Hunting leads Zebras with 11
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Romance on Valentine’s Day at the RHS gym was dead Tuesday.
Instead of a dozen roses, Triton junior guard Cole Shively dropped nearly three dozen points on host Rochester.
Stopping him was a thorny problem as Triton pulled away in the second half to notch a 70-48 win.
Shively scored 23 of his career-high 35 points in the first half, and Dante Workman added 14.
Luke Hunting led Rochester with 11 points, and Bryce Baugher, Brock Bowers, Aidan Smith and Paul Leasure added seven points each.
Triton improved to 11-8. Rochester fell to 10-8.
Triton took control with a 15-1 run in the second quarter to break free from a 16-16 tie and take a 31-17 lead.
Rochester would get as close as 36-29 and 38-31 in the third quarter, but the Trojans went on another 14-3 run to get the lead to 52-34. They led by as many as 25 in the fourth quarter.
The Zebras tried a man-to-man with Leasure and then Aidan Smith guarding Shively in the first half. They also tried a 2-3 zone and pressure packages, but Shively hit two 3-pointers and also scored off dribble penetration and in the mid-post area.
The 70 points were a season high for Triton. Meanwhile, only Manchester had scored more than 70 against the Zebra defense.
“That was rough,” Rochester coach Rob Malchow said. “We just couldn’t contain him. He was a dude. We had no answer in the first half. When we did go zone, we did slow him down a little bit. And the way it was going, the 2-3 definitely slowed him down.
“We just couldn’t make shots.”
Triton coach Jason Groves called Shively “aggressive.”
“Tonight he was feeling it,” Groves said. “Sometimes you have those games where you don't miss and everything’s going to go in the bucket, and I think that was one of those nights.”
In addition to his scoring, Workman had the defensive assignment on Leasure, who was coming off a 30-point night in a 62-61 win over Wabash Friday.
Triton played a box-in-one keying on Leasure early but played mostly a man-to-man over the final three quarters.
Malchow thought the issue was simply not making the shots that the offense generated.
“I think even in the third quarter, we got it down to (seven), and we just couldn’t put enough pressure on them by making shots that forced them to feel some pressure,” Malchow said. “You grind and grind, but some of your energy comes from your offense sometimes. We just couldn’t get that going. We ran plays for everybody – isos for Luke, obviously our horns plays, our screens up top for Paul. … We ran our sets for Tanner, Brock. … We had some looks.
“Against Wabash, where we knocked down those shots that helped keep our momentum going and helped turn the tide of that game, we just could not make enough shots to help keep us getting to a pressure defense that would keep the momentum going,” Malchow said. “And then, you know, number 20 (Shively) came down and made us pay. He was good.”
Rochester jumped out to an 8-2 lead thanks to 3-pointers from Bowers and Hunting, but Shively scored 15 points in the first quarter, and his fallaway jumper with five seconds left in the quarter gave Triton a 16-14 lead.
Reinartz scored in the post to tie the game on the opening possession of the second quarter, but Shively cut back door for a layup, Workman scored on a drive and then got a friendly bounce off the rim on a 3-pointer from the left corner.
Leasure hit a free throw, but Workman sunk two free throws, Shively finished off a back door lob and then scored again on a steal and breakaway layup. The lead was 14, and Malchow called timeout.
In the JV game, Jack Reffett scored 10 points for Rochester in a 36-32 win. Drew Bowers and Carson Paulik had six points each, Owen Prater and Bryce Baugher had five each, and Hunter Honkomp and Grant Clark had two each.
Triton 70, Rochester 48
TRITON (70) (11-8)
Dante Workman 4 5-9 14, Julian Swanson 2 1-2 6, Cole Shively 12 9-10 35, Jacob Pitney 0 0-0 0, Evan Briles 3 3-8 9, Isaac Quintana 0 0-0 0, Tanner Witt-Hoyo 0 0-0 0, Caden Large 0 0-2 0, Wayne Reichert 0 0-0 0, Gage Riffle 0 0-0 0, Cam Callahan 0 0-0 0, Anthony Schuh 2 2-3 6, Ben McFarland 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 23 20-34 70
ROCHESTER (48) (10-8)
Paul Leasure 3 1-4 7, Aidan Smith 1 5-6 7, Brock Bowers 3 0-0 7, Tanner Reinartz 2 0-0 4, Luke Hunting 4 2-2 11, Drew Bowers 0 0-0 0, Ethan Medina 0 0-0 0, Luke Malchow 0 0-0 0, Owen Prater 1 1-1 3, Bryce Baugher 3 0-1 7, Davis Renie 0 0-1 0, Xavier Vance 0 2-2 2
TEAM: 17 11-17 48
Three-point field goals:
Triton 4 (Shively 2, Workman, Swanson),
Rochester 3 (Hunting, Baugher, B. Bowers)
Total fouls: Triton 17, Rochester 25
Intentional foul: Prater (RHS), 3:41, fourth
Turnovers: Triton 10, Rochester 13
Score by quarters
Triton 16 19 19 16 – 70
Rochester 14 11 11 12 – 48
JV: Rochester 36, Triton 32
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