Crown Point ends Chesterton’s 22-5 season with a 54-35 win Saturday night in Michigan City regional

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Playing against a team as quick and long, physical and relentless, as Crown Point, Chesterton needed to make an extremely high percentage of shots at the rim to remain competitive for four quarters.
Just the opposite happened and the regular season DAC champions prevailed Friday night at the Michigan City regional, 54-35.
The Trojans scored just 10 points in the middle two quarters of the final game of a sectional championship season that ended with a 22-5 record.
“We missed a lot of shots that we’ve been making,” 10th-year Chesterton coach Marc Urban said. “The results were disappointing. There are a lot of things that were disappointing, but it was a fantastic season.”
Chesterton needed multiple comebacks and had just one, and that came early.
By the time the Trojans attempted their first shot, they had already turned the ball over three times and were down 7-0, triggering a timeout from Urban.
Aggressive drives and converted free throws from Tobias Ray and Malachi Ransom enabled Chesterton to take a 12-11 lead heading into the second quarter.
“Nine out of their 11 points were off our turnovers. They only scored two points in the halfcourt,” Urban noted. “So that was a good thing, but the other thing was you can’t let them get nine points off turnovers. But they have really good, quick guards who do a good job of pressuring.”
Missing from at the rim on post feeds, offensive rebounds and drives, the Trojans managed just four second-quarter points and trailed at the half, 26-16.
Excessive turnovers coming on balls ripped from the ballhandler, stolen in the passing lanes, and four first-half moving screen violations whistled against the Trojans, gave them too few scoring opportunities to get away with missing the good ones they had.
Still, the Trojans played strong enough defense for most of the half to hang close until the pivotal final two possessions of the half, one at each end.
“In the second quarter we missed three or four that we just needed to convert,” Urban said. “We miss a layup and they come down and get an and-one at the buzzer. That’s tough.”
Had the layup dropped, the Trojans would have drawn within five points, despite not scoring their first points of the second period with just 2:20 remaining in the half, which cut the deficit to 18-16. Crown Point took control by scoring the game’s next 14 points and Chesterton never came closer than 12 points the rest of the way.
Putting a period on a strong junior season, Ray led Chesterton in scoring for the second game in a row, this time with 15 points. Ransom added nine, followed by Logan Pokorney (six), Jaylon Watts (three) and Bradly Basila (two).
The Trojans did a much better job of defending Dikembe Shaw than in the regular season when he went off for 33 points. On the bench with foul trouble for part of the game, Shaw was limited to three points, and he wasn’t needed as a scorer with the Bulldogs (23-1) scoring so regularly on turnovers converted to layups.
Crown Point senior point guard Kingston Rhodes, out with an injury the first game, more than compensated for Shaw, scoring 19 of his 23 points in the first half.
A dangerous 3-point shooting team throughout the season with threats coming from multiple positions in the starting lineup and the bench, the Trojans made just two 3-point shots, both in the fourth quarter.
In their final two games of the regular season, blowout victories vs. visiting Valparaiso and at Culver Academy, the Trojans moved the ball rapidly enough to lead to 31 3-point field goals.
Crown Point’s suffocating defense didn’t allow that to happen.
“Their ball pressure, it’s hard to get into your stuff when they pressure the ball the way that they do, and when they are able to be physical with you, it makes it even that much more difficult for us to be able to get into our stuff,” Urban said. “That’s why we had Bradly bring it up a little bit to relieve some of that pressure and then try to get back and get into stuff, and then we had looks we just missed.”
Overall, the season was a hit, not a miss.
“They were a fun group to coach. They were a fun group to be with each day,” Urban said. “They had a great personality. To win 22 games against the schedule that we had, win the sectional against who we won against, I’m super proud of what we accomplished this year.”