Pure shooter Lindsi McGuffey leads Chesterton girls basketball team into Valparaiso tonight in battle of teams unbeaten in the DAC, trying to break Trojans’ seven-game losing streak to Vikings

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

It doesn’t take watching Chesterton sophomore guard Lindsi McGuffey shooting that purer-than-a-mother’s-love jumper of hers to correctly guess that she was taught proper shooting mechanics right from the start and never had to unravel any bad habits.
It’s obvious that she didn’t teach herself to shoot when she was way too young, using both hands equally to heave with all her might in hopes of reaching the 10-foot hoop.
No, she clearly was taught by someone who knows the value of keeping the non-shooting hand, poorly named the guide hand, out of the shot. It does anything but guide the shot. A body square to the hoop guides the shot and a smooth follow through finishes it. The guide hand should be called a stabilizing hand, or maybe the stay-out-of-the-way hand.
Anyway, McGuffey has beautiful shooting mechanics, waving goodbye to the ball with her right hand, sending it spinning so purely and landing so softly.
Sure enough, McGuffey wasn’t flying blind when she first practiced shooting a basketball. She had a teacher, her father, Kevin, who might want to think about starting his own shooting school.
Lindsi said she didn’t start playing basketball until fifth grade. She already was a varsity rotation player as a freshman. Quick learner.
Heading into tonight’s game at Valparaiso (8-1 overall, 3-0 in the DAC), McGuffey leads the Trojans (8-3, 3-0) with 12.2 points per game and ranks second among rotation players in 3-point shooting percentage (36%) to freshman Ella Boyanski (38%) and makes 75% of her free throws.
A year ago, McGuffey was able to catch and shoot and didn’t have many of the primary ballhandling duties. This year, she and junior Novea Brandon, AAU teammates, form a strong starting backcourt and switch off handling the point.
Sometimes, taking on more of the ballhandling can make a guard at least temporarily regress as a shooter, but that hasn’t been a problem at all for McGuffey. She knows when she has a shot, doesn’t force any, knows when to penetrate and when to keep the ball moving with a quick pass.
“I think AAU helped a lot because Novea and I have always switched off and on point guard, so we’re both used to having to handle the ball then being the shooter, whatever offense we’re in,” McGuffey said.
Teaming year-round has enabled McGuffey and Brandon to develop smooth chemistry on the court. They both play a ton of basketball, always as teammates.
“I’m going to say in the summer, we probably played around 50 AAU games and then about 25 with the high school team,” McGuffey said. “So it’s not over a hundred but pretty close to a hundred.”
Chesterton played 24 games last season, ending the season in the sectional final. So if McGuffey’s summer totals are accurate, getting to 100 would require advancing to the regional, which would mean getting past Valpo.
Even playing close to 100 games and practicing every non-game day but Sunday during the season, McGuffey still finds time to do some form shooting with her first shot doctor, her father.
“We practice a lot on not even shooting at the basket, just in the air, like laying on your back and just shooting it, keeping your guide hand in place, not pushing it,” McGuffey said. “We did that a lot. I just remember we did a lot of form shooting when I was young and now we still do stuff that helps my form stay locked in. He’s helped me a lot.”
McGuffey and her teammates will have to be at their sharpest tonight to keep up with the Vikings, the favorites to win the DAC.
Valpo has a seven-game winning streak in the rivalry series, the past six games with Ball State recruit Lilli Barnes leading the Vikings.
Barnes signed a lucrative NIL deal with the Cardinals, whose coach, Brady Sallee, is over the moon to have Barnes heading to Muncie.
“In this class of in-state ‘26 recruits, Lilli was the prize,” Sallee said when Barnes signed. “We feel like we got the best player in the state. She does it all and can do it from multiple positions. She competes at an elite level and makes everyone around her better.”
Chesterton last defeated Valpo on Feb. 5, 2020, weeks before the COVID-19 shutdown spat on life as we knew it.