Hard work pays off for Rochester
There’s an old saying in prizefighting — “Weight classes exist for a reason.”
Replace “weight classes” with “classifications,” and the same saying holds true for virtually every high school girls basketball team — just not Rochester. Coming off the first WPIAL championship in program history, the Rams have embodied another popular prizefighting mantra — “Any time, any place.”
Rochester third-year coach C.J. Iannini made it a point to put together the toughest non-conference schedule he could find for this year’s group, although his players were a bit skeptical at first.
“I started doing this a little bit last year and the girls were a little bit shell shocked, like, ‘Whoa, coach, we’re going to play who?’” Iannini said. “This is going to be the new standard, and we’re either going to accept it and overcome it, or we’re just going to roll over and be scared.”
No matter the classification and no matter the pedigree, no team has been safe from the wrath of the topranked Rams this season.
After opening the season with a 59-40 win against Class 5A opponent Hampton, Rochester knocked off Class 6A opponent Erie McDowell, 49-45. In their third game of the season, the Rams lost to WPIAL Class 4A No. 4 Central Valley — last year’s WPIAL runner-up in Class 4A — 5856.
Not satisfied with just keeping it close against the Warriors, Rochester took on Class 4A No. 2 Blackhawk two games later. The Cougars, led by star senior Mackenzie Amalia, are the highest-scoring team in the WPIAL, undefeated in section play and have lost only one game to an in-state opponent this year.
That one in-state loss? You guessed it — a 77-74 overtime defeat against the Rams.
“We started this a little bit last year, trying to step outside of our comfort zone and really trying to challenge ourselves to see where we’re at as a ball club,” Iannini said. “To be the best, you have to play the best. We wanted to not get in the habit of playing only our classification.
“I wanted to change the mindset and the culture of the program that we’re not only one of the best teams in Class 1A — we’re one of the best teams in the WPIAL.”
It’s certainly hard to argue that with the type of season the Rams are putting together. Never before has a team in the WPIAL’s lowest classification played so well against teams from Class 4A, 5A and 6A — let alone title contenders.
Rochester (16-1) has won 14 games in a row, but it hasn’t always been easy. Along with the close wins against McDowell and Blackhawk, the Rams had a stretch of three consecutive games decided by four points or less from Dec. 2128 — and they won all three.
Since then, Rochester has gotten back to its dominant ways, winning its next four games by a combined 167 points.
“It’s been a bigger grind mentally for our team, just trying to understand that the target is on our back every night,” Iannini said. “You have to deliver every night. You have to understand that teams want to knock off the champs.”
Knocking off these champs will be easier said than done with the “big three” of Alexis Robison, Corynne Hauser and Jasmine Mack leading the way.
Robison, a junior who made all-state last season, entered the week ranked No. 15 in the WPIAL with an average of 19.1 points per game, while Hauser (16.5 ppg), a sophomore point guard with several Division I offers, isn’t that far behind.
Mack, meanwhile, has picked up where she left off as a double-double machine after scoring 19 points and grabbing 14 rebounds in the Rams’ 62-56 win against West Greene in last year’s WPIAL championship game.
With only two seniors on the roster, Rochester has all the makings of a team that could reign atop Class 1A for the foreseeable future. But this year’s Rams aren’t just looking to repeat as WPIAL champions.
“This team, there’s definitely unfinished business,” Iannini said. “We want to make a much deeper state playoff run than we did last year. … The ultimate goal is for us to be able to hang one of those yellow state championship banners in our gym.”