ROCHESTER — Live by the three, die by the three. The Rochester Warriors have taken that motto to heart at times throughout the course of the season, and the second half of their regular-season finale against Hoquiam proved no different.
A flurry of threes helped erase an eight-point halftime deficit, but the Warriors weren’t able to hit enough shots late in what ultimately ended up as a 52-40 loss.
Rochester trailed 28-20 at the break, but hit three threes in the third and one early in the fourth to tie the game at 36 with about six minutes to play.
From that point on, though, the Warriors went cold from beyond the arc. They hit a pair of two-pointers in the next two and a half minutes, but went scoreless in the final three and a half.
“Third quarter, we hit shots,” Rochester coach Caleb Sells said. “Fourth quarter, we had a lot of those open shots, and if those same kids are open again, because those are the shots that put us in the situation we’re in.”
During that same stretch, the Hoquiam offense that had gone cold during Rochester’s hot stretch reignited. In the fourth, the Grizzlies hit two three-pointers and went 8 for 9 from the free-throw line to build back their lead.
“About four minutes to go, that was getting pretty exciting,” Sells said. “But we missed a couple shots, they make a big three, we get called for a travel … Little things like that, all of a sudden it’s a seven, eight point game, and it’s kind of tough to come back from that.”
Freshman Tyson Canales led the comeback effort for the Warriors, scoring 15 of Rochester’s 20 second-half points. Canales finished with a game-high 19 points, including three three-pointers.
“He just plays within the system, and then the shots come to him,” Sells said of Canales. “He's just a very patient player, and he’s an ultimate team player. It’s fun when the kids that get all the points are also team players and they care about their teammates. It’s kind of rare these days.”
Le’Shawn Hines finished as Rochester’s second-highest scorer with nine points, and prior to the game, he was honored alongside the Warriors’ other two seniors, Devin Gravett and Zander Miller.
“They’ve improved a lot, and they’re team players,” Sells said. “It was really cool to see the recognition that they deserve.”
Emmitt Mancuso added four points, Clayton Knutson and Marshall Turnquist both scored three, and Peter Hayden tallied two.
Had the Warriors (3-17, 3-5 1A Evergreen) been able to top the Grizzlies, they would have earned the No. 3 seed from the Evergreen. With the loss, they are the No. 4 seed, and they will be facing either Seton Catholic or Columbia (White Salmon) in the pigtail game on Tuesday.
The winner will face Fort Vancouver, the No. 1 seed from the Trico that went 14-0 in league play and 17-3 overall.
It is Rochester’s first trip to the postseason since 2014, and with such a young core leading the way, Sells is confident that regardless of the outcome, the future for the program is bright.
“The weekend will probably be spent watching a very inappropriate amount of film, and we’ll try to come up with a game plan so that we can hopefully extend our season a little bit,” Sells said. “Just getting to this point with this young of a team, with five freshmen in the top seven, is really big for this team … If we could extend that another game, that would be fantastic.”
