HOUGHTON, Mich. — No. 18-ranked Michigan Tech got off to a slow start and could never recover in an 81-69 loss to No. 6 Hillsdale in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Women's Basketball Championship game tonight at the SDC Gym. The Huskies fell to 24-6 while the Chargers improved to 27-3.

The game couldn't have started more in the Chargers' favor. They made 11 of their first 13 field goal attempts to build a 26-7 lead in the first 10 minutes of the game. GLIAC Player of the Year Katie Cezat had 10 of HC's first 26 points.

Alicia Schneider's 3-pointer capped a 19-6 Tech run to shrink the margin to 32-26 at the 3:57 mark. Hillsdale answered with eight straight points and ended up going into halftime up 42-28.

Hillsdale pushed the score to 52-34 before five straight points from Danae Danen made it a 13-point game with 13:52 to play. Tech had three chances to further cut into the deficit but misfired on each. The Chargers had the margin back to 19 by the 10:49 mark.

A Katie Wysocky layup with 5:21 remaining made the score 64-53. The Tech defense got a stop and Katie Zimmerman just missed a 3-pointer that would have cut the gap to eight. After another Cezat bucket, Zimmerman's layup again made it an 11-point game. HC again answered — this time with four straight points that put the game out of reach.

"We got off to a bad start, and it's hard to play from behind all game," said head coach John Barnes. "When we tried to make runs, we couldn't make that next shot to keep it going.

"Hillsdale was a better team today, and Cezat is like no other player I've coached against."

Cezat finished with 36 points, 16 rebounds and six assists en route to being named GLIAC Tournament most valuable player.

All five Tech starters finished with double figures in points. Wysocky posted team highs of 15 points and 10 rebounds. Danen (13), Zimmerman (11), Sarah Stream (11) and Tara Ferris (10) were the others.

Danen and Zimmerman were selected to the GLIAC All-Tournament team.

Much like its game against Tech here two weeks ago, Hillsdale shot the ball extremely well all game. The visitors made 56 percent of its field goals compared to 38 percent for the Huskies. They were also 20-of-25 (80 percent) from the foul line in the contest.

Michigan Tech, which was ranked fourth in last week's NCAA Midwest Regional poll, will likely get an at-large berth to the NCAA Tournament. The announcement of the tournament field with pairings and sites will come tomorrow at 9 p.m. on NCAA.com.