Jonathan Walker/Collegian
Sophomore Crystal Yoder drives the ball down the court against the Lake Superior State defense.
Down by five points with two minutes and 10 seconds left during overtime, the Hillsdale Charger women’s basketball team seemed close to another last minute loss to visiting Lake Superior State University last Thursday evening.
“You could feel the momentum had switched,” head coach Claudette Charney said. “We’d been through so many of these this year. It was kind of a let-down.”
Nine points and 2:10 later, the Chargers were celebrating a final score of 90-87 against LSSU, ranked 19th in the nation out of Division II teams. The Chargers outscored LSSU 9-1 in the remaining moments of the game.
“We knew that it was going to be a battle because LSSU is a very good team,” said junior Jenn Carlson, who finished the game with 14 points. “We played very hard and played together as a team and had everyone contribute. Our intensity level was where it needed to be.”
Four other Hillsdale players finished the game with double digit points. Senior Gretchen Rocco and junior Jessie Miller had 12 and 13 points, respectively. Miller was also 11 for 12 from the line. Junior Nikki Wustman had 25 points and was 12-for-15 from the field before fouling out during overtime. Junior Crystal Yoder, who was playing for an injured starter, finished with 17 points.
“She played just a phenomenal game and that really helped,” Charney said. “Overall, our whole team played their hearts out.”
The overtime victory was especially sweet to the Chargers because of several last minute losses they have experienced this season, including a double overtime loss to Michigan Tech.
“We’ve had a lot of close games this year,” Miller said. “We’ve lost three within the last five minutes. We were due to win a game sooner or later.”
“It was a great, great win for us,” Charney said. “They’re a ranked team. It was a game we really needed to prove to ourselves we could win. I don’t know if we could have done that a year or a month ago. I think we’ve grown up a little bit.”
The Chargers had the opportunity to mature as a team over Christmas break, much of which they spent at Hillsdale either practicing or playing games. For Carlson, Christmas break was one of the more productive ones that she has experienced here.
“The past two years we have kind of struggled over the break period,” she said. “This year, I thought we did well and learned a lot from some of the games we played.”
The victory on Thursday improved the Chargers’ record to 14-6 and 7-3 in their division. They are one game behind the South Division leader, Ashland University. The Chargers’ next game will be this Thursday at Ashland, a team that had a 13-game winning streak at home until last Saturday’s loss to Grand Valley State. The Chargers played Ashland once already this season and lost by 10 points.
“When we played [Ashland] at home, we played terrible and made them look a lot better than they are,” Carlson said. “We will use that game to motivate us to beat them Thursday.”
After the game against Ashland, the Chargers will continue their road trip through Ohio to play Findley on Saturday.
“We need to take it game by game,” Miller said. “These are actually big games for us.”