.png)
Leasure, McGlothin, Smith all score in double figures for Rochester
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Paul Leasure hit four 3-pointers and scored a team-high 17 points, but the Rochester boys basketball team committed a crucial turnover and gave up a critical offensive rebound in the final 50.0 seconds left in regulation and eventually fell to visiting Logansport 57-53 in overtime at the RHS gym Saturday.
Tarick McGlothin scored 14 points, and Aidan Smith added 11 for Rochester, who fell to 2-3.
Isaac Russell hit five 3-pointers and scored a career-high 21 points for Logansport. Caleb Crook added 11 points, including that offensive rebound and a game-tying free throw with 7.9 seconds left in regulation, and K. Amare Summers had 10.
Logansport senior guard Noah Lange, who came in averaging 14.5 points per game, was held to eight.
Jacob Taylor scored four of his six points in the overtime for the Berries, who improved to 1-4. The win was the first at Logansport for coach Sherron Wilkerson.
Taylor’s two free throws with 3:06 left in the overtime gave Logansport the lead for good at 50-48. A Summers layup and a Taylor driving bank extended the lead to six.
Leasure pumped in a 3-pointer with 30.9 seconds left to make it 54-51, but Lange found Crook for a layup on a press breaker to push the lead back to five.
Smith’s acrobatic layup made it 56-53, but Lange hit the clinching free throw with 4.1 seconds to wrap it up.
Rochester trailed 39-27 at one point in the third quarter but rallied to take a 48-47 lead on Luke Hunting’s 3-point play with 1:45 left in regulation. That capped a 13-2 run.
McGlothin had the assist to Hunting on his 3-point play, running off a curl and then penetrating and dropping a pass down to Hunting for a layup as he was bumped.
Playing on top of Rochester’s 2-3 zone defense, he then stole a Logansport pass into the high post, spoiling a Berry possession that was 50 seconds in length.
Rochester used mostly a 2-3 zone with scattered possessions of a 1-3-1 zone and a man-to-man defense for the first 25 minutes. With seven minutes left in regulation, Rochester coach Rob Malchow switched to a halfcourt trap.
“Once they got up six, eight points, they weren’t going to shoot,” Malchow said. “They were just going to be content with going back and forth and letting the clock run. So that’s where we went to our halfcourt trap with about seven minutes to go in the game. And they didn’t like it. We came all the way back from 12 down and obviously took the lead at one point.”
Lange fouled McGlothin with 50.0 seconds left, but Rochester was not in the bonus. They had to inbound along the sideline opposite the bench and scorer’s table.
But Smith could not find an open man in time, and Rochester was called for a five-second violation.
“When we took the ball out of bounds on the side out-of-bounds over there, we were up one with 50 seconds to go, we didn’t go hard enough,” Malchow said. “Our urgency wasn’t there, and that half a second took us to get the ball inbounds turned it over to them and gave them a shot.
“Otherwise, we could go to our four corners and hopefully take some more time off and get fouled and make free throws. That’s the goal, and we weren’t able to do it because we gave them the ball back.”
Logansport then ran the clock down to 20.5 seconds. Wilkerson called timeout.
Lange attempted a 3-pointer from off the right corner but missed. Crook got the offensive rebound and was fouled by Robert Bozzo on his way up to shoot with 7.9 seconds left.
Crook missed the first free throw but made the second.
Rochester advanced the ball to the frontcourt and used their final timeout with 3.8 seconds left.
When play resumed, Leasure ran off a staggered-screen set by Bozzo and Hunting and caught McGlothin’s inbounds pass.
He lofted up a rainmaker for 3. The shot hit the rim, hit the backboard and exchanged Christmas presents with the rim again for a second. It fell off as time expired.
Overtime.
“They played really hard,” Malchow said of his players. “When you’re out there with a bunch of guys who are as young as they are, after last night’s game (a 46-33 loss to North Judson), which was incredibly physical, you know, I give them a lot of credit for playing hard and getting us back in it. … Once you get to that point with 50 seconds left, you have to have greater urgency to get the ball inbounds.”
Each team hit three treys in the first quarter, which ended tied 13-13.
Putback buckets from Crook and Summers helped give Logansport a 26-20 lead, but McGlothin’s pass to Hunting for a layup with 0.5 seconds left in the half cut the margin to four.
Russell, who had never scored more than nine points in a varsity game prior to Saturday, scored eight points in the first two minutes of the second half. He hit three 3s in the quarter, the last of which gave the Berries a 12-point lead.
McGlothin and Huffman each hit treys to help cut the lead to eight after three quarters.
Crook’s transition bucket to start the fourth made it 45-35, but two Leasure 3-pointers sandwiched a McGlothin left baseline jumper to cut the lead to two. After Leasure’s second 3-pointer, he then stole a Logansport pass and started a fast break that Smith finished with a reverse layup to tie the game with 4:04 left.
A Crook putback with 2:06 left gave Logansport the lead back at 47-45.
In the JV game, Rochester earned a 50-46 win behind Dylan Hook’s 14 points. Colton Ferverda had nine, Hunter Campbell had eight, Brock Bowers had seven, Thatcher Sampsel had six, Ethan Medina had four, and Gavin Young had two.
Logansport 57, Rochester 53 (OT)
LOGANSPORT (57) (1-4)
Noah Lange 2 2-4 8, Isaac Russell 6 4-4 21, Jacob Taylor 2 2-2 6, Izak Mock 0 0-0 0, Caleb Crook 5 1-4 11, John Scott 0 1-2 1, K. Amare Summers 5 0-1 10
TEAM: 20 10-17 57
ROCHESTER (53) (2-3)
Tarick McGlothin 5 2-2 14, Paul Leasure 6 1-1 17, Tanner Reinartz 0 0-0 0, Luke Hunting 2 1-1 5, Aidan Smith 4 2-2 11, Aaron Huffman 1 0-0 3, Robert Bozzo 1 0-0 3, Xavier Vance 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 19 6-6 53
Three-point field goals:
Logansport 7 (Russell 5, Lange 2),
Rochester 9 (Leasure 4, McGlothin 2, Smith, Bozzo, Huffman)
Total fouls: Logansport 11, Rochester 14
Turnovers: Logansport 8, Rochester 8
Score by quarters
Logansport 13 13 17 5 9 – 57
Rochester 13 9 13 13 5 – 53
JV: Rochester 50, Logansport 46
Comments