Sophomore Bradly Basila delivers in the clutch, buries a 3 with 3.3 seconds left, scores team’s last eight points and leads Trojans to 52-49 win with 21 points, many set up by Malachi Ransom

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Tie score, the clock dwindling, the ball in Malachi Ransom’s hands. The Chesterton junior bloww past his Michigan City defender and has a decision to make on the fly in the lane: either take it to the rack and see what happens or feed sophomore Bradly Basila in the left corner.
“I knew he was there and I knew he was hot,” Ransom said after the game. “I fed him a couple of times and he knocked the shot down, so I had to feed him again. He’s hot. I’m going to feed the hot hand every time.”
Basila stepped into Ransom’s perfect delivery, swished the shot with 3.3 seconds left and the Trojans played such airtight defense the rest of the way that City didn’t get off a shot.
Chesterton eked out a 52-49 win against a quick, well-organized City team that made easy baskets difficult to find after losing an 11-point halftime lead and getting behind by three points.
Credit Basila with taking an ugly duckling of a basketball game and turning it into a swan just in time to send the home spectators out of the gym and into another cold night smiling.
The 6-foot-7 sophomore scored Chesterton’s final eight points and was the only Trojan in double figures with 21 points. He did all that on a night in which most of his shots close to the basket had too much velocity on them and bounced off the backboard or glanced off the rim.
But he compensated with a soft touch from beyond the arc, making four 3-pointers.
When he saw Ransom beat his defender, Basila said he thought he would take it all the way to the rim, but was ready just in case.
“Not really because he can finish,” Basila said of whether he was expecting the pass. “I’m very thankful he gave me the ball because he can make it if he tries, but he trusts me.”
Basila made it easy to trust him.
“Malachi made a great decision where he didn’t force it and kicked it and Bradly was able to step into it,” Chesterton coach Marc Urban said. “If we are able to step into our 3s, good things happen.”
Basila, easily the team’s most prolific dunker, has come so far as a 3-point shooter that with the game on the line the player with the ball in his hands had no doubt where he wanted to send it.
“He’s got a nice shot, nice shot on him,” Ransom said of Basila. “That’s big for him that he hit those 3s. I hope he takes some confidence from that.”
Basila’s first 3 of the final period, from the right corner, came with 2:19 left to tie a game that Chesterton had led by 11 points at the half.
City regained the lead 49-47 and Basila tied it with a pair of free throws with 1:26 on the clock.
Forever active senior Jaylon Watts’ touch from the free throw line also played a big part in Chesterton taking the win. On a night Watts didn’t make a field goal, he made 8 of 8 free throws.
And Ransom’s influence on the game extended to all 84 feet.
“Malachi was great tonight,” Urban said. “He was able to get downhill. I thought he made really good reads when he got downhill. He’s really good when he’s able to do that. I thought he kind of let the game come to him. Sometimes he gets in in that first quarter and forces it. And he didn’t do that tonight.”
Another positive contribution from Ransom came with him spending much of the night bringing the ball up the floor. He’s a difficult guard to press because of his ability to blow past defenders.
Ransom showed the quickness to get to the rim repeatedly against an athletic team, but like Basila, he had trouble finishing, the only blemish on an otherwise impressive night for the lefty guard, who scored six points.
Basila’s clutch finish prevented the Trojans from losing a game they led at the half 31-20 after Cooper Huwig buried a 3-pointer from near the Indiana map on the right side of the floor with a couple of seconds left.
“Huge shot,” Urban said. “Huge. It was huge.”
According to a Region Sports Network stat-keeper, Chesterton made just 5 of 23 shots inside the arc, perhaps a function of getting sped up because of the Wolverines’ quickness and multiple shot-blockers, most notably 6-8 senior Colson Dobre.
“They put two people on me sometimes and sometimes I get fouled,” Basila said. “I have to work to finish more shots because I missed a lot today.”
Urban is confident Basila will get there.
“They’re surrounding him. His big thing is he’s got to finish through that contact,” Urban said of Basila’s troubles finishing. “Sometimes he’s getting fouled, sometimes he’s not. But he’s got to be able to get in balance because he’s strong enough to just get up and finish those.”
The progress Basila has made in a year suggests he’ll figure it out.
“From where he was last year finishing to where he is now, it’s completely different,” Urban said. “He just has to keep sticking with it. It’s not going to be an overnight fix, but I think he’s made a lot of progress.”
Chesterton played another strong defensive game, particularly in the final 3.3 seconds. A Michigan City player was about to shoot a deep, guarded shot when his coach called timeout with 0.8 seconds left, and after the timeout, Ransom made his man hesitate to the point he could not get a shot off before the horn.
“Deny the ball, but don’t foul,” Ransom said of how to defend City’s final possession. “Just letting him know I’m here. Have to show him the presence and get your hands up high.”
Urban: “Switch to deny, make sure you arrive with it on the catch, and we did. We sat down, we switched and arrived right away and we did our job.”
Urban used that finish to issue a challenge to his players.
“We’ve got to play with that focus and defensive presence for 32 minutes,” Urban said. “They were so dialed into that last 3.3 possession. But you have to stay dialed in like that every possession because if you do, we’re a really good defensive team.”
The Trojans, ranked No. 15 in the state coaches’ poll, will need to prolong that defensive intensity against Penn (13-3), the No. 13 team in the state. Tip time Saturday is at 2:30 p.m.
“It was a fantastic win for this group along our journey here,” Urban said of Thursday’s game. “It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t great, and we got down after giving up a big lead but we found a way to win, and that’s a big-time win.”
In a highly competitive DAC, top to bottom, there will be no small wins on the conference schedule.