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Bowers scores 23, Reinartz adds 13
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Tanner Reinartz Bryce Baugher
WABASH — Trailing by six points, Rochester boys basketball assistant coach Luke Smith detailed offensive adjustments the team needed to make on a grease board during halftime against Northfield at Kaltenmark Gym Friday.
Coach Rob Malchow responded to Smith with a more powerful, if perhaps somewhat contradictory, message. The way they would get back in the game had to do with their defense. The defense would trigger their offense.
That message won out as the Zebras went on a 23-0 run covering the third and fourth quarters, holding Northfield scoreless for over eight minutes as they rallied from an eight-point deficit to win 60-44.
Playing for the first time since he scored 48 points against Caston Tuesday, Drew Bowers led Rochester with 23 points, including 11 in a span of 80 seconds in the third quarter that necessitated two Northfield timeouts.
Tanner Reinartz added 13, including eight in the fourth quarter. Bryce Baugher, Jonas Kiser and Grant Clark combined for 15 points, all in the second half.
Rochester made 18 of 23 free throws while Northfield went 1 for 5. Northfield did not attempt a free throw in the second half.
Carter Rodgers led Northfield with 10 points. The Norsemen’s leading scorer, he came in averaging 14 points per game.
Rochester’s 16-point final margin equaled their largest lead of the game.
Rochester improved to 10-3 overall and 3-2 in the Three Rivers Conference. Northfield fell to 7-7, 2-4.
Combating Northfield’s in-your-jersey man-to-man defense, Rochester beat Northfield for the eighth straight year and for the sixth straight year by double digits.
“They played very hard-nosed and physical and put us on our heels,” Malchow said of Northfield’s first-half defense. “And like I told our guys at halftime, coach Smith was putting on the board how he wanted to handle them offensively, and I just snapped. … I pointed at our defensive coverages and said, ‘That’s our offense. That’s who we are. We’re not getting after them. We’re not putting them on their heels. We’re not getting in the passing lanes. If you want the halfcourt offense to work, the blitz, our defense, has to get us some layups, so the other stuff will come.’ And that’s kind of what happened.”
Isaac Burkhart’s left elbow jumper on the first possession of the second half gave Northfield a 29-21 lead before Malchow’s defensive message kicked in.
Kiser hit two free throws and then a 3-pointer. They would be his only five points of the game, but the run was on. Baugher drove for a layup to cut the lead to one.
Then Bowers attacked at hurricane force.
He cut back door against Northfield’s aggressive man-to-man defense and received a Kiser pass and scored to give Rochester the lead for good at 30-29. Then he took a hit-ahead pass from Paulik and scored in transition and was fouled. After a Norsemen timeout, he tacked on the free throw for a 33-29 lead. Then he hit two free throws. Then he went coast to coast for a layup. Then he stole a looping crosscourt pass in the backcourt and drove in for another layup.
The lead was 39-29, and Northfield coach Rex Reimer had to take another timeout.
Another Baugher driving layup after an offensive rebound got the lead to 41-29 going into the fourth quarter.
Reinartz hit a top-of-the-key 3-pointer on the first possession of the fourth to bump the lead to 15, and it stayed in double digits the rest of the night.
“Just a spurt of us not taking care of the ball in the halfcourt,” Northfield coach Rex Reimer said. “We let their pressure kind of dictate us a little bit, and our guards didn’t value the ball very well and led to some easy buckets for Rochester, some layups. We would foul them, and they would shoot free throws. So we just didn’t take care of the ball very well in the third.”
Malchow’s defensive message was not necessarily focused on Rodgers, Northfield’s senior point guard, so much as it was to close out on Northfield’s perimeter shooters within their halfcourt zone and pressure defenses. Rochester also limited Northfield’s points in the paint in the second half.
Juniors Clark and Carson Paulik did not start, but they were in at the end as the Zebras protected the lead. Paulik got the ball in the middle and fed a cutting Clark for a layup. That came after a Clark deflection that he inadvertently batted off the Northfield backcourt set up another transition opportunity.
“I think that Coach’s locker room speech really got us turned around,” Clark said. “I think we got pepped up, and we just brought the energy in the second half and started taking away the middle more.”
Northfield delivered the first blow, taking an 8-0 lead on a Jaden Baer 3-pointer, a Burkhart turnaround in the post and a Rodgers 3-pointer from the right corner.
A Reinartz 3-pointer and three Bowers free throws with 0.4 seconds left in the quarter cut the margin to 10-8, and Rochester took their first lead at 14-13 on a Bowers layup in transition off an Owen Prater assist. A Prater right baseline drive for two made it 16-13.
Northfield scored six straight points before a Paulik 3-pointer tied it at 19. But Northfield went on another 8-2 run. Jake Perney had two buckets during the run, and Ty Leming and 6-5 freshman Cody Holmes also scored.
The lead was 27-21 when Rochester began to regroup.
“It was a tale of two halves,” Malchow said. “We were lackadaisical, just kind of not going through the motions but not playing what our identity is. When we got back to our identity, then we put them on their heels, and it was a different ballgame.”
Said Clark of Malchow’s halftime talk: “He was meaning that really what Rochester Zebra basketball is we defend first and then we go to the offensive side next. We create our offense through our defense.”
Rochester also won the JV game 57-53.
Rochester 60, Northfield 44
ROCHESTER (60) (10-3, 3-2)
Drew Bowers 7 9-11 23, Bryce Baugher 3 0-0 6, Tanner Reinartz 3 5-6 13, Jonas Kiser 1 2-2 5, Jack Reffett 0 0-0 0, Carson Paulik 1 2-2 5, Owen Prater 2 0-0 4, Brady Coleman 0 0-0 0, Conner Dunfee 0 0-0 0, Grant Clark 2 0-2 4, Xavier Vance 0 0-0 0, Mitchell Clark 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 19 18-23 60
NORTHFIELD (44) (7-7, 2-4)
Carter Rodgers 3 1-2 10, Jasen Baer 2 0-0 6, Tyson Baer 3 0-0 8, Ty Leming 3 0-2 6, Isaac Burkhart 2 0-0 4, Jake Perney 3 0-1 6, Parker Oswalt 0 0-0 0, Cody Holmes 2 0-0 4
TEAM: 18 1-5 44
Three-point field goals:
Rochester 4 (Reinartz 2, Kiser, Paulik),
Northfield 7 (Rodgers 3, T. Baer 2, J. Baer 2)
Total fouls: Rochester 13, Northfield 22
Intentional foul: Perney (NF), :15.0, fourth
Turnovers: Rochester 11, Northfield 9
Score by quarters
Rochester 8 13 20 19 – 60
Northfield 10 17 2 15 – 44
JV: Rochester 57, Northfield 53
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