With postseason play beginning next week, the Hillsdale College women's basketball team looks like a squad hitting its stride at just the right time.
The Chargers showed just that with one of the best raw shooting performances in program history in a 89-73 victory at Findlay to cap the regular season on Saturday.
Hillsdale went 17 of 26 from deep to run away from the Oilers in the second half of the contest, shooting an astounding 65.4% from 3-point range. The Chargers' 17 makes in the contest were the most in a game since the Chargers set a program record with 20 3-pointers against Trevecca Nazarene on Feb. 28, 2019, and Hillsdale's shooting percentage from deep is the highest in over a decade -- not since the Chargers shot .733 (11 of 15) from deep against Tiffin on Feb. 12, 2011 has Hillsdale exceeded that mark.
Five different players hit 3-pointers for the Chargers in the win, led by sophomore Lauren McDonald, who went 6 of 7 from beyond the arc for a game-high 22 points in just 19 minutes of action. A transfer from Division I Air Force who joined the team in midseason at the semester break, McDonald needed time to acclimate and develop chemistry with her new teammates, but after a couple of months with the Chargers, she appears to be reaching her potential at exactly the right moment.
McDonald had plenty of help on Saturday, as fellow sophomore and known sharpshooter Caitlin Splain went 4 of 6 from beyond the arc to finish with 18 points as well. Those four 3-pointers bring Splain's season total in 2022-23 to 72, tied for the third-most all-time in a single season with Brittany Gray's 2017-18 campaign.
Grace Touchette chipped in 17 points as well for Hillsdale, Sydney Mills added 11 points and eight rebounds, and Carly Callahan finished with nine points for the Chargers, who led just 46-43 at the half but buried the Oilers with an 11-0 run that spanned the end of the third quarter and the beginning of the fourth, giving the Chargers a double-digit lead it would never relinquish. McDonald hit two of her six 3-pointers in that span to help put the game away.
With the victory, Hillsdale finishes the regular season at 17-13 overall, matching the record the Chargers had in 2018-19, the last time the team finished with a winning record and made the G-MAC Tournament. At 10-10 in league play, Hillsdale has earned the seventh seed in the 2023 edition of the G-MAC Tourney, and will travel to Kentucky Wesleyan on Tuesday for a G-MAC Quarterfinal scheduled to begin at 1 PM Eastern Time in Owensboro.
Photo by Charles Miller