Everything about Trojans freshman Cooper Huwig, jv basketball shooting star and varsity role player, belies his birth certificate

Tom Keegan
onwardtrojans.com

​Unless conscious of not letting it happen at a young age, it seems left-handed basketball players can favor their dominant hand even more than right-handed athletes.
Since defenders are more accustomed to guarding right-handed players, a young defender’s instincts can contribute to him favoring the wrong side guarding a lefty. The lefty exploits that, sees no reason to stop exploiting it, and falls behind in developing his weak hand.
Chesterton freshman Cooper Huwig, whose soft left-handed 3-point jumper is the centerpiece of a sophisticated game, is so aware of not becoming too one-handed a basketball player that he even takes steps away from the basketball court with that in mind.
“When I’m at home, instead of doing stuff with my left hand, I’ll do it all with my right,” Huwig said. “I’ll eat with my right hand. I’ll brush my teeth with my right.”
Like many a son of a basketball coach, Huwig is more aware of all things on the court than most his age. His father, Josh Huwig, is the principal at Yost Elementary. He used to coach at Grimmer Middle School in the Lake Central School District and then coached freshman basketball at Lake Central before moving the family to take the job as assistant principal at Chesterton High School when Cooper was in kindergarten. He still coaches his younger sons.
Not a lot of time watching Huwig play basketball is needed to notice he has a feel for the game beyond his years. He seems mentally a step or two ahead of most of his peers. In the limited varsity minutes he has played this season, Huwig hasn’t looked out of place, stressed out, or in a hurry, common traits for players facing varsity competition for the first time.
“I enjoy playing with them,” Huwig said of the varsity.
If not for Chesterton having such a deep rotation of perimeter players, including sophomores Malachi Ransom and Tobias Ray, juniors Logan Pokorney, Peyton Tarnowski and Jaylon Watts, and senior Anthony Gonzalez, Huwig might have been a full-time varsity player as a freshman.
But in the long run, that might not have been the best thing for his development. Later in his career, when he becomes one of the team’s primary scorers, maybe the leading scorer, he already will have been there, done that.
“I think it’s been good for me,” Huwig said of playing for Coach Drew Boetel on the JV. “We’ll have a good group (on varsity) next year and I’ll have to do my role, and then the following years I’ll take on a bigger role every year, but this development year is really good for me.”
Huwig played for the varsity in Chesterton’s victory at Hammond Central and buried a pair of 3-pointers, the second one beating the third-quarter buzzer. If Trojans coach Marc Urban sees a situation during a game that he thinks Huwig could best address in the remaining two games of the regular season and during sectional play, he won’t hesitate to use him.
“It’s kind of what we need at the time in a way, but the one thing with Coop is his ability to shoot it,” Urban said.
Even good shooters tend to rush it when new to a higher level of competition. See: college basketball and NBA players’ shooting stats as freshmen and rookies, as compared to a few years later. Not Huwig.
He is shooting 3-pointers at a .409 clip in varsity games, having made 9 of 22.
Huwig is 6-foot-2 and growing, so depending on how tall he becomes, he could be a high school version of what his favorite NBA player, Celtics sharp shooter Jayson Tatum is against the best competition in the world. Tatum is a lefty, of course.
Part of a talented freshman class, Huwig’s basketball savvy will come in handy in the years to come. Big men Tommy Kostbade, an elite swimmer until switching to basketball in seventh grade, and Bradly Basila, new to so many aspects of basketball, including putting the right touch on shots on a glass backboard, have tremendous potential and so much to learn. Huwig’s steady hand and knowledge of the finer points of the game should benefit both of his classmates.
“Coop’s a confident kid who brings some swagger to us,” Urban said. “He obviously can shoot. He’s had a really, really good JV year. That’s what Tyler Parrish did when he was a freshman. He was the guy and had to score and produce and I think that helped him his next three years.”