January 6, 2009 - The Hillsdale College women's basketball team is ranked seventh in the latest ESPN/USA Today Division II poll, released Tuesday afternoon.

The Chargers are 10-1 on the season, and will travel north to Midland Thursday to take on Northwood University starting at 6 p.m. The men's game will tip off around 8 p.m. at the Bennett Center on Northwood's campus. The No. 7 mark in the poll is the second-highest in school history. Hillsdale was ranked sixth in the poll that was released Dec. 16, but the team's loss at Grand Valley State on Dec. 20 knocked it down one spot in the poll.

The Timberwolves are one of several teams in the GLIAC South Division off to strong starts in the 2008-09 season. The top four teams in the division - Hillsdale, Ashland, Northwood and Findlay - have a combined overall won-loss record of 36-8. Two of those losses were handed to Findlay by Hillsdale, the most recent a 72-62 Charger win over the Oilers in Findlay Saturday afternoon.

Northwood has been a thorn in the side of the Chargers in recent years. Northwood has won four of the past five meetings with Hillsdale, including a 65-53 decision on Dec. 15, 2007, the last matchup between these two teams.

That was one of two conference losses suffered by Hillsdale in 2007-08. This year, Northwood has joined the GLIAC South Division, putting an extra bit of emphasis on this matchup.

The women's game will feature two of the best players in the conference going toe-to-toe. Northwood's Megan Starnes was named the GLIAC South Division Player of the Week Monday, and leads the Timberwolves in scoring and rebounding. Northwood is also among the conference leaders in team scoring and team defense, although their first two games of the season helped those statistics out considerably (108-39 over Rochester and 106-70 over Madonna).

Leading the way for the Chargers is All-American Katie Cezat, who is playing at a statistically superior pace to her amazing season from a year ago. Cezat leads the nation in rebounding by a wide margin, with 15.9 boards per game. No one else in all of Division II averages more than 13 rebounds per game. She's also second in the NCAA in scoring average (27.4) and in total blocked shots (37).

Cezat has already tied her single-season school record for blocked shots, set last year. But she's made that mark in just 11 games this season compared to 28 games in 2007-08. She has four 30-point scoring games and three 20-rebound games. On Dec. 13, she set a GLIAC record with 13 blocked shots at Ferris State.

Hillsdale's men's team will try to continue a six-game winning streak over the Timberwolves. The Chargers are 12-1 vs. Northwood this decade, and have won some nailbiting games with NU over the years.

The Chargers have lost four straight coming into Thursday's games, all of those coming to teams ranked in the Top 25. Two of those games were against No. 1-ranked Findlay, making it one of the most brutal stretches of a schedule anyone in the country would have to deal with. The hope for head coach John Tharp and his players, is that experience making the team battle-hardened as the conference schedule gets into full swing. Only one currently ranked team remains on the regular season schedule for Hillsdale.

Thursday's game at Northwood is the first for the Chargers against an unranked team since its Dec. 13 win at Ferris State. In that game, guard Keith MacKenzie converted an offensive rebound into the game-winning layup for the Chargers.

Charger senior Tony Gugino is the only GLIAC player to be ranked in the top 10 in five different statistical categories: scoring, rebounding, blocked shots, assists and assist-to-turnover ratio.

The Northwood University website has links for live stats and webcasting by B2Networks on its men's and women's basketball pages. Check out those links to follow the games live Thursday night.

Click on the link below for the Division II Women's Basketball Top 25 poll.

Division II Top 25 Women's Basketball Poll