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McCarter scores game-high 17 in win over Southwood
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Like many opposing point guards, Rochester sophomore Tarick McGlothin was seemingly in
the crosshairs of Southwood’s trapping, pressing defense at the RHS gym Tuesday.
It wasn’t always pretty. RHS committed 20 turnovers, including six in the fourth quarter.
The adversity he faced during the first 31 minutes might have brought out the best in him in the final minute.
He hit the game-tying 3-pointer with 44 seconds left and then followed with the game-winning assist to Blake Hughes for a 3-point play with 2.0 seconds left as the Zebras
earned a compelling 57-54 win over the Knights to improve to 6-0 in the Three Rivers Conference.
Grant McCarter led Rochester with 17 points, and Hughes, who had 16, kept his chin on the rim for perhaps the biggest bucket of his career, taking a bump from Carson Rich for a layup that broke a 54-54 tie.
Kyle Reinartz added 10 for the Zebras, who won their 10th straight game and improved to 13-1 overall. McGlothin had eight, and Quin Stesiak had six.
Rich led Southwood with 16 points. Alex Farr had 14, and Dawson Filip had 10. Southwood, who played without injured senior guard Connor Rich, a 9 ppg scorer, dropped to 7-9 overall and 3-4 in the TRC.
“That’s as hard as I’ve seen a team play against us this year,” RHS coach Rob Malchow said of Southwood.
To call this game a seesaw affair would require one to acknowledge that the seesaw was on hyper speed.
RHS led by as many as 11 in the third quarter but saw Southwood drop a 20-3 spurt on them to go up 48-42 in the fourth. RHS switched out of its zone defense and went to a halfcourt trap and replied with a 9-0 run to take a 51-48 lead before Southwood went on a 6-0 run to go ahead 54-51 on a Filip steal and layup in transition.
Rochester had the final response. McCarter, who had an assist to Reinartz underneath the basket for a bucket on an inbounds play earlier in the fourth, this time found McGlothin open in the opposite corner on another inbounds pass.
He drained the triple to tie the game.
“It was hard for him, I think, because they really keyed on him and put a lot of pressure on him,” Malchow said. “I think being a sophomore, they saw he has some holes they tried to expose, and I thought as the game went on, he got a little better. He got a little frustrated a couple times, but he bounced back … and as a competitor, I just looked at him and said, ‘They’re trying to challenge you,’ and he said, ‘I know they are.’ And I said, ‘Then stick it up their butt.’ And he said, ‘I will.’”
Southwood bled the clock but Cole Winer’s shot somehow bounced out after circling the cylinder with 15 seconds left, and McGlothin rebounded, and he passed to McCarter.
Malchow had two timeouts left but decided not to use them. McCarter paused with the ball. He looked up and advanced the dribble past halfcourt before finding McGlothin just beyond the arc.
McGlothin raced to the left elbow and found Hughes at a 45-degree angle to his right. Carson Rich, trailing the play, fouled Hughes, who put in the go-ahead layup and then pumped his fist as the Zebra bench exploded behind him.
“I know when I drive I’m going to find my post players always,” McGlothin said. “Because it’s just how it is. I love passing them the ball.”
Hughes made the ensuing free throw to complete the 3-point play, and Carson Rich missed a desperation 35-footer as time expired.
“I could have called timeout, but I rolled the dice and decided because they were so spread out, and we got it and Tarick had it right away to just go,” Malchow said. “It worked out. Sometimes it does; sometimes it doesn’t. But it was a tie game at that point, so worst-case scenario, we were going to overtime.”
Southwood never led at any point in the first half, but Logan Barley’s 25-footer at the first-quarter buzzer tied the game at 12. RHS developed a 24-16 lead in the second quarter on a McCarter 3-pointer.
Southwood answered again, tying the game at 26 on a Farr 4-point play – a steal, a layup, a foul on Reinartz after the shot while Southwood was in the bonus and both free throws of a one-and-one.
RHS responded with a 13-2 run covering the second and third quarters that featured two McCarter 3s and a McGlothin 3 to take a 39-28 lead, but the Knights disrupted the Zebras with their pressure and broke through to take a six-point lead.
Farr scored 10 points during the next six minutes, including a go-ahead 3-pointer to give Southwood a 44-41 lead. A Carson Rich pullup jumper with four seconds left gave Southwood a five-point lead going into the fourth.
“They’re hustlers,” McGlothin said of Southwood’s defense. “They’re scrappy. They’ll come up behind you, and you just have got to be aware. They’re a scrappy team.”
Hughes split a pair of free throws, but when Southwood patiently broke down the RHS zone and Farr hit a left baseline jumper off a Filip assist, the Knights led by six, and Malchow decided to change up defenses.
“I thought the turn was with six minutes to go when we went to the trap at halfcourt,” Malchow said. “That was the ballgame. They didn’t like being pressured at all, and we got several turnovers on them at that point or forced quick shots that we converted.”
Southwood coach John Burrus said the plan was to increase the pressure incrementally. He thought his team had “frustrated” McGlothin prior to his two big plays.
“We knew Rochester was going to be difficult to deal with here at home,” Burrus said. “And their size, they just killed us last year (a 70-58 win at Southwood), especially the second half. They really wore us down, but we were determined tonight that we were going to kind of glide into the full court instead of starting in it. We wanted to let the game flow a little bit, and I felt like that was fairly effective and it kind of got them away from their initial game plan. They probably were figuring a lot of pressure early and kinda got their kids maybe a little out of what they were expecting.”
Southwood racked up a 55-22 win in the JV game. Luke Hunting led RHS with eight points, Robert Bozzo had seven, Brock Bowers had three, and Aaron Huffman and Evan Elliott had two each.
Prior to that, RHS secured a 34-25 win in the “C” team game. Dylan Hook and Kaiden Towell had nine points each, Colton Ferverda had seven, Bozzo had five, and Gavin Young and Thatcher Sampsel had two points each.
Rochester 57, Southwood 54
SOUTHWOOD (54) (7-9, 3-4)
Carson Rich 5 5-6 16, Alex Farr 4 4-5 14, Cole Winer 1 0-0 2, Dawson Filip 4 1-2 10, Jason Oprisek 4 1-1 9, Logan Barley 1 0-0 3
TEAM: 19 11-14 54
ROCHESTER (57) (13-1, 6-0)
Grant McCarter 4 6-7 17, Tarick McGlothin 3 0-0 8, Quin Stesiak 2 2-2 6, Kyle Reinartz 4 2-3 10, Blake Hughes 7 2-3 16, Trenton Reinholt 0 0-0 0, Aidan Smith 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 20 12-15 57
Three-point field goals:
Southwood 5 (Farr 2, Rich, Filip, Barley),
Rochester 5 (McCarter 3, McGlothin 2)
Total fouls: Southwood 14, Rochester 10
Turnovers: Southwood 12, Rochester 20
Score by quarters
Southwood 12 14 20 8 – 54
Rochester 12 17 12 16 – 57
JV: Southwood 55, Rochester 22
C: Rochester 34, Southwood 25
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