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Cotner-Graves hits go-ahead trey with 42 seconds left, Lutane adds clinching FTs
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
WALTON — The game situations came full circle for the Rochester boys basketball team in a six-day span.
They trailed Twin Lakes by eight points in the fourth quarter but came back to win Jan. 10. They led host Lewis Cass by eight points in the fourth quarter Friday but saw the Kings stun them with a game-closing 13-1 run to beat them 49-45.
The rally spoiled Jonas Kiser’s career-high 31-point night. Over the last 10:23, he scored 15 of Rochester’s final 16 points. Mitchell Clark added six points. He was the only Zebra other than Kiser to have multiple field goals.
Trey Johnson scored 13 points, Jaxon Lutane had 11, and Owen Cotner-Graves added 10 for Lewis Cass, who improved to 7-3 overall and 4-1 in the Three Rivers Conference.
Rochester dropped to 4-6, 1-2.
“I can’t believe we let that one slip away,” Rochester coach Luke Smith said.
Lutane, a freshman, dropped in a 3-pointer from the left corner off a Cotner-Graves assist with 1:48 left that tied it at 44.
Kiser split a pair of free throws to give the Zebras a 45-44 lead with 1:10 left, but Cotner-Graves, who had made just two 3-pointers in his last six games combined, hit his second trey of the fourth quarter to give the Kings a 47-45 lead with 42 seconds left.
Rochester called timeout with 26.7 seconds left. After play resumed, Kiser never touched the ball against Lewis Cass’ 2-3 zone. Clark and Carson Paulik played catch along the perimeter. Clark fed Liam Spence, and the ball worked around the perimeter, from Spence back to Clark back to Paulik to Jack Reffett on the deep left wing.
Reffett then tried to throw a skip pass over the defense, but Lutane intercepted, and Clark fouled him with 7.5 seconds left.
Lutane made it a two-possession game with two free throws.
A lob pass that Kiser tried to tip off the glass slid off the rim, and Julian Levine rebounded and dribbled out the clock.
“It was the last two minutes of the game,” Smith said. “We’re up eight. We don’t make our free throws. We start turning the ball over. Shot selection started getting poor. And this is a tough one to swallow because our guys played way too well tonight.”
Rochester trailed 21-12 in the second quarter, but a switch from a 3-2 zone to a man-to-man defense helped slow the Lewis Cass offense.
They got within 23-20 at halftime, and when Kiser fired a dart to Reffett for a layup at the doorstep of the rim, Rochester had a 29-28 lead with 3:17 left in the third quarter, marking their first lead since it was 4-2.
Cotner-Graves split a pair of free throws with 2:52 left, but Kiser hit a trey from the right wing to give Rochester another lead at 32-29.
The lead would later get to 37-32 after a Liam Spence block would later lead to Kiser scoring on a delayed break.
Johnson scored at the third quarter buzzer for Lewis Cass, but Kiser hit a pullup from the left baseline to start the fourth. He later scored on a lefty scoop layup. When Grant Clark hit a free throw with 5:20 left, the lead was 42-34.
“They had no answer for him,” Smith said of Kiser. “We identified that. We kept getting him the ball. He could probably do that every night if he really wanted to. If he wants to play off two feet and wants to finish with strength rather than the flippy-ness that he likes to do once in a while. We had a good conversation about that in practice this week. I said, ‘Jo, you could literally have 30 a game if you would play off two feet.’ And what do you know?”
Lewis Cass coach Eric Branz complimented Kiser, noting that he was good at “creating angles” and “reverse pivots.”
“He was tough, and I questioned our toughness quite a bit,” Branz said. “He had a heck of a game.”
Julian Levine made two free throws for Lewis Cass with 5:05 left.
Cotner-Graves, a rugged 6-1 forward who picked up his fourth foul with 1:58 left in the third quarter, returned with 4:42 left.
Kiser made two free throws with 3:50 left to make it 44-36.
Smith described the tempo in which the Zebras made their rally as “slow” and “monotonous.”
“I like that it was a little slow and monotonous,” Smith added. “I thought that favored us actually. … I walked into the locker room and was like, what just happened?”
Then Rochester got more good news. Lewis Cass turned the ball over, with a diving Cotner-Graves throwing a pass that grazed off Levine’s leg that rolled out of bounds.
And Brennan Deeter, Lewis Cass’ leading scorer at 14.4 ppg, fouled out with 3:16 left. Rochester was in the bonus, but Kiser missed two free throws.
Cotner-Graves hit a 3, Spence missed a 3, and Johnson scored on a driving layup. The lead was down to three.
Lewis Cass called timeout and came out in a trap. A bad pass from Mitchell Clark led to a turnover, and with the Rochester defense in scramble mode, Lutane tied the game.
“Our mindset changed,” Branz said when asked what the turning point was. “We were down on ourselves, and we’ve been in these positions before. We just had to have some belief. It kind of started in the third quarter. I noticed some bad body language, and that’s what we used a lot of our time together on the bench talking about is we’ve got to fix that if we want any shot at winning this game. And then it came down to the belief. … When you get down like we did, things got to fall in place. There were some uncharacteristic shots that they took. The 3 in the corner, I was kind of surprised, and that helps us out. Because if that doesn’t happen, then we’ve got to really work to get deflections a little bit better. But it was a mindset change and just the belief in our unit.”
Lewis Cass scored the last five points of the first quarter to take a 10-6 lead on a Lutane 3 from the left wing and a Johnson steal and layup with two seconds left.
Kiser made all four of his free throws in the second quarter, and he also scored on a post up-and-under, a spinning banker and a 10-foot fadeaway.
Deeter hit his own midrange fadeaway to make it 23-16, but Reffett hit Kiser cutting back door, and a Mitchell Clark steal and layup got Rochester back within three at halftime.
In the JV game, Rochester rallied from a 13-point deficit in the first quarter to win 54-40. Alex Chapman led Rochester with 15 points, and Van Kiser tallied 11.
Lewis Cass 49, Rochester 45
ROCHESTER (45) (4-6, 1-2)
Carson Paulik 1 0-0 3, Mitchell Clark 3 0-1 6, Liam Spence 1 0-0 2, Jonas Kiser 10 10-14 31, Jack Reffett 1 0-0 2, Brady Coleman 0 0-0 0, Grant Clark 0 1-2 1
TEAM: 16 11-17 45
LEWIS CASS (49) (7-3, 4-1)
Trey Johnson 5 3-3 13, Karston Gray 0 0-0 0, Brennan Deeter 3 1-2 8, Julian Levine 2 2-2 7, Owen Cotner-Graves 2 4-6 10, Jaxon Lutane 3 2-2 11
TEAM: 15 12-15 49
Three-point field goals:
Rochester 2 (Kiser, Paulik),
Lewis Cass 7 (Lutane 3, Cotner-Graves 2, Levine, Deeter)
Total fouls: Rochester 14, Lewis Cass 15
Fouled out: G. Clark (RHS), 4:42, fourth; Deeter (LC), 3:16, fourth
Turnovers: Rochester 16, Lewis Cass 10
Score by quarters
Rochester 6 14 17 8 – 45
Lewis Cass 10 13 11 15 – 49
JV: Rochester 54, Lewis Cass 40
