Sophomore Tommy Kostbade, last big man standing for Chesterton after three tall teammates foul out, scores eight second-half points, helps to defeat Elkhart and road whistles, 57-49

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Christmas. ’Tis the season for home cooking, catching up with relatives, and feeding off the innocent energy of children.
Chesterton’s boys basketball team took a two-day break for Christmas to enjoy all its emotional and spiritual magic, practiced Friday, and headed to Elkhart for a Saturday afternoon game.
A strong case could be made that the Trojans were served more home cooking, and not the kind they enjoyed at the dinner table.
Since Chesterton defeated Elkhart, 57-49, there was no point in making the case.
Still, the Trojans will be hearing whistles in their sleep. Their two starting post players, sophomore Bradly Basila and senior Caden Schneider and the first forward off the bench, junior Gunner Ello, all fouled out, leaving sophomore Tommy Kostbade to hold his own against players armed with more physical maturity and varsity experience and do it batting foul trouble of his own.
Kostbade handled the responsibility well enough to more than double his season scoring output with a career-high eight points in Chesterton’s 57-49 win over the Lions
At one point, the disparity in fouls was Chesterton 24, Elkhart 11. Elkhart helped the Trojans’ cause by making just 14 of 34 free throws, compared to 17 of 23 for the visitors.
Hard-driving Chesterton Jaylon Watts shot 9 of 9 from the line and scored a team-high 14 points. Logan Pokorney added nine points, and Basila and Tobias Ray each scored six.
All eight of Kostbade’s points came from the field and in the second half.
The majority of Kostbade’s experience has come in JV games. Entering the trip to Elkhart, he had totaled five points and one rebound in four varsity games.
Once a nationally ranked age group swimmer, he didn’t take up basketball until seventh grade. Everything about him screams potential, from his long 6-foot-6 frame that has a lot of room for adding pounds, to his explosive leaping ability, to his soft touch from the corner.
But on a day when the other three bigs spent so much time on the bench in foul trouble and ultimately disqualified by five whistles, his future wasn’t a relevant topic. The Trojans needed the future to be now. And Kostbade moved the development clock up for an afternoon, was charged with four fouls but never the disqualifying fifth.
Teammates didn’t hesitate to feed him the ball inside and he consistently banked in shots off the glass, sometimes weathering contact and showing impressive agility in avoiding shot-blockers. He scored two field goals in the third quarter and two more in the fourth.
The rules allow for high school basketball players to total five quarters in back-to-back JV and varsity games. After playing in the first two quarters of the JV game, Kostbade lobbied head varsity coach Marc Urban for more.
“Can I get one more quarter?” Kostbade asked Urban.
Already down a player with sophomore Cooper Huwig sidelined by a concussion, Urban didn’t give the request any consideration.
“No,” Urban told Kostbade. “We’re going to need you today.”
Little did the coach know how much he would need the athletic forward.
“Luckily we cut him off,” Urban said.
Junior Ethan Virgil also gave the Trojans a boost off the bench after playing in the JV game.
“It was kind of different for me because I got thrown into the fire,” Kostbade said after the game. “I just had to adjust kind of quickly and figure it out on my own how to stay calm. I get nervous a lot before games, so I think it was big for me to just play.”
And play well.
The way the game started it didn’t appear as if Elkhart would score enough points for the visitors to need help from their bench to survive.
The Lions (4-3) managed just three field goals in a first half that ended with Chesterton leading 24-11.
Then when the game resumed after intermission, North Side Gymnasium, a building born in 1954, began to echo with whistles and never stopped. A lead that had grown as big as 15 points late in the third quarter gradually dwindled to five points with a minute remaining.
The hosts’ two best players, 6-4 Samarcus Gipson (17 of 21 points in the second half) and 6-4 Kaleb Anderson-Mitchell (all 17 points in the second half) adjusted well to the whistle, put their heads down and drove to the basket, aided in part by what was left of the Trojans’ whistle-weary defense.
The fouls came in bunches. Less than a minute came off the clock in the middle of the third period in the time it took Basila, Ello and Schneider to be tagged with their fourth fouls. Within a second of each other, Schneider and Ello fouled out, 10 and nine seconds into the fourth quarter. Basila didn’t foul out until the final minute at a time when it started to seem as though overtime had become a possibility.
After the Chesterton lead had been pared to five for the second time, Pokorney sealed the victory at the line in the final seconds. He made his first free throw, missed the second, and then hustled to the hoop to rebound his own miss and put it back in for the game’s final points.
“I’m proud of them for grinding that one out,” Chesterton coach Marc Urban said. “I was really pleased with how much grit that we played with when we were fighting uphill on a lot of stuff.”
Once the game drew close, buckets that seemed big at the time took on even greater importance looking back, such as a pair of buckets made through contact in a third quarter that ended with Chesterton on top 42-29.
Not the least of those was Ray’s inexorable drive through the lane. Bumped at every level, he kept moving forward, then launched into the air, where his arms continued to take hits, none hard enough to keep him from stretching his right arm as wide as it would go, outside the reach of the final defender, and then throwing it softly off the glass for two points. Clearly, the flu bug that kept him out of the loss to Bloomington North was behind him. Just as clearly, he was not going to be denied that bucket.
Later in the period, Ray started a similar drive into the combat zone that was the lane and this time stayed on his feet and threw a hard bounce pass to Watts, who finished the play through contact and turned it into three points by making the free throw. Ray’s outburst of emotion, delivered with a sneer and a hard shove into Watts’ chest brought a huge grin to Watts’ face. A welcome whistle might have improved the mood too.
The victory did more for the Trojans (6-1) than improve their record.
“I think it will help me with my confidence just being able to score and be big down low,” Kostbade said. “This game is going to help me with that and help me to continue to get better.”
The lack of hesitation to feed Kostbade the ball proved how much confidence teammates have in the rising prospect.
“I have to give them lots of props,” he said. “They always look for me and try to lift me up and I really appreciate them for that.”
He also expressed gratitude for the minutes he gets in JV games playing for Coach Drew Boetel.
“It’s been really good for building my confidence, helping me score and just be myself and not overthink when I need to go make a play,” Kostbade said.
He was with the Trojans when they played in the prestigious Charlie Hughes tournament over the summer and he’ll be with them this week when a similar level of elite competition is on the schedule at the Fishers Holiday Classic, Friday and Saturday (Jan. 2-3).
“There were times where I got in, but I didn’t play as much,” Kostbade said of his Charlie Hughes experience. “I feel like playing these JV games has helped me to take a bigger leap than I did in the summer.”
The Trojans open the Fishers tournament Friday morning vs. Evansville North. The winner of that game plays Saturday morning, likely vs. Fishers, the No. 1 team in the state, and the loser plays its second game Friday night, likely vs. Fort Wayne Wayne.