Bloomington North comes out hot and holds on to deal Chesterton boys basketball team its first loss of the season, 63-55

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Visiting Bloomington North buried Chesterton in a blizzard of 3–point shots to take a double-digit lead in the first quarter and the Trojans never could dig themselves all the way out, losing for the first time this season, 63-55, Tuesday afternoon.
In the first quarter, the Cougars made four 3-pointers and scored the final nine points of the period to take a 19-8 lead.
Chesterton (5-1) came as close as 28-27 and 29-28 midway through the second quarter but never led. The last tie was 2-2.
Junior Levi Lindeman, son of Todd Lindeman, a 7-footer who played four years at Indiana University in the early 90s, torched the Trojans for 22 points. The 6-foot-6 forward, Lindeman made four 3-pointers.
At the other end, Chesterton’s guards did a good job of getting to the hoop, but failed to finish the shots as too many point-blank attempts rolled off the rim.
“We have guys who are really good players missing layups,” Chesterton coach Marc Urban said. “It’s a lack of concentration. It’s a lack of strength. It’s a lack of toughness. You’ve got to be able to drive in there, get your chin on the rim, and you’ve got to make the shot. We were complaining too much for fouls, including myself, but we’ve got to make those.”
Seniors Logan Pokorney (21 points) and Jaylon Watts (17) led the Trojans in scoring on a day they were playing without junior point guard Tobias Ray, who was home sick with the bug making the rounds in Chesterton.
Ray runs the team, keeps everybody going at a fast pace and has been shooting lights out from 3-point range, but Urban pointed to an intangible when asked how the team missed Ray, a three-year starter, the most.
“Leadership. I felt like everybody was really quiet. We got punched in the mouth there early. It was good to see us fight back. We just couldn’t get over that hump,” Urban said. “It’s not like it’s just one person who has to show leadership. It has to be collective leadership. Somebody has to say ‘Enough’s enough!’ and let’s get a stop, let’s get a rebound. Let’s execute.”
The break between the first and second quarters amounted to well-timed smelling salts for the dazed Trojans, who picked up the intensity at both ends as Ransom, Pokorney and Watts looked to drive. By halftime, the Trojans had cut their deficit to 25-21.
Consecutive buckets by Watts, the first on a nifty give-and-go pass from Caden Schneider, pulled the Trojans within 27-26 early in the third period and Malachi Ransom’s right-handed layup again cut the deficit to a point at 28-27, but the Cougars (5-1) scored the final six points of the quarter to take a 10-point lead.
In the fourth, Cooper Huwig cut it to six points with a hard drive and after the Cougars pushed it back to nine, Pokorney hit Watts with a bounce-pass that resulted in a layup to trim the deficit to seven.
Sophomore Bradly Basila had his quietest night of the season and finished with a season-low four points. For the first time since last season, he looked sped-up at times. But he came alive briefly in the fourth quarter, blocking shots on consecutive possessions to trigger fastbreaks. Pokorney finished the first break with a bucket, Basila the next to cut the lead to 52-49 with three-and-a-half minutes left, the closest the home team would get. Two fouls and a minute-and-a-half later, Basila had fouled out.
“It was probably the first time this year that he’s had real resistance,” Urban said of Basila. “He didn’t have any resistance from some of the teams that we’ve played. So you finally get 4A guys who are strong and physical and I think he got knocked off his spots. He didn’t rebound great. But it’s part of the learning process for him, too. And it wasn’t just him. It was everybody. They played more physical than us and that bothers me. We have to play more physical.”
The Trojans’ shooting troubles started at the hoop and extended beyond the arc. They made an average of 9.8 3-pointers in opening the season with a 5-0 record and made just two Tuesday, compared to six for the visitors.
“They hit some tough shots but we didn’t have any resistance to us,” Urban said. “They made plays and we didn’t make plays. They got loose balls, they got rebounds, they hit timely shots. That was probably the first game we didn’t shoot well, but I think that we weren’t good defensively and that translated to the offensive end.”
Tuesday’s opponent challenged the Trojans in ways they had not been tested and scored multiple buckets on back cuts. North coach Jason Speer was an assistant to Urban with the Indiana All-Stars last year.
“He’s a really good coach and they ran stuff,” Urban said. “They have good pieces and they use their pieces well. That worried me going into the game. Everybody was like, ‘You guys are really good defensively,’ but we really hadn’t played anyone that had run anything yet. So let’s see what happens when we play someone who does some stuff. Then we saw what happened. We got out of position a lot. We were bad with the details that we needed to be good at to win the possession. When you’re playing teams that aren’t doing much like we played early you kind of get blinded by that. We got exposed.”
Chesterton next plays Saturday at Elkhart, which is off to a 4-2 start with head coach Bodie Bender in his first year at the school after moving over from Mishawaka. The game is at North Side Gymnasium, located at the middle school at 300 Lawrence St. in Elkhart. Built in 1954, the gym has a capacity of 7,373.
“We’ve got a lot of stuff we have to figure out,” Urban said. “You can say what you want, but you start reading the rat poison of how good you are and you figure you just have to show up and it’s going to be easy. It’s not.”
Bloomington North proved to be a difficult opponent.
“They had great energy,” Urban said. “They played as a team. They played connected. And they beat us. The only way this could be good is if we learn from it, and we will. We have tough, resilient kids, but we have to take lessons from this.”