Kammerer scores 16, Shepherd adds 13 as Valley beats Rochester

Kiser scores 22, Paulik adds 13 for Zebras

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

AKRON — Tippecanoe Valley boys basketball coach Eli Henson set a goal for his players to hold Rochester’s Jonas Kiser under 15 points Saturday.

They did not meet their goal, but because of Jude Kammerer and Hudson Shepherd, they did not have to in order to win.

Kammerer scored 16 points, and Shepherd came off the bench to score 13 to lead Valley to a 56-48 win over the Zebras at Rita Price Simpson Court.

Kammerer, a junior, had scored 19 points in his varsity career prior to Saturday. His career high for a game was six. Shepherd, a senior, had scored seven points in his varsity career prior to Saturday. In this game, he scored seven points in the fourth quarter.

Owen Omondi added 10 for Valley, including the basket with one second left in the third quarter that put Valley ahead for good at 40-39.

Kiser led Rochester with 22 points and seven rebounds. Carson Paulik hit three 3-pointers in the second half and added 13. Kiser and Paulik scored 23 of Rochester’s 26 second-half points.

But the Vikings remain infallible at home against the Zebras: Rochester has not beaten Valley since January 2021, and they have not beaten Valley on Valley’s home court since December 2006.

Valley improved to 2-5. They have won two straight since an 0-5 start. Rochester lost their third straight game and fell to 2-4.

Rochester led 39-36 with 1:22 left in the third quarter on a Liam Spence putback. He was fouled on the play but missed the free throw in an attempt to complete the 3-point play, and Rochester did not score again for another 6:34.

Rochester first-year coach Luke Smith said the team got tired late.

“I think that first four minutes of the fourth quarter … they went on a little run there,” Smith said. “When you’re playing from behind and you’ve got to run a little chaos, and they were trying to slow everything down, it just wears our dudes out, and we ran out of gas at the end of it.”

Valley has five new starters this year, but they also have four seniors on their roster. First-year coach Eli Henson made a distinction between having a “young” team and an “inexperienced” one.

“I think a lot of time, it’s just make the simple play,” Henson said. “We’re making it more difficult than what it needs to be. The good thing about tonight is we were averaging 20 turnovers a game, and we only had 11. … So that’s a big thing. … It’s an inexperienced team that just needs to grow in those situations.”

Omondi scored on a spinning layup to close out the third quarter, and he scored again on a spinning banker 35 seconds into the fourth quarter. A Shepherd driving layup made it 44-39. Wes Parker, who finished with nine points, scored on a driving floater to push the lead to seven.

“They do a good job of clogging the paint,” Henson said of Rochester’s defense. “They do a good job of not letting you drive to the paint. We knew we’d have them in a lot of long closeouts, and we thought we had a little bit more speed than what they did, and a little bit of that too was we weren’t shooting very well tonight, so once we got them in those long closeouts, I wanted our guys to be able to attack the rim. It was like, ‘Don’t settle. Continue to attack.’”

Kiser finally broke the scoring drought with a driving layup.

Kiser’s two free throws with 2:04 left cut the deficit to three 46-43.

Kiser also scored 18 points and grabbed six rebounds last season against eventual Class 2A state champion Manchester, coached by Henson, in their regular season meeting.

Henson said Kiser “just does his work and has to just keep possessions alive.” 

They would again get within three at 51-48 on a Paulik 3-pointer, a backcourt steal and two Kiser free throws with 29.0 seconds left.

“We had a couple costly turnovers there late,” Smith said. “We have some details we have to continue to clean up. I’m proud of my guys. They fought all night. They took the punch. We knew Valley was going to punch us right in the month. We got down early (and) fought back.”

But William Mellott and Shepherd would combine to make five of six free throws in the final 20.9 seconds to seal it. Rochester had five turnovers in the fourth quarter and 13 for the game.

Shepherd has made coming up clutch against Rochester his thing: He also had an interception in the fourth quarter of the Bell Game at Barnhart Field in a 7-2 Valley win.

This time, he had the game of his life on the hardwood.

“I was just talking about that with my friends,” Shepherd said. “Something about the Rochester games get me going. I get fired up. It’s definitely a rivalry though.”

Neither team led by more than six points through three quarters. Mellott drained two treys, Kammerer hit from deep, and Parker scored twice off the dribble – once on a runner and another on a sidestep move – as Valley took a 13-8 lead.

But Brady Coleman scored on a pullup 12-footer, Kiser scored on a cutting layup after a Spence block, and Kiser scored on an air ball putback and was fouled with 11.4 seconds left in the quarter.

Kammerer was fouled at the buzzer and split a pair of free throws to tie the game at 14 after one quarter.

Rochester went to a zone defense in the second quarter, and they held Valley to five points in the first five minutes of the quarter. Parker picked up his third foul with 4:22 left in the half, but Valley outscored Rochester 7-6 the rest of the half with Parker on the bench. 

Kammerer, listed at 5-10, stepped up, scoring on a driving banker and again in transition. And when Shepherd hit a 3-pointer over the Rochester zone, the lead was up to 26-20.

“I think I was more aggressive this game,” Shepherd said. “Because I think sitting on the bench watching, I see how many openings there are, what I can take. … It comes to you all of a sudden. As soon as you hit that one thing, you want to keep going. It’s a confidence thing. It goes up.”

Rochester then went on an 8-0 run covering the second and third quarters. Kiser closed out the half with a bucket, and then he put down two layups within the first 27 seconds of the second half with help from a Valley turnover against pressure. When Jack Reffett found Paulik for a reverse layup, Rochester had their first lead of the second half at 28-26.

Then the game became a 3-point shootout between Kammerer and Paulik. Each hit a pair of triples in the quarter as the lead switched hands four times.

But Kammerer scored again on a driving banker in traffic to tie it at 34.

“When he’s playing well, we’re a whole different team,” Henson said of Kammerer. “He does such a good job of driving the basketball too, and his next phase is driving and then figuring out when to kick it out. He attacked the rim very aggressively. Him and Hudson Shepherd in the second half were really big for us. … For those guys, that was a big game for them because they showed they can provide something offensively as well.”

Paulik hit a cutting Kiser for two, but Omondi scored on a spin move to tie the game again. A Mitchell Clark free throw with 1:56 left in the third gave Rochester a 37-36 lead

In the JV game, Rochester outscored Valley 14-4 in the fourth quarter to claim a 46-43 win. Aiden Wilson scored nine of his game-high 16 points in the fourth quarter for Rochester. Linden Wilburn and Van Kiser added 10 each, Parker Casper had seven, and Alex Chapman had three.

Malaki Christian led the Viking JV with 15. Liam Newcomer had eight, Hunter Stage and Ethan Drudge had six each, Ty Kiser had four, Mason Miller had three, and J.J. Kammerer had one.

Tippecanoe Valley 56, Rochester 48

ROCHESTER (48) (2-4)

Carson Paulik 5 0-0 13, Mitchell Clark 1 1-2 3, Brady Coleman 2 0-0 5, Jack Reffett 0 1-2 1, Jonas Kiser 8 6-7 22, Liam Spence 1 2-3 4, Parker Casper 0 0-0 0, Conner Dunfee 0 0-0 0

TEAM: 17 10-14 48

VALLEY (56) (2-5)

Grant Anthony 0 0-0 0, Jude Kammerer 6 1-2 16, William Mellott 2 2-2 8, Owen Omondi 4 2-2 10, Wes Parker 4 1-4 9, Hunter Stage 0 0-0 0, Hudson Shepherd 2 8-10 13, J.J. Kammerer 0 0-0 0

TEAM: 18 14-20 56

Three-point field goals:

Rochester 4 (Paulik 3, Coleman),

Valley 6 (Jude Kammerer 3, Mellott 2, Shepherd)

Total fouls: Rochester 19, Valley 18

Fouled out: Coleman (RHS), 1:11, fourth; Omondi (TV), :29.0, fourth

Turnovers: Rochester 13, Valley 11

Score by quarters

Rochester 14 8 17 9 – 48

Valley 14 12 14 16 – 56

JV: Rochester 46, Valley 43