The road is often a treacherous place in college basketball, but the Hillsdale College men's basketball team is used to such tests, and passed another one Thursday night.
After leading by double digits in the second half, then falling behind, the Chargers gutted out a 76-73 win over Trevecca Nazarene in Nashville to win its first-ever Great Midwest Athletic Conference contest. Hillsdale stands at 7-1 overall and 1-0 in conference play with the victory.
A technical foul was called on the Trevecca coach a little more than midway through the second half. Charger senior Ryan Badowski made the two subsequent free throws putting his team on top 58-48 with nine minutes to go. But as often happens, the "T" fed some inspired play to the affected team. In this case, it was Trevecca, who quickly erased that 10-point deficit, going on a 13-1 run to take a 61-59 lead just three minutes later. But the veteran Charger squad counterpunched impressively with an 9-0 run after its deficit reached five points. The Lowry brothers scored seven of those points during a decisive spurt in the game.
Stedman Lowry, the older of the brothers, had a marvelous game shooting the ball with 23 points, going 5-for-9 from 3-point territory. He swished his first shot of the game, and one could tell he had the feel from deep right away. He also grabbed 6 rebounds and shot 50 percent from the floor (8-for-16).
Hillsdale got some nice production from the center position, as junior Nick Czarnowski and freshman Austen Yarian each scored 10 points, combining to go 9-for-12 from the field.
The teams were relatively even in many statistical categories, but the Chargers did a much better job of making the Trojans pay for their mistakes. Hillsdale carried a 28-12 edge in points off turnovers, despite only having a plus-5 edge overall in turnovers, 13-18. What was impressive from that total was that Hillsdale averaged more than two points scored per Trevecca turnover (28 points off 13 turnovers), a rare statistical mark to achieve in a game.
Czarnowski led the team with 9 rebounds whiloe junior Nate Neveau had 8 points and 7 assists for Hillsdale.