It wasn’t a perfect weekend, but it was certainly a positive one for the Hillsdale College men’s basketball team.
On Jan. 19, the Chargers erased a 14-point deficit late in the second half before falling 79-77 to the Walsh Cavaliers on a last-second jumper. Hillsdale bounced back on Saturday with a comfortable 80-62 win over the Tiffin Dragons as junior guard Stedman Lowry scored 31 points on 9-of-12 3-point shooting.
With a 4-8 record in conference play, Hillsdale is 2.5 games out of postseason position in the GLIAC with eight games remaining. The Chargers can’t afford to keep splitting weekends, but their play last week laid a solid foundation for the final stretch.
In Hillsdale’s loss to Walsh, bench production shined through a tough defeat. And while Lowry’s hot hand was a big factor in Hillsdale’s rout of Tiffin, strong bench play again helped the Chargers keep the Dragons from ever making a serious cut into their deficit.
“It was a tough loss on Thursday but it was a good team week for us,” head coach John Tharp said. “There was a lot of good things happening.”
In the first half against Walsh, Hillsdale’s bench erased an early 8-0 deficit. Hillsdale’s bench unit scored 26 of the Chargers’ 33 points in the opening period.
“We wouldn’t have gotten into that game on Thursday if it wasn’t for those guys that came off the bench,” Tharp said.
Sophomore forward Nick Czarnowski led the Chargers with 8 points at the half and finished the game with a team-high 16 points on 8-of-12 shooting and 8 rebounds in just 14 minutes. Against Tiffin, Czarnowski was Hillsdale’s second-leading scorer behind Lowry with 13 points on 5-of-6 shooting and 9 rebounds in just 19 minutes off the bench.
“He just keeps on getting better and better and better,” Tharp said. “He’s scoring around the rim at an incredible rate and he’s rebounding the basketball at an incredible rate.”
Czarnowski said being able to learn from and go against senior center Nick Archer in practice has helped him improve.
“A guy with his experience is just really helpful for me,” Czarnowski said. “I’ve got a little bit better understanding of what it takes out of me in order for our team to be successful and what I need to do to contribute.”
As the Chargers try to climb up the GLIAC standings, strong bench production will continue to be a factor.
“When your name is called you’ve just got to be ready to do whatever coach is expecting out of you,” Czarnowski said. “However many minutes you get, just do everything you can to help the team.”
Hillsdale’s bench might not have to do much if Lowry continues to shoot the way he did Saturday. After struggling from the floor against Walsh Thursday when he missed all six of his 3-point attempts, Lowry made his first seven 3-pointers on Saturday and finished with nine makes from beyond the arc.
“It’s really important to me to see my first one go in because then that just gets me going a little bit,” Lowry said. “I was able to just get going pretty quick.”
In Hillsdale’s first game this season on Nov. 11, Lowry made just 2-of-11 3-point attempts. A few days earlier, Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry set an NBA record with 13 3-pointers made in a game just one game after going 0-for-10 from beyond the arc. That motivated Lowry, a Warriors fan.
“I thought, ‘OK, well I’m going to come out with the mentality that I’m going to break a record today.’ And I made my first four that game,” Lowry said. “That was the same thing I tried to go into this game with.”
Lowry’s quick start gave him and his team confidence.
“When Stedman Lowry shoots the ball that way for us, we’re so much more dangerous,” Tharp said. “With Stedman hitting those shots, everybody took a deep sigh and just said, ‘OK, we can just go play now.’ Every possession wasn’t such a stressful possession.”
While Lowry carried the Chargers on offense, a complete team effort on defense helped the Chargers hold the Dragons to just 33 percent field goal shooting (23-of-69) and 21 percent shooting from beyond the arc (4-of-19).
“We played defense together,” Tharp said. “We were all in our gaps. Our bigs did a great job of blocking some shots. But we were there for each other and that was the big key.”
The Chargers have shown some inconsistency on the defensive end this season. They’ll need to keep up the form they showed Saturday as they play 5 of their final 8 games on the road.
“We’ll do everything we need to do to keep this momentum going on the defensive end. Shots aren’t always going to fall, but defense travels,” Czarnowski said. “As long as we keep working in practice, I think that’ll keep it going.”
Tonight, the Chargers will face the last-place Lake Erie Storm at 7:30 p.m. in Painesville, Ohio. The Storm have struggled this season, having won just 3 games, but the Chargers know they have to play the game with the same intensity as Saturday against Tiffin.
“We can’t take deep breaths when we relax because when we do that we put ourselves in a tough situation,” Tharp said. “We’ve got to play with an edge and at the same time have a little fun and enjoy ourselves.”
The Chargers will return home Saturday to host Ohio Dominican at 3 p.m.
“We know that every game in the GLIAC is a tough one,” Lowry said. “We’ve got to string a couple in a row together and I think we have some confidence going into this week after a big win.”
