Caston 14/779

L. Mollenkopf’s 23 leads 3 Comets in double figures; Riley scores 33 for Warriors

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

Gavin Mollenkopf Carson Harness

DENVER — The North Miami boys basketball team got 33 points from star senior Jake Riley, made 16 of 19 free throws, committed only five turnovers and grabbed several crucial offensive rebounds for their senior night home game Thursday.

It still was not enough to beat Caston.

Logan Mollenkopf scored 23 points to lead three players in double figures, and Carson Harness hit the go-ahead 3-pointer off a Reed Sommers assist with 5.1 seconds left as the Comets went on a game-ending 8-0 run to win 64-61.

Lane Hook hit four 3-pointers, including the game-tying triple with 1:06 left, and scored 18, and Gavin Mollenkopf had 14 for Caston, who beat North Miami for the second time this season and for the 12th consecutive time overall. Caston has not lost to North Miami since 2019.

Caston also finished the regular season on a six-game winning streak and improved to 12-10 overall and 6-2 in the Hoosier North. They finished in sole possession of third in the conference. Triton won the conference at 8-0, and Winamac was second at 7-1.

“This is one of the most high-focused groups I’ve ever had,” eighth-year Caston coach Carl Davis said. “And they’re young. It’s exactly the opposite of what you’d expect from a bunch of freshmen and sophomores, but we have a junior in Gavin, and we have a couple seniors in Max (Sommers) and Jan (Aguilar-Mendez), who might not have gotten a lot of playing time tonight, but they do an unbelievable job Monday through Saturday of leading and making sure that we’re locked in and focused. And we would be remiss if we didn’t call them out for that.”

Riley added 10 rebounds for a double-double, but he missed on a look from 25 feet out in front of his bench as time expired. Drew Wright and Luke Musall added seven points each.

Riley, Wright and Ray Pickett were the seniors honored in pregame ceremonies. North Miami finished the regular season 8-14, 4-4.

North Miami led by as many as 10 and by as many as six in the fourth quarter. They still led 61-56 with 1:28 left when Kale Deardorff hit a floater off one dribble in the paint off a Wright assist.

But Logan Mollenkopf answered with a floater in the lane with 1:17 left. Caston called timeout to set up its press.

Riley caught the inbounds pass but was trapped along the left sideline. He threw a diagonal pass to Pickett, who went to the floor to snatch the pass. From his backside, Pickett threw a pass that Drew McGrew intercepted.

He fed Sommers, who kicked to Hook on the right wing. Hook drilled the game-tying 3.

North Miami’s next possession would end with a Logan Mollenkopf block from the weakside on a Ryan Meredith post-up, and Gavin Mollenkopf rebounded.

Caston worked the clock to 14.2 seconds left and called timeout.

Logan Mollenkopf caught the inbounds pass and passed to Sommers 30 feet out along the right wing. Lake Musall advanced at him, but Sommers sidestepped him and passed to Harness, who was open in the corner.

Riley flew out at Harness, but it was too late. Harness buried the shot for his first three points of the game and for Caston’s first lead of the fourth quarter.

Harness had checked into the game during the timeout with 14.2 seconds left.

“Absolutely not, no,” Davis said when asked if the play was designed for Harness. “Absolutely not. They just made a play. Those are the best ones though. That’s not what we drew up, but they kind of took away an angle, and I was getting ready to call timeout. It looked like Reed had some daylight to make a play, and when you have good basketball players that have good basketball sense, you trust them in a moment like that and let it go and don’t call timeout. And they make a play, and that’s what it’s about.”

Harness said he practices corner 3s “quite a bit.”

“In general, I shoot a 3 a lot, but the corner 3, that’s one where a lot of game-winners happen,” Harness said. “So that’s one I practice a lot. … I was very excited. It was a great feeling to have, especially after missing my first couple shots and being trusted to keep shooting even after is just an amazing feeling.”

North Miami called timeout after Harness’ shot. Then Caston called timeout. In the huddle, Davis said he considered fouling up three. Instead, they played straight-up defense.

Riley launched a long 3 from the wing just before the buzzer that was well short.

“Honestly I trust this group,” Davis said. “I trust this group going either way. We practiced either way. And the sense they had in that moment was they wanted to defend and get the stop and just like they did against Lewis Cass in the Cass County tourney (a 53-50 Caston win Dec. 6), and both times they had the right feeling, and they got the job done.”

Caston had allowed only 34 points per game in the first five games of their winning streak.

“Defense has improved a lot,” Harness said. “At the start of it, it was a little shaky. There were some things that we needed to clean up. Offensive rebounding was not one of them, but it was tonight. North Miami is a very good offensive rebounding team. Just rebounding in general, they’re a really good team, which made it tough for us. But when it came down to it, we shut them down on the boards, and that’s what got us the win.”

North Miami went on a 12-2 run in the first quarter to take a 19-9 lead. Pickett split a pair of free throws and then zipped a pass to Meredith for a layup. A Riley steal and layup and a Riley bucket off a post-up pushed the lead to 14-7.

Gavin Mollenkopf scored in the post, but Wright hit two free throws, and Riley hit a corner 3.

Hook sandwiched 2 triples around an off-balance Gavin Mollenkopf bucket in the paint to cut the margin to 19-17, but a Riley bucket before the buzzer made it 21-17, and he also scored the first six Warrior points of the second quarter as the lead ballooned to 27-20.

Musall hit three of four free throws, and Meredith scored on a putback to make it 32-25, but Caston closed the first half on an 8-0 run on a Logan Mollenkopf driving layup, a Gavin Mollenkopf 3-point play and a McGrew 3 with two seconds left in the half to lead 33-32.

Riley scored 14 of North Miami’s 16 points in the third quarter. The Mollenkopf brothers combined to score all 13 Caston points in the quarter.

Logan Mollenkopf hit a floater to open the scoring in the fourth quarter and tie it at 48.

A Wright layin, a Musall putback and three Deardorff free throws put North Miami back up 55-49 with 3:59 left.

“I thought our guys played extremely hard,” North Miami coach Ryan DeMien said. “And they played together on both ends of the court. It was just a couple things here and there. You’ve got to give it to Caston. They shot the ball really well.”

North Miami took the JV game 48-41.

Caston 64, North Miami 61

CASTON (64) (12-10, 6-2)

Drew McGrew 2 0-0 5, Reed Sommers 0 1-2 1, Logan Mollenkopf 10 2-3 23, Gavin Mollenkopf 6 2-3 14, Lane Hook 6 2-5 18, Jan Aguilar-Mendez 0 0-0 0, Carson Harness 1 0-0 3, Max Sommers 0 0-0 0, Parker Zimpleman 0 0-0 0

TEAM: 25 7-13 64

NORTH MIAMI (61) (8-14, 4-4)

Jake Riley 12 5-6 33, Kale Deardorff 1 3-3 5, Ray Pickett 1 1-2 3, Drew Wright 2 2-2 7, Ryan Meredith 3 0-0 6, Lake Musall 1 5-6 7

TEAM: 20 16-19 61

Three-point field goals:

Caston 7 (Hook 4, L. Mollenkopf, McGrew, Harness),

North Miami 5 (Riley 4, Wright)

Total fouls: Caston 15, North Miami 17

Turnovers: Caston 7, North Miami 5

Score by quarters

Caston 17 16 13 18 – 64

North Miami 21 11 16 13 – 61