SALEM, VA.— With Babson College leading 47-46 with 6:31 remaining in the second half, juniors Hunter Hill and Griffin Pils turned Friday’s game around by scoring a combined total of 20 points.
At the 8:41 minute mark in the second half, Augustana was tied with Babson at 41 points and tied again with Babson at 43 points with 7:41 left on the clock. With 6:31 remaining on the clock and Babson up by one point, it took both Hill and Pils landing four three-point shots to get the team out of the rut and to a 22-1 run that won the game, with a score of 68-48. Augustana will play in the NCAA Division III Championship at 2 p.m. on Saturday.
“It kind-of just starts with our guys on defense and when we get stops,” said Hill. “My team has just kept believing in me. They kept telling me to shoot the ball, and I just tried to be patient out there, wait for my time, and I got a couple of good looks…I give credit to my guys for finding me and getting stops.”
Hill made 37.5 percent of all the shots he took and 40 percent of the three-point shots he took, scoring 18 points total in the game.
“Any time you’re hitting shots, it gets your confidence going,” said Hill. “Great players don’t worry about their shot. They do other things when the shots are not going in.”
Hill said he was instead more focused on getting defensive stops, rebounds and being a leader on the court.
“The shots come, they come, if not they don’t,” said Hill.
Babson’s head coach Stephen Brennan said that Pils and Hill “changed the game.”
“I thought that we did a really good job with (Hill) in the first half, and I think he decided that they weren’t gonna lose at this point, and he banged one or two threes. You could tell he got some momentum,” said Brennan.
He said he could tell Pils and Hill wanted the ball when the game was “tight.”
“That got them some space,” said Brennan, “and they did a great job of creating a little bit of separation between us and them, and then to our credit, we kept fighting, but those threes, in my mind, changed the game.”
He said it was the timeliness of Hill’s and Pils’s shots that altered the game
“It was one of those situations where we didn’t have enough time or firepower to complete it,” said Brennan.
Pils went from scoring two points in the first half to eight in second, making him the second highest scorer in the game. He attributes this to only taking two shots in the first half since the team’s “big men” were open.
“Late in the game, I got a couple of good looks,” said Pils.
In the second half, Pils made 60 percent of the shots he took, two of those being three-point shots.
“I think we did a better job late in the game of penetrating into the paint and getting open shots for other people, like drawing fouls on them,” said Pils.
Babson had 13 personal fouls called on them in the second half, compared to the seven in the first.
Head Coach Grey Giovanine said that his team has the will to be successful and will does what it takes to win, referring specifically to Hill, Pils and senior Nic Hoepfner.
“They’ll front the post, they’ll dive for a loose ball, and they’ll block out a guy,” said Giovanine. “They’ll do the little things that winners do, and I thought down the stretch, that’s what you saw…these three guys, you know, rising up under the bright lights and making baskets for sure was a testament to the character of this team, and we’ve seen it all year long.”