Turning point? Tough practice helps Trojans grow up in a hurry

TOM KEEGAN
Onwardtrojans.com

If last week’s strong home performances on back-to-back nights, a one-point loss to No. 2 Crown Point and a 24-point victory over Hobart, prove to be a turning point for the Chesterton boys basketball team, coaches and players alike won’t struggle to pinpoint when the worm turned.
The Saturday practice on Jan. 18, the day after a 51-46 loss at LaPorte, could be remembered as the day the Trojans grew up.
“Give LaPorte credit. They beat us. We did not shoot it well, but we really didn’t play how we played tonight,” Chesterton coach Marc Urban said in the moments following the loss to Crown Point. “We brought them in Saturday and we had a very difficult practice. It was probably the best practice we had all year, the last 20, 25 minutes of that practice.”
And the momentum from that, Urban said, carried throughout the week.
“They come in Monday, they work Tuesday, they work Wednesday, they work Thursday, and they just keep coming back for more,” Urban said. “And the fact that they made plays that they needed to make, when you have a chance with the ball to go win at the end, now we just have to find a way to kick the door down and win that game. But the belief in this team right now is at an all-time high. I’m telling you, we’re there, we just have to figure out a way to kick the door down because when we do and we get it, I like this team. I like this team, the fact that they haven’t quit, haven’t gone away. We’re 7-7, and I’m as excited as ever. We’re right where we want to be.”
The next night the Trojans improved to 8-7, and if the team plays with the togetherness it did last weekend, Urban will look back on that practice as a watershed moment.
“There’s no doubt about it,” the coach said. “There’s no doubt about it. This is not about me in any way, shape or form, but you stay up, you can’t sleep, you stay up, you’re mad at your kids, you’re mad at your wife, mad at everyone who comes your way, but you come back and you want to get better, and you have a group that is there and they completely work their tails off, and they get through practice and we get good at the end of it. I left that night and after that practice and I was like, ‘Man these guys keep coming back for more,’ and that was really, really encouraging. We have to find a way to win this one because we’re capable of it.”
Urban loads his early schedule with so many heavyweights, it makes it easy to measure progress.
“If you look at it, No. 5 team in the state, St. Joe, we were godawful. We had no business even coming close to winning that game whatsoever,” Urban said of the 77-55 road loss. “We go onto Fishers. We’re playing the No. 1 team in the state on their home floor and we were extremely nervous (74-35 loss). Now we play the No. 2 team in the state and I know we have some familiarity with them, but you go compete and you’ve got a chance. I know it’s just words, but if we continue to come back for more and keep fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, we’re going to break through, and that’s exciting.”
The first positive signs for spectators rooting for the home team came when the Trojans played with so much confidence right from the opening tip. For Urban, the signs came earlier in the day, during the morning shoot-around.
“You’ll never figure it out as a coach,” Urban said. “Sometimes you read your kids right, sometimes you read your kids wrong, and this time I read them right. They were dialed in right from the start.”
Sophomore guard Malachi Ransom looked back on the day after the Trojans sliced the ball into the woods at LaPorte.
“That practice was hard, really hard,” Ransom said of the day after the LaPorte loss. “It was tough. He’s really tough. He’s like that every day, though. That’s the sign of a good coach, though. Every practice is hard for me, for real.”
And that, Ransom said, is why the arrow on his improvement curve has pointed straight upward since joining the program at the beginning of the school year, after his family moved from Chicago to Chesterton.
“Man, it made us better,” Ransom said of the tough practice. “After that game, we realized we weren’t connected, so we all just have to come together and practice hard while getting each other better, becoming more competitive.”
Jaylon Watts agreed that the particularly challenging practice the day after a tough loss made him better individually and the team better as a whole.
“It helped me know I’ve got to talk more and we have to stay connected. And all the little things really do matter in the bigger picture,” Watts said. “That’s what we worked on Saturday and I think it helped us throughout the week. Talking, saying our plays, making sure we all know what we’re in so we can execute.”
No matter the sport, athletes will welcome constructive criticism, no matter how harshly delivered at times, from a coach they are convinced knows how to make them better. The more skilled the coach is at teaching the athletes how to get better, the more they will take from him.
“He coaches us very well, and we’re a very close team, so we all help each other get better, which also helps us with our growth and we keep good attitudes,” Watts said.
Those winning attitudes didn’t allow the Trojans to have a letdown the night after a near-miss against Crown Point when a less talented Hobart squatted visited the gym.
“I felt like we had some good looks early and I felt like we wore them down a little bit,” Urban said after the Hobart win. “And gaps started to open up. And we moved the ball really well. I thought we were really unselfish and created some lanes for each other. That was really important because we have to play that way. What’s going to make us dangerous is if we keep the ball moving and everybody is a threat, everybody can shoot it, everybody can drive it. That’s what will make us hard to guard.”