Jaylon Watts catches fire late, scores 9 of game-high 15 points in fourth quarter, as Chesterton closes out regular season at home with gritty 52-40 win over Culver

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Chesterton showed pretty much everything a high school basketball coach wants to see out of his basketball team in the final game before the postseason Friday at home: wicked tough defense, players up and down the roster adhering to their roles, a bonded, connected group of teenagers playing for each other.
But if the Trojans were going to turn all that into a victory and not a lost lead, somebody was going to have to pull them out of their second-half scoring slowdown.
That someone was Jaylon Watts, who scored 9 of his 15 game-high points in the fourth quarter to lead the Trojans past visiting Culver Academy, 52-40.
In the final period, when the Trojans scored 23 points compared to six points in the third, Watts made a pair of 3-pointers and took an old-fashioned path to a 3-point play, making an acrobatic shot at the rim and the ensuing free throw.
Goodbye confidence crisis for the junior guard, hello postseason. Good timing.
Watts missed time with a concussion after taking a hard fall on his head in the Hanover Central game. The missed practice time left him feeling as though he had to play catch-up, and his shot suffered.
“Oh my gosh, it felt great,” Watts said after the game. “I struggled with confidence, but my teammates help me every single day. I miss a shot, they’re right they’re all there to pick me up. I can’t do anything but thank them.”
Until freshman Bradly Basila’s recent emergence, Watts was the team’s best rebounder. He pushes the ball up hard in transition, takes it to the rim hard and cares about playing good defense. When his shot is on, that’s the final piece in making him a complete player who keeps opponents on their heels.
“He’s put in some extra work and stuck with it,” Trojans coach Marc Urban said. “You just have to get recalibrated sometimes, find some confidence and let it go.”
That’s what Watts did, and he had plenty of company in
The Trojans’ relentless help defense enabled them to take leads of 7-2 at the end of the first quarter and 23-9 at the half.
The bench played superbly and was the key to expanding the lead in the second quarter.
Senior guard Anthony Gonzalez, playing the final home game of his career, entered with the 3-and-D spark that has made him a fan favorite this year. Sophomore point guard Malachi Ransom, his aggressive-yet-under-control juggling act that steadily has grown better as the year has progressed, got to the lane consistently. He set up teammates Gonzalez and Rob Czarniecki with open 3-point shots from the left corner and they turned Ransom’s passes to the left corner into assists for him.
Gonzalez brought more of the same in the third period, again diving to the floor to snag a steal from an opponent in mid-dribble. The strong defense from the Trojans continued, but with less trapping than in the first half and with Andrew Oliver-Overmyer, a slender, slippery guard heating up with seven of his team-high 12 points.
The strong defense was needed because the Trojans only put six points on the board in the third quarter.
“They’re very good defensively. They’re very sound defensively,” Watts said. “They did very good things. When we were driving, they had guys helping, so it was hard to get to the rim. That really made it hard.”
The fact that Culver made it difficult to score made the Eagles an ideal opponent to face heading into the postseason
“I felt we probably tried to do things too early in the possession. They’re sound. They’re in the right spots and they clog things up in the right way where you’re not going to get it right away,” was Urban’s take on the barren third quarter. “I thought this game might be in the 30s. You have to keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. We forced it too much in there and they hit some good shots, and ran some good stuff and we got beat on some things, but overall, I was pleased with our defensive effort.”
Basila, still in too much of a hurry at times and too determined to shoot when nothing is there, continued to progress and showed excellent ballhandling skills and a better feel for where to be and when to be there. He scored nine points, cleaned up on the boards, disrupted ballhandlers and passers and hung in there against extremely physical defense played on him. Logan Pokorney scored 11 points and Ransom had seven.
The Trojans (15-8) take a seven-game winning streak into their sectional opener, vs. Portage at Valparaiso next Friday.
“It’s taken time but to these guys’ credit they just keep coming back for more and trying to get better. They’ve stuck with it and when you stick with things and do it the right way you put yourself in a position to have a chance,” Urban said. “It was a good win for us. They’re very sound in what they do on both ends of the floor. I thought we had to be sound on both ends. I thought we had a good start. The third quarter we had a little dip. It was good to see them get back and play through that dip and find a way to finish it out.”