BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

The Rochester boys basketball team will open the season with home games against Culver at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Tippecanoe Valley at 2:30 p.m. Saturday. Front, from left – Drew Bowers, Carson Paulik, Jack Reffett, Owen Prater. Back – Grant Clark, Tanner Reinartz, Xavier Vance, Jonas Kiser, Bryce Baugher.

It is one of those sports cliches – under the radar. What does it mean for a team to be under the radar? Is the Rochester boys basketball team under the radar? And if they are, is that a good thing?

Rochester is coming off a 10-12 season last year. They are 31-35 over the last three years.

They have not won fewer than nine games or more than 11 in the last three years since their last sectional title team in 2021 went 18-2 overall and 9-0 in the Three Rivers Conference.

But they return their top six scorers from a team that averaged 58.7 points per game. The 58.7 scoring average was Rochester’s highest since the 2008-09 team averaged 68 per game, and that team had Mr. Basketball Runner-up Bruce Grimm Jr., shared the TRC title and was the Class 3A state runner-up.

The state runner-up team might have been “under the radar” as they were not ranked in any preseason polls. The same might be said of the 2021 team, which had balanced scoring and found ways to win close games.

“I guess I like flying under the radar,” Rochester coach Rob Malchow said on the even of his 17th season. “That’s a fair statement, not drawing a lot of attention and hopefully putting ourself in a place where we have the confidence to play against anybody. It’s just everybody else doesn’t know that.”

The top six returning scorers are senior point guard Drew Bowers (12.4 ppg), senior forward Tanner Reinartz (12 ppg), senior forward-center Owen Prater (11.4 ppg), senior forward Bryce Baugher (5.5 ppg), junior guard Carson Paulik (4.9 ppg) and junior forward Jonas Kiser (3.2 ppg).

Reinartz, Prater, Bowers and Baugher were also Rochester’s top four rebounders, and Bowers, Reinartz, Prater, Baugher and Paulik were the top five in assists.

Malchow switched to a fullcourt pressing style in early January, and he said the uptick in scoring – Rochester averaged 67 ppg over their last seven games – started with the defense.

Malchow said that practice in early January was so frustrating that he retreated back to the coach’s office. He considered kicking the entire team out of practice.

“I paced back and forth in a little bit of a lather,” Malchow said. “I thought, ‘I’m not kicking them out. I’m not letting them off the hook.’ And I went back out and I just told (JV coach) Sean (Kelly), ‘You know what? Screw this. We’re going to press.’ I said, ‘We’re going to press, and we’re going to press like crazy because we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to score. We’ve got to score with our defense because we’re not scoring in our halfcourt offense well enough.’ … I think it played better into their skill level.”

In their first game with the press, they beat Whitko 54-39. Their record the first six games with the press was 5-1. But then they lost five straight before recovering to beat Oregon-Davis and Maconaquah. The season then ended with a 56-48 loss to Wabash, a team that started five seniors and would go on to advance to semistate, in the sectional quarterfinals.

“We scored 67 a game because of our defense,” Malchow said. “Because of how we scored from our defense or at least if we didn’t get a layup out of it, we got into a transition game, and the floor spread, and we were able to attack without getting into a halfcourt set with our secondary break. I guess the reason I say that is you can score 67 points, but you still got to play defense. It was because of our defense that we averaged 67 points. But if we don’t pressure and get into people and force them to play faster … our defense made other offenses speed up. The thing we’ve got to do better is rebound better out of those defenses because we are scattered out.”

A potential factor in whether they are under the radar could have to do with the baseball team’s advancement to semistate in June. Bowers, Reinartz and Paulik are key members of the baseball team, and the time they spent playing baseball – “bless them for that,” Malchow said of the baseball team’s success – kept them from summer activities playing basketball.

Other than a couple scrimmages against Peru, the team mostly stayed at home over the summer.

“It was mid-June before those guys were done, and so that was when we usually go over to Huntington or … Fort Wayne for D1-type stuff,” Malchow said. “So we missed those dates, and the reason we ended up missing them, and had they won at semistate when we saw they were getting there, that next week was the last week of that stuff, and we didn’t know if they weren’t going to win or lose, and we had to have already committed to that. So we couldn’t do the things we normally would do.”

Bowers, Reinartz, Prater, Baugher and Xavier Vance are the team’s five seniors. Vance, a 6-5 center, did not play last season after suffering a knee injury in a sectional football game against Lafayette Central Catholic in October 2023.

Having Vance will not inhibit the team’s ability to press, according to Malchow.

“X won’t slow us down,” Malchow said. “We put him in the back end of the press, and at 6-5, he’s there to protect the basket. If he gets the rebound and he gets the outlet and off we go, he’ll be the trailer, no different than anybody else. Now will he have as long a spurts? He’ll probably have shorter spurts in the game just because of the conditioning factor he’s got to work into. But there’s no question he’ll fit in fine.”

Bowers excels in open-court scenarios.

“If we’re pressuring and flying up and down the floor on the break, it’s harder to find him,” Malchow said. “And I think that that opened up the game for him. … He still scored, but his assists went up. … He’s stronger this year than he was last year playing football. He’s taller than he was.”

Malchow sees Prater as somebody who can score in the post and be a playmaker.

“What I hope he can do this season is as he draws some of that is do a little better job of kicking to the open guys because he will draw that second guy sometimes,” Malchow said. “And I think as a younger player, I think he was more determined to score than facilitate. … I’m hoping that the facilitation factor plays bigger for him this year.”

Reinartz is both a top slugger and top pitcher for the baseball team. Malchow acknowledges Reinartz’s baseball proficiency and dedication. The key is to get him in top shooting form as he transitions from the end of baseball season to the start of basketball season.

“He was playing baseball up until a week ago, two weeks ago,” Malchow said. “And sometimes because baseball is such a big part of his life and not being able in the offseason to get the kind of shots up, it’s almost like – and he even has talked about it – we’re working on how to help close that gap, and I think each year it gets quicker and quicker – how to get his touch so he’s the shooter he wants to be, hopefully at the beginning of the season instead of maybe six weeks into the season, four weeks into the season, something like that.”

A concussion in early February marred Baugher’s season last year, and he missed the sectional game. He and juniors Jonas Kiser and Grant Clark will add to the frontcourt depth.

“They play in a similar way,” Malchow said of the threesome. “They’re longer. They’re athletic.”

Malchow mentioned that Kiser is unusually strong for his grade level.

Paulik got better as the season went on last year, according to Malchow.

“If a shot wasn’t there, he didn’t force it,” Malchow said. “Because he is obviously a smart young man. He plays quarterback, and he understands the flow of a game. … Defensively, he’s always right there competing, always looking to make the extra pass.”

Clark has worked on his footwork and finishing in the post with either hand, according to Malchow.

The last of the juniors is sharpshooter Jack Reffett, who was third on the team with 17 3-pointers at a 35% rate last year.

“He’s grown,” Malchow said. “He’s 6-2, 6-3. So he’s got some size to him. He obviously is a streaky shooter. He can get hot and get you a couple quick buckets. But the thing about him is making him understand if that’s the only thing you’re going to hang your hat on, it’s going to limit your playing time. But if you’re working your tail off on the defensive end and you’re looking to rebound and get the break started instead of always being on the other end of the break because you’re sneaking out.”

Conner Dunfee is another junior who could vie for playing time.

Rochester added new conference rival Northwestern to the schedule while keeping former conference rival North Miami as a nonconference game. Rochester also added Bremen, dropped North White and dropped the Wawasee holiday tournament. The regular season schedule is down to 20 games.

Rochester boys basketball schedule

Nov. 27 – vs. Culver, 7:30 p.m.

Nov. 30 – vs. Tippecanoe Valley, 2:30 p.m.

Dec. 6 – at Winamac, 7:30 p.m.

Dec. 13 – vs. North Judson, 8 p.m.

Dec. 14 – at Logansport, 7:30 p.m.

Dec. 20 – vs. Northwestern, 7:30 p.m.

Jan. 4 – at Bremen, 7:30 p.m.

Jan. 10 – at Whitko, 7:45 p.m.

Jan. 17 – vs. Lewis Cass, 7:30 p.m.

Jan. 21 – at Caston, 7:30 p.m.

Jan. 24 – at Manchester, 7:45 p.m.