Aris Rodriguez, Red Knights don’t miss with a Berks championship on the line
Aris Rodriguez may not be much of a hockey fan, but he believes what Wayne Gretzky believes: You miss every shot you don’t take.
So Reading High’s top outside sniper kept putting them up Friday night in the Berks championship game, enduring miss after miss as his Red Knights fell further and further behind Exeter.
Rodriguez missed each of his six shots in the first quarter. He was 1-for-11 from the field through three quarters, more than half of them from beyond the arc. He missed his first shot of the fourth quarter.
“I just kept shooting it,” said Reading’s 6-5 senior wing.
Of course, you know where we’re going with this one; you’ve seen before. Who else but Aris Rodriguez hits the biggest shot of the game, the 3-pointer from deep in the corner with two minutes left that gave the Red Knights the lead for good in their epic comeback, a pulsating, thrill-a-minute 70-63 victory?
“I mean, I missed like 13,” Rodriguez said, unfazed, “but I made that one, so it was blessing.”
“They should’ve known not to leave him in the corner,” Reading’s Ruben Rodriguez said wryly after the top-seeded Red Knights (24-1) pulled another rabbit out of the hat, erasing a 10-point deficit by scoring 18 unanswered points late in the fourth quarter to earn their record 25th Berks championship.
The second-seeded Eagles (19-6) played about as well as they could; maybe better than ever before. They were knocking down 3-pointers left and right in the first half. They stood up to Reading’s pressure through three quarters. They were up 11 at one point and ahead 57-47 with 4 ½ minutes left.
They were leaking oil badly at that point, though.
Reece Garvin, their second-leading scorer and rebounder, endured a leg injury early in the game and couldn’t play in the second half. Anthony Caccese, their 6-6 anchor, picked up his fourth foul in the final minute of the third quarter and had to play cautiously the rest of the way.
The straw that broke the camel’s back came midway through the final quarter when 6-2 wing Kevin Saenz picked up his fourth and fifth fouls within a 90-second stretch. He left the game with his team leading 57-49.
“That’s when Nick (Chapman) got that And-one, and everything changed,” Ruben Rodriguez said. “Little stuff like that can change the whole game around. We went from down 10 to up 10 just like that.”
Exeter went scoreless for more than four minutes, enough time for the Red Knights to rip off 18 straight points. Reading turned up the heat in the fourth quarter, began trapping all over the court, and forced nine turnovers.
The Eagles, running out of gas, greased the skids by missing the front end of three straight one-and-ones. It was still close at that point, a one-possession game. But it didn’t stay that way long. Smelling blood in the water these basketball sharks from Reading went wild and tore the Eagles to bits.
Alex Kelsey stopped the bleeding with a 3-pointer with 43 seconds left, but Exeter still trailed by five at that point. Aris Rodriguez pushed the lead back to seven a few seconds later, draining both ends of a one-and-one. Those shots were part of a 13-point finishing quarter by Aris, who ended up with 17 points despite his early woes.
The loss was devastating for coach Matt Ashcroft and his Eagles, who had won 13 of their previous 14 and had little doubt they could extend their winning streak to 10 despite the caliber of their opponent.
The Eagles played at a championship level; they just couldn’t sustain it after losing some of their key pieces down the stretch.
“All credit and respect to Coach (Rick) Perez and his kids,” Ashcroft said. “They just don’t stop. Coach Perez is an awesome coach; they’re an awesome team. I would imagine they’re a favorite for a state title, (or at least) one of them.”
As long as Ruben Rodriguez, their two-time All-State guard, is on the floor they always have a chance. He didn’t have a great shooting night, either, going 8-for-18 from the floor and 6-for-17 from the foul line (yes, you read that right, 6-for-17).
But he grabbed 10 rebounds and fought hard on defense and kept making little plays, knowing that if he fought to the end things would end well. They usually do.
“We’ve been here before, plenty of times,” Rodriguez said of being down. “We just had to come out and keep playing hard, and we kept coming, we kept coming. Eventually the game went our way.”
Rodriguez finished with a game-high 23 points, giving him 1,838 career points – 10 more than Lonnie Walker IV. Walker still owns the program scoring record, because 288 of Rodriguez’s points came as a freshman at Muhlenberg. His point total ranks 10th in Berks history and he has several – maybe as many as eight – games to play.
The Red Knights missed an incredible 18 free throws and were a woeful 2-of-15 from 3-point range. But they did enough right to win.
They out-rebounded Exeter 46-32, despite seeing Caccese grab a game-high 16 boards (to go with his 17 points).
They couldn’t slow down Exeter’s Zyion Paschall – he posted another outstanding playoff game, with a team-high 20 points. But they did play well in the post against Caccese, limiting him to nine shots – four or five of those off offensive rebounds.
They didn’t turn the ball over once during frenetic fourth quarter, and they managed to jam 30 points into that final eight minutes – against a team that allows less than 46 per game.
“We’ve seen these (tough) circumstances before,” Perez said. “They just found a way (to overcome them).”
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Final | |
| Exeter | 17 | 16 | 15 | 15 | 63 |
| Reading High | 12 | 18 | 10 | 30 | 70 |
| Eagles (19-6) | FG | FT | 3’s | A | R | Points |
| Paschall | 8-13 | 1-3 | 3-5 | 0 | 5 | 20 |
| Saenz | 3-11 | 1-2 | 1-7 | 4 | 2 | 8 |
| Snyder | 3-9 | 0-0 | 2-6 | 1 | 0 | 8 |
| Garvin | 0-4 | 0-0 | 0-2 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Caccese | 7-9 | 3-3 | 0-0 | 0 | 16 | 17 |
| Kelsey | 3-7 | 0-1 | 2-4 | 4 | 0 | 8 |
| Dauble | 1-3 | 0-1 | 0-0 | 1 | 5 | 2 |
| Totals | 25-56 | 5-10 | 8-24 | 12 | 30-32 | 63 |
| Red Knights (24-1) | FG | FT | 3’s | A | R | Points |
| Burdine | 0-4 | 6-8 | 0-0 | 1 | 4 | 6 |
| R. Rodriguez | 8-18 | 6-17 | 1-5 | 1 | 10 | 23 |
| Grey | 2-10 | 4-6 | 0-2 | 1 | 6 | 8 |
| A Rodriguez | 4-17 | 8-10 | 1-8 | 0 | 5 | 17 |
| Osumanu | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Cruz | 4-8 | 3-4 | 0-0 | 0 | 9 | 11 |
| Chapman | 2-4 | 1-1 | 0-0 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| Ortega | 0-1 | 0-0 | 0-0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Totals | 20-62 | 28-46 | 2-15 | 3 | 37-46 | 70 |
Turnovers: Exeter 21, Reading High 13.
