After taking a first-quarter lead, the Charger women's basketball team was unable to hang on in a 71-64 road loss to Lake Erie College Thursday night.
The loss snaps Hillsdale's two-game losing streak and makes the team 7-6 overall and 5-4 in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference.
The Chargers did a lot right in this ballgame. They held an 18-13 lead following the first quarter. They played to a big strength of theirs, outrebounding Lake Erie 53-32, and got a huge performance from senior Allie Dittmer, who had 24 points and 18 rebounds.
But the team simply struggled too much to make shots throughout the game, never shooting better than 40 percent in any quarter, and 35.6 percent for the game. Hillsdale was 5-for-29 (17 percent) from behind the 3-point arc and attempted just 10 free throws as a team in the game, making seven. The Storm were 13-for-17 from the charity stripe as a team, gaining a key edge.
Lake Erie was led by high-scoring guard Kayla Gabor, who had 30 points, making four of her team's six made 3-point baskets in the game.
This one turned in the second quarter, when Lake Erie outscored Hillsdale 21-12, erasing its five-point first-quarter deficit. The Storm held Hillsdale to 0-for-5 shooting from 3-point land in the second quarter, and got 10 points from its bench in that stanza.
Lake Erie was also plus-8 in the turnover department (18-10) and outscored Hillsdale 20-13 in points off turnovers, a margin matching the game's final score.
Dittmer was a force, going 11-for-16 from the field, and 11 of her 18 rebounds came on the offensive end. She was just three offensive rebounds shy of Megan Fogt's single-game school record.
Junior Makenna Ott had 12 points, 6 rebounds and 5 assists while junior Brittany Gray had 10 points and 8 rebounds for Hillsdale.