The Hillsdale College men’s basketball team cleaned up the G-MAC individual awards, with junior forward Patrick Cartier becoming the first player in the conference’s ten-year history to win a second Player of the Year award.
Guard Joe Reuter took home Freshman of the Year and fifth-year senior Austen Yarian was named to the second team All-G-MAC. The Chargers have also made the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year despite being knocked out of the G-MAC tournament in the semifinal round.
After becoming the first sophomore to win the award last year, Cartier is now only the second junior to win it. He now owns 20% of the G-MAC Men’s Basketball POTY awards ever given out. He was also selected to the first team All-G-MAC for the third straight year.
“The awards I get and the points I score have, a lot more than people realize, to do with my teammates and coaches, whether that’s drawing up specific plays to get me in really good positions or my teammates getting me the ball in really easy spots for me to score layups,” Cartier said. “It’s really cool to receive the award, but I think whenever you achieve something or get an award like this, it’s important to reflect on the people that made it possible and contributed to your success.”
During this season, Cartier averaged 21.9 points per game, tying him for 10th in the nation, while shooting 65.25% from the floor, which ranks seventh in the nation.
“The beast is the beast, and we appreciate the beast’s greatness, and we think he’s not only one of the best players in the league, but in the region and the country,” Head Coach John Tharp said.
“Pat is one of the hardest working guys that we’ve had. He’s a terrific player and he’s pounded on and beaten up every single time he’s on the court, and he finds a way to handle it.”
Cartier wasn’t the only one taking home individual honors from the conference, as Reuter became the second Charger, along with Cartier, to win G-MAC Freshman of The Year.
Reuter posted double-figure scoring games in 10 of the last 14 of the season, including 20-point outings in wins against Malone and Lake Erie. He also ranked second on the team in three-point percentage during conference play, shooting 44% from outside.
“We brought him along slowly, so we didn’t know if other people in the league realized the type of year we had for our program,” Tharp said. “Joe’s one of the hardest working kids I’ve ever coached in the 28 years that I’ve done this, he is relentless.”
Yarian rounded out the Chargers’ season awards, being named to an all-conference team for the third time in his career. The do-it-all forward ranked top-six in the conference in both rebounding and assists, as well as seventh in blocked shots.
“We’re happy for him, we thought it was extremely well-deserved, we thought he should have been a first-team all-conference player,” Tharp said. “We go based on how he goes, we’re happy that he deserved that recognition.”
The Chargers’ performance in the conference tournament, however, wasn’t quite as smooth. They suffered a last-second, 68-66, upset loss to the Cedarville University Yellow Jackets.
After going down by 12 at halftime, fifth-year senior forward Tavon Brown and junior guards Jack Gohlke and Kyle Goessler joined Cartier to lead a gritty second-half comeback, taking a six point lead with 6:31 remaining in the game.
The Chargers came out of the locker room on fire, making six of their first eight shots, including threes from Gohlke, Cartier, and Goessler.
Courtesy of a late three each from Goessler and Gohlke, and a bucket from Cartier, Hillsdale took a five point lead into the final 45 seconds. Those would be the final points scored by the Chargers as the Yellow Jackets tied the game with less than 10 seconds to go. A costly turnover in the final moments led to a Branden Maughmer steal and layup with less than a second to go, giving Cedarville the edge.
“We need to work on taking care of the ball, we had 16 turnovers, they only had four,” Reuter said. “In games that are that close, those really add up. I think we just have to be careful with the basketball and we’re working on that in practice, to be tougher as a team, as a unit, and I think that’ll translate to our upcoming game on Friday.”
Though they lost their chance at the automatic bid that would’ve come with a win in the conference tournament, the Chargers still had a chance to grab an at-large bid.
On Sunday, the team met at Tharp’s house to watch the selection show, which revealed the Chargers were given the three seed in the Midwest Region, with the season’s fourth bout against Cedarville on tap in the round of 64 Friday at noon.
“We were a little anxious, we thought we were possibly going to be a four or a five seed, so when it came out that we weren’t the four or five seed, I’ll speak for myself, I was a little nervous about what the heck’s going on,” Tharp said. “Then you see yourself come up as the three seed, you’re just excited to see your name. I think we walked out of it going, ‘ok, we’re in, what do we do with it now?’”
It marks only the second time in program history that the Chargers have made it to back-to-back tournaments, after making the Sweet 16 in a record-setting year last year. The Chargers returned 12 of the team’s 15 players from last season, including the team’s entire starting lineup. They will have a shot to avenge their most recent loss in the same venue.
“Cedarville’s bigger and longer and way more athletic than we are in certain spots, so we’ve got to figure out some things that we need to do to try to handle that,” Tharp said. “When we got shots in the second half, good things happened for us, when we turn the ball over, that’s not possible. You’ve also got to be careful not to change too much, so it’s a little bit of a balance.”
