Pretzer added 13 points and sophomore guard Ryan Badowski scored 11 points in his first game with the Chargers.
Just six players scored for the Chargers, as redshirt freshman guard Nate Neveau’s seven points were the only points scored by Hillsdale’s bench. Despite little point production, Tharp said his bench players gave “good minutes.”
“We played some starters a little longer,” Tharp said. “But we got production in different ways off the bench. Not so much as points, but different things.”
Tharp said he is “really happy” that the Chargers won, but he’s not “totally satisfied” with how his team played.
“It was a great road win,” Tharp said. “But we’ve got to clean some things up and make some improvements.”
Hillsdale won’t play again until Nov. 27 when they face Illinois Springfield in Rensselaer, Indiana at 6 p.m. The Chargers will play the second game of the back-to-back on Nov. 28 against St. Joseph’s at 8 p.m. The Chargers will use the longer time between games to continue improving.
“It gives us a lot of time to focus on ourselves a little bit and fix what we were doing wrong against Indianapolis,” Cooper said. “It also gives us a chance to get our legs ready for back-to-back games which are always tough on your body.”
Because the Chargers play two games over Thanksgiving break, the team will spend Thanksgiving together in Hillsdale.
“My wife started cooking already,” Tharp said. “It’ll be a day that we’ll practice and we’ll have our own celebration of family within our program.”
