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Zebras force 28 turnovers, hit 10 treys
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Drew Bowers Grant Clark
The North Judson boys basketball team did not have starting senior point guard Jesiah McDaniel against host Rochester at the RHS gym Friday.
Rochester’s pressure defense might not be one a team would want to face with their backup point guard, and the Zebras’ merciless pressure forced 28 turnovers en route to a 59-43 win.
Drew Bowers led Rochester with 14 points, Tanner Reinartz had 11, and Owen Prater had 10.
Sophomore reserve Logan Pradke scored a game-high 16 for North Judson, and Kole Wilcox had 14, all in the second half.
Rochester improved to 3-1. North Judson, who sported multiple players who played in the Class 1A state championship football game on Nov. 30, dropped to 0-1.
Rochester coach Rob Malchow called the win “ugly” but then added: “I’d rather have an ugly win than an ugly loss.”
Rochester trailed 15-14 at one point in the second quarter, but they went on a 16-2 run covering the second and third quarters to go up 30-17. North Judson cut the lead to 32-24 on a Wilcox 3-pointer from the top of the key with 4:14 to go in the third quarter, but Prater, Grant Clark and Bowers hit 3-pointers on Rochester’s next three possessions in a 70-second span to open up a 17-point lead.
Rochester hit 10 3-pointers for the game.
Rochester led by as many as 21 points in the fourth quarter against a Blue Jay team that made it to semistate in Class 2A last year.
McDaniel suffered an ankle injury in a football regional game against Taylor on Nov. 15. He played against South Adams in the semistate and Providence in the state title game the following two weeks but was spotted on the bench in a walking boot for their basketball opener Friday.
McDaniel hit five 3-pointers and scored 23 points in a 50-45 win over Rochester last year.
North Judson had 11 turnovers in the first quarter without him, and Bryce Baugher scored twice in transition, Carson Paulik hit a 3-pointer off a Grant Clark assist, and Bowers scored on a driving banker to help Rochester to an early 9-3 lead.
The lead was 14-10 after one quarter, but Pradke scored on a drive to the hoop and then hit a 3 from the right corner to put North Judson ahead.
“Defensively, I like where we’re at,” Malchow said. “We’re getting a lot of shots. I think there was one point in the first half where we had like 23 shots to their nine, and they had the lead. That’s not where you want to be.
“We’ve got things to work on, and we will. We work on them. Oh man, I tell you what, we work on them, and we’re going to keep working on them. We’ve just got to take better care of the ball. We’ve got to execute when we get five feet in and knock down shots to make it easier on ourselves.”
In a 23-second span, Prater split a pair of free throws, Reinartz intercepted an outlet pass at three-quarters court and went coast to coast for a layup, and Prater intercepted an inbounds pass, saved it from going out of bounds and found Paulik, who then fed a cutting Clark for a layup.
That made it 19-15, and North Judson called timeout.
After the timeout, Prater hit two free throws, and Reinartz hit a 3 from the right wing.
“I’d say our press is our bread and butter,” Reinartz said. “It comes down to the ball pressure and keeping them making the wrong decision. We want to force them to make mistakes.”
After Christian Ingram scored for North Judson, Prater scored twice in the post to increase the lead to 11 at halftime. A Reinartz bucket in the post to start the second half completed the run.
Rochester travels to Logansport at 7:30 p.m. today. Rochester has not beaten Logansport since Feb. 26, 2010. Logansport lost to Hamilton Heights 88-50 Friday.
This marks the fifth time since the 2019-20 season that Rochester will play North Judson and Logansport on back-to-back nights. (The Logansport game in the 2020-21 season was canceled due to COVID.) They had been 0-8 in those games prior to Friday.
“Going into this weekend is the first weekend in probably four years since the ‘21 team where I thought we could win both games,” Malchow said. “The last couple years, we went in hoping to get a split, and we didn’t get either. But if we shoot like we did tonight, we’re in trouble at Logan. I don’t think they’re necessarily easy shots, but we’re making it more difficult than it should be. … Just lack of discipline. And I tell you what, we’re in pretty good shape because we run a lot for not doing it right in practice. You would think you’d get tired of running, and you’d rather do it right, so we can work on other things, but I’m kind of stubborn that way. So I guess we’re just going to keep hammering away and working at it and hoping we turn a corner there.”
Reinartz said he has taken extra shots after practice and has worked with assistant coach Rex Reinholt on his shooting. A pitcher-infielder on Rochester’s regional championship baseball team with college aspirations in that sport, Malchow has implored Reinartz to hone his shooting touch earlier after a long travel baseball season.
“I’m slowly starting to come around,” Reinartz said. “I made one, maybe two (3-pointers) a game. It just comes down to repetition and confidence. I work with Reinholt quite a bit after practice, almost daily. And just work on my touch and confidence shooting behind the arc.”
Rochester also won the JV game 47-34. Brady Coleman led Rochester with 11 points, Conner Dunfee had 10, Mitchell Clark had nine, Aiden Wilson had eight, Parker Casper had six, and Ashton Musselman had three.
Rochester 59, North Judson 43
NORTH JUDSON (43) (0-1)
Javen Christensen 0 0-0 0, Owen Radtke 0 0-0 0, Kole Wilcox 5 2-2 14, Eli Radtke 1 0-0 3, C.J. Sanchez 0 0-0 0, Christian Ingram 3 0-0 7, Gabe Brazauskas 1 0-0 3, Logan Pradke 6 2-2 16, Zander Nowak 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 16 4-4 43
ROCHESTER (59) (3-1)
Drew Bowers 5 1-2 14, Bryce Baugher 2 0-0 4, Owen Prater 3 3-4 10, Tanner Reinartz 4 1-2 11, Jonas Kiser 1 0-0 2, Carson Paulik 3 0-0 7, Brady Coleman 0 0-0 0, Conner Dunfee 0 0-0 0, Grant Clark 2 0-0 5, Jack Reffett 2 0-0 6, Xavier Vance 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 22 5-8 59
Three-point field goals:
North Judson 7 (Wilcox 2, Pradke 2, Ingram, E. Radtke, Brazauskas),
Rochester 10 (Bowers 3, Reinartz 2, Reffett 2, Prater, Paulik, Clark)
Total fouls: North Judson 9, Rochester 9
Turnovers: North Judson 28, Rochester 9
Score by quarters
North Judson 10 7 17 9 – 43
Rochester 14 14 19 12 – 59
JV: Rochester 47, North Judson 34
