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Reinartz adds 13, Kiser makes key layup after 23-point lead slips away
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Drew Bowers Tanner Reinartz Jonas Kiser
Under siege from a jump shooting exhibition from Lewis Cass’ Bryce Rudd and Brennan Deeter, the Rochester boys basketball team kept calm, got the ball to Drew Bowers for the game’s most important shot and won their third straight game at the RHS gym Friday.
Drew Bowers scored a game-high 22 points, including the go-ahead 3-pointer with 57 seconds left, and Tanner Reinartz added 13 as the host Zebras beat their conference and sectional rival 58-55.
Rochester improved to 7-2 overall and 2-1 in the Three Rivers Conference. Rudd scored 21, and Deeter had 16 for Lewis Cass, who fell to 2-10, 0-6.
Rudd and Deeter combine to average 16 points per game. In this game, Rudd and Deeter made five 3-pointers each. The 55 points for Lewis Cass were a season-high.
Rochester led by 23 points in the third quarter, but Lewis Cass went on a 14-0 run that bled into the third quarter, and they had another 10-0 run in the fourth. They tied at 53 on Trey Johnson’s 3-point play with 1:21 left.
But Rochester ran their motion offense. Carson Paulik screened off two Lewis Cass defenders and Bowers popped out to the top of the key. Reinartz’s pass from the right wing set him up for the shot, and Rochester was back up 56-53.
“I think experience really helped,” Bowers explained. “We’ve been in a lot of close games though. I think that helps.”
On the other end, Deeter missed, Bowers rebounded, and Rochester received alternating possession with 34.6 seconds left after a Lewis Cass player tied up Bowers underneath the basket.
But Reinartz dribbled on the sideline with 33.0 seconds left against the press in front of the Lewis Cass bench.
Reinartz then fouled Brody Hillis accepting the inbounds pass. Lewis Cass was in the bonus, and Hillis made both free throws to cut the deficit to one.
Rochester called timeout and set up a press breaker.
Bowers inbounded to Paulik, who dribbled in a semicircle in the backcourt and found Reinartz on the right wing.
Two defenders ran at Reinartz, who quickly hit ahead to Baugher in the middle of the court before they could get to him. Baugher in one motion leaped and fed ahead to Kiser for an open layup and a 58-55 lead with 25 seconds left.
After a Lewis Cass timeout with 16.3 seconds left, Deeter missed a trey from the deep corner in front of the Rochester student section. The rebound was tipped in the air, and Hillis threw the ball off Paulik, who was lying out of bounds to retain possession with 5.7 seconds left.
Lewis Cass had a timeout left but elected not to call it. Deeter ran off a maze of screens in the lane and popped out to the corner. Rochester coach Rob Malchow had told his players to switch on all screens.
Paulik saw that Bowers, who had been guarding Deeter, got lost in the maze, so Paulik popped out on him. Deeter’s off-balance 3 from the left corner hit nothing but glass, and Reinartz rebounded.
Hillis fouled Reinartz with 1.1 seconds left. Rochester was not in the bonus.
After a timeout, Paulik inbounded to Kiser, who threw a pass off Reinartz’s fingertips out of bounds as time expired.
“The third-quarter run was really good,” Malchow said. “They got hot. That’s one thing that happened. Number five (Deeter) and number three (Rudd) got hot. Sometimes in high school boys basketball, you’ll run across that because I think that half of their shots were good shots for them and half of them we really contested, and they still dropped them. We had guys right there in their stuff.”
Rochester led by as many as 14 in the first half and by nine at halftime. They were still up 34-25 in the third quarter when they went on a 15-1 run.
Owen Prater, who finished with eight points before fouling out with 2:47 left, scored at the rim, Paulik hit a spinner in the lane, and Bowers finished off a lob from Reinartz in transition.
Malchow called a timeout, and the surge continued. Prater got the Lewis Cass defense to bite on a fake dribble handoff and cruised to the rim for an easy two. Reinartz hit two free throws. Bowers hit a 3.
Deeter split a pair of free throws, and after a Zebra turnover, Bowers stripped Lewis Cass’ Nolan Hahn, picked up a loose ball and in one motion whipped an over-the-shoulder pass to Baugher as he was falling to the floor. Baugher waited for the defense to clear before putting in a layup to increase the lead to 49-26.
After the highlight film came a horror show.
Deeter pumped in three treys, including one at the buzzer. It was down to 49-35.
Rudd hit a 3 from the left corner to cap a six-point double possession. Then Rudd hit a pullup 15-footer. The lead was down to single digits.
Baugher was along the baseline when he found Prater for a layup, but Rudd pumped in a 3. Baugher scored in transition, but Deeter hit another 3 from the right wing. The lead was seven.
Rudd hit a pullup 12-footer with a defender on him. Then he hit another over Baugher. It was 53-50 with 1:53 left.
“You’ve got to get stops at that point, and we were able to hit some timely shots with those stops,” Lewis Cass coach Eric Branz said. “If you don’t get stops, you can’t come back. But it was good. We had a couple guys step up and make shots during that stretch as well.”
After Bowers was stripped, Johnson took a wing pass and drove to the middle of the lane. He leaned and sunk in a banker as an official called Reinartz for a blocking foul. One free throw later, the game was even.
“I thought we lost our composure a little bit,” Malchow said. “Like I told them, whether the officiating was good or bad, it doesn’t matter. You have to adjust to the officiating. And if they’re letting them bang on us at the end of the game, we can’t dribble through traps. We’ve got to limit our dribble, be strong with the ball, move it without the dribble, find the open man like we did Kiser for the last layup, and that’s how you remedy those issues. But there was a little bit of an emotion because we were up so big, and then the frustration set in – the panic or the lack of composure. I just told them … ‘You can’t do that. You can’t go there.’ … To our credit, we found a way to win.”
Said Bowers: “We weren't the smartest in the second half. … We took quick shots, dribbled too much, turned the ball over, we weren’t getting out on our defenses. We weren’t going very hard.”
Rochester also won the JV game 66-33. Brady Coleman scored 22 points, Aiden Wilson had 11, Owen Lett had nine, Mitchell Clark had eight, Conner Dunfee had seven, Trenton Meadows had six, and Ashton Musselman had three.
Rochester 58, Lewis Cass 55
LEWIS CASS (55) (2-10, 0-6)
Trey Johnson 1 1-1 3, Brennan Deeter 5 1-2 16, Bryce Rudd 8 0-0 21, Owen Cotner-Graves 0 0-0 0, Brody Hillis 1 2-2 4, Kolten Young 2 0-0 4, Nolan Hahn 0 0-0 0, Jonathan Mack 0 0-0 0, Julian Levine 3 0-0 7, Wade Tocco 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 20 4-5 55
ROCHESTER (58) (7-2, 2-1)
Drew Bowers 8 2-5 22, Carson Paulik 2 1-2 5, Owen Prater 4 0-0 8, Bryce Baugher 2 2-4 6, Tanner Reinartz 4 3-3 13, Jonas Kiser 2 0-0 4, Grant Clark 0 0-0 0, Jack Reffett 0 0-0 0, Xavier Vance 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 22 8-14 58
Three-point field goals:
Lewis Cass 11 (Rudd 5, Deeter 5, Levine),
Rochester 6 (Bowers 4, Reinartz 2)
Total fouls: Lewis Cass 17, Rochester 16
Fouled out: Prater (RHS), 2:47, fourth
Turnovers: Lewis Cass 17, Rochester 17
Score by quarters
Lewis Cass 12 10 13 20 – 55
Rochester 19 12 18 9 – 58
JV: Rochester 66, Lewis Cass 33
