Malachi Ransom, Rob Czarniecki and Anthony Gonzalez bringing it off the bench for Chesterton basketball

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojns.com

The Chesterton boys basketball team’s revolving door of a player rotation spun faster than in most years through much of the season.
Nine different players started at least two games. Fourteen different players scored seven points or more. A current starter missed the first 15 games.
The spinning has stopped and the starting lineup and bench roles are settled.
Sophomore Tobias Ray is the starting point guard, flanked by junior wings Logan Pokorney and Jaylon Watts. That’s how it has been all season. Two 6-foot-7 players with skill sets that have little in common, junior Caden Schneider and freshman Bradly Basila, round out the starting five.
Those five will take the floor in the Valparaiso sectional for a semifinal game vs. Portage, the DAC co-champion, Friday at 6 p.m. Hobart will face Merrillville in the semifinal that follows the Chesterton game. Merrillville played its way into that game by defeating Valparaiso, 45-42, Tuesday night.
Malachi Ransom, a 5-10 sophomore guard, 6-2 junior forward Rob Czarniecki and 3-and-D sparkplug Anthony Gonzalez, a 5-11 senior guard, round out the rotation.
“We could start seven guys, but it doesn’t really matter,” ninth-year Chesterton coach Marc Urban said, alluding to Ransom and Czarniecki getting starters’ minutes. “They’ve had really good attitudes about it, and it doesn’t matter.”
Gonzalez has the most specific role of any of the three reserves. He energizes the team and the crowd with scrappy defense, pestering ballhandlers into turnovers. He also can rev up a crowd by hitting a 3, or even a few 3s.
“If you’ve been following us for the past 10 games, you know what Anthony’s going to do when he comes in the game,” Urban said. “You think of any good team that you’ve watched, you know what that guy’s going to do when he comes in if you watch throughout the year. We’re kind of figuring out our roles.”
Urban spoke to the roles of the two reserves who play starters’ minutes.
“Rob just in general is a smart, competitive kid who understands how to impact the game in non-scoring fashions sometimes, even though if he hit three 3s I wouldn’t be shocked,” Urban said. “But if he had zero points and five rebounds and two steals and you felt him, then that wouldn’t shock me either. Rob’s been great. He brings that toughness that we need, he’s able to guard and he makes those plays when we need to make plays, and he’s obviously a big piece to what we’re doing.”
Ransom played for the freshman team at Chicago Simeon a year ago and wasn’t with Chesterton in the summer. He said he didn’t play in a structured system until coming here. He has gotten the hang of it in impressive fashion.
“Malachi comes in, he has the ability to play point guard, he has the ability to defend, and he has the ability to be a playmaker as well,” Urban said.
Ransom was whistled for a taunting technical in the season opener vs. Elkhart, just one sign of needing to adapt. He steadily brought his game under control and puts a lot of pressure on opponents at both ends of the floor and in transition.
“Night and day, night and day,” Urban said of then and now. “And you knew it was going to be that way a little bit because it doesn’t just happen. You have to fail. You have to go through stuff. It’s got to get ugly, but if you stick with it, eventually it’s going to click.”
Chesterton’s bench has clicked during the seven-game winning streak that the Trojans carry into Friday’s third game of the season vs. Portage, the rubber match.
“When Malachi goes in, he can go in for five guys,” Urban said. “Rob can go in for a few guys. I think that’s helped us, too. We’ve finally figured out our rotation.”
An eight-man rotation is ideal, but if Urban has to go deeper down his bench he will do it without hesitation.
“That’s the difficult part for me,” Urban said. “Peyton (Tarnowski) is fully capable of playing with us. Cooper Huwig is perfectly capable of playing with us. Robert Williams is fully capable of playing with us. But it’s hard in a 32-minute game to go that deep at this point in the year. In the same breath, they bring value in practice for what they’re doing, and they’ve stayed ready where I know that we can insert them at any point, and I would be confident in playing them.”
Playing scrappy defense, driving hard to the hoop and hitting 3-pointers, junior guard Peyton Tarnowski contributed to multiple close wins. Robert Williams, a 6-7 senior, always looks so fundamentally sound in his limited playing time. He played the final 27.5 seconds in Friday’s victory over Culver Academy, time enough to hustle his way to an offensive rebound on a free throw and then step in with defensive help in a way that rattled the player who otherwise would have put up a shot throwing the ball away.
“It’s just the way the game is played at this time in the year, the rotation gets shortened up,” Urban said. “But their attitude allows us to have a chance to win as well.”