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Malchow praises ‘flexibility’ after first win over Logansport since 2010
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Drew Bowers Tanner Reinartz
LOGANSPORT — Tanner Reinartz scored eight of his game-high 24 points in the fourth quarter, and Drew Bowers added 23 as the Rochester boys basketball team ended a nearly 15-year drought against Logansport with a 64-58 win at the Berry Bowl Saturday.
Rochester led 58-46 with 1:01 left, but Logansport crept back within 62-58 on a Quincy Jackson 3-pointer with 10 seconds left, but Reinartz drilled two free throws with 5.3 seconds left to complete the scoring, and Bowers followed with a steal and held onto the ball as time expired.
Rochester won their third straight game and improved to 4-1. The win ended a 13-game losing streak to Logansport and was Rochester’s first over the Berries since Feb. 26, 2010.
Carson Dubes scored 17 points, and Chrisanthony Del Valle added 12 for Logansport, who fell to 2-3.
Bowers and Reinartz combined for nine of Rochester’s 10 3-pointers. Logansport, who was coming off an 88-50 loss to Hamilton Heights on Friday, also hit 10 treys, but they also committed 18 turnovers.
Junior guard Logan Lange did not play for Logansport.
“You’re on their floor, it’s a tough out,” Rochester coach Rob Malchow said. “Probably the best game we’ve played this year, and we needed it to win on the road like this. What our goal is to get better every week, and I thought we did that tonight.”
Rochester went on an 11-0 run covering the first and second quarters – the run included two Bowers 3-pointers and a Reinartz 3-pointer and was capped by a Xavier Vance putback of his own miss – to erase a seven-point deficit and take a 19-15 lead, and they never trailed again.
Del Valle hit a 3-pointer, but Reinartz drove the left baseline for a layup, Bowers hit two free throws, and Vance scored on another putback to make it 25-18.
Logansport would cut the deficit to two, but Jack Reffett would hit a 3, and Bowers would score on a back door layup. An Owen Prater steal and breakaway layup and an off-balance banker from Bowers with one second left in the half kept the lead at 34-27.
Though Bowers was nuclear-level hot – he hit two more triples in the third quarter – Logansport would get as close as 49-44, but Vance hit Reinartz with a reversal pass to the right wing for a 3-pointer that got the lead to eight going into the fourth quarter.
“That’s one of those continuity things,” Logansport coach Matt Lange said. “The guys you saw out there aren’t used to playing in the spots they were playing in tonight, and they weren’t used to being in situations. I thought they did a nice job with the high ball screen. We had a hard time covering it. We knew who the shooters and the scorers were. Sometimes kids don’t listen to the scouting reports.”
Meanwhile, Rochester mixed in a halfcourt zone with its pressure packages, holding Logansport to two points in an eight-and-a-half minute span covering the third and fourth quarters.
Bowers and Reinartz combined to hit four of six free throws in a 37-second span to get the lead to 12.
Then Logansport mounted their final surge. Tate Strong hit a 3 from the left corner with 54.1 seconds left. Reinartz stepped out of bounds along the sideline against the Logansport press, and Dubes hit a 3.
The lead was down to 58-52.
Reinartz made two free throws with 43.9 seconds left, but Prater fouled Dubes in the act of shooting a 3-pointer, and Dubes converted all three from the line to make it 60-55.
Carson Paulik split a pair from the line with 33.6 seconds left. Eli Baldwin missed a 3, and Bryce Baugher pulled down the rebound in traffic, and Paulik split another pair from the line with 23.3 seconds left.
Baugher later said that all the seniors “blend in really well” as team leaders, though he said that Reinartz is the “loudest” of the leaders.
“Xavier came in, and Drew had a really good first quarter,” Baugher said. “He was on fire, and Xavier came in, and he started setting screens. He’s a big body, so he had a real good impact. And then we kept switching it up defense-wise, and Malchow kept switching it up for our press, and we kept putting more pressure on the ball.”
But then Jackson hit another 3, and Logansport had cut the lead to four.
Malchow later said everybody on the team played a key role and praised Baugher and Jonas Kiser for their ability to guard guards.
“What I liked about tonight is we showed some flexibility,” Malchow said. “Even though we used our pressure packages, we were able to drop into the 2-3 zone with X (Vance) especially and kind of slow them down in a different way. And I really thought the guys did a good job making adjustments on the move.”
Logansport took the JV game 61-17.
Rochester 64, Logansport 58
ROCHESTER (64) (4-1)
Drew Bowers 7 4-6 23, Bryce Baugher 0 0-0 0, Tanner Reinartz 7 6-6 24, Owen Prater 3 0-0 6, Jonas Kiser 1 0-0 2, Carson Paulik 0 2-4 2, Grant Clark 0 0-0 0, Jack Reffett 1 0-0 3, Xavier Vance 2 0-0 4
TEAM: 21 12-16 64
LOGANSPORT (58) (2-3)
Carson Dubes 4 5-6 17, Chrisanthony Del Valle 5 0-0 12, Deagan Kitchel 3 0-0 6, Eli Baldwin 2 3-4 8, R.J. Clem 3 0-0 6, Lucas Jones 0 0-0 0, Tate Strong 1 0-0 3, Quincy Jackson 2 0-0 6
TEAM: 20 8-10 58
Three-point field goals:
Rochester 10 (Bowers 5, Reinartz 4, Reffett),
Logansport 10 (Dubes 4, Del Valle 2, Jackson 2, Baldwin, Strong)
Total fouls: Rochester 11, Logansport 19
Turnovers: Rochester 14, Logansport 18
Score by quarters
Rochester 14 20 18 12 – 64
Logansport 15 12 17 14 – 58
JV: Logansport 61, Rochester 17
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