Rochester to name Smith boys basketball coach

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

Reaching out to its past, Rochester will hire Luke Smith as its new boys basketball coach, pending approval at the next school board meeting.

Smith would replace Rob Malchow, who announced his retirement to the team at the season-ending awards night April 16.

Smith has been an assistant on Malchow’s staff for eight years. This will be his first head coaching position.

In an email to RTC, Rochester athletic director Cal Stone said that Smith was one of “approximately 20” candidates to apply for the job. He said that the field was “narrowed down” prior to any candidate interviews.

A committee of eight people conducted interviews Monday morning. The committee then met after the interviews and determined that Smith was the best candidate. Stone did not identify the eight people on the committee but said it included “administrators, other varsity head coaches, board members and community members.”

Smith is a 2006 Rochester grad and played on sectional championship teams in 2004 and 2006 under Malchow. He finished with 506 points his senior year and 1,166 for his career.

At the time of his graduation, he was the first player to score 1,000 career points in a Zebra uniform since Jim Coleman did it in 1992 and the first to score 500 in a season since Steve Ruckman in 1989.

Rochester’s sectional title in 2004 ended a 26-year sectional drought. The Zebras won 10 games that year and improved to 12 wins in 2005 before a season-ending loss to Rensselaer at the Winamac sectional. 

But with Smith at point guard averaging 21.5 points, 4.5 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 2.6 steals per game, Rochester stepped up their game even further in 2005-06, winning 18 games. They went 5-2 in the Three Rivers Conference, which at the time was their best conference record since joining the TRC 19 years earlier.

They then beat Rensselaer and North Newton to win the sectional title and followed that with a 51-47 victory over North Montgomery in a regional semifinal at North Judson. That win over North Montgomery marked Rochester’s first win in a state tournament game beyond the sectional since 1972.

Smith’s prep career ended later that night with a 67-56 loss to Westview in the regional final.

Smith then played at Huntington University for Steve Platt and later Ty Platt, where he scored 1,174 career points.

His emergence as an assistant on Malchow’s staff coincided with Malchow beginning a second stint as head coach in 2017 following a six-year break from coaching. Rochester won back-to-back sectionals in 2020 and 2021 with Smith on the staff, and the 2021 team went 9-0 in the TRC.

If Smith were to be approved, he would be the first Rochester boys basketball coach to be an alum since Scott Newcomb. Newcomb, a 1981 Rochester grad, coached the Zebras from 1992-98.

(Dave Burkett, who coached the Zebras from 1998-2001, graduated from Richland Center in 1963. That school was later consolidated as part of the Rochester Schools in 1965.)

Smith will inherit a roster that could potentially include seniors-to-be Jonas Kiser, Carson Paulik, Grant Clark and Jack Reffett from a team that went 17-6 and lost to eventual Class 2A state champion Manchester in the Sectional 38 semifinals. Junior-to-be Brady Coleman and sophomore-to-be Mitchell Clark also have varsity experience and could be in the mix for varsity minutes.

The Rochester School Board has not announced when its next meeting will be. Typically, it meets on the third Monday of every month, which would put Smith in line for a May 19 vote.