Marc Urban reflects on nine years on the job at after becoming chesterton's winningest boys basketball coach in school history with No. 174 and counting

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Chesterton ninth-year basketball coach Marc Urban’s first comment when asked about becoming the school’s winningest boys basketball coach revealed how much he enjoys his job.
“It’s crazy how fast it’s gone,” said Urban, who resides in Chesterton with wife, Traci, and their two daughters, Averie and Grace. “Traci takes a picture of us every year out on the court. Averie was a little baby our first year, and now she’s 9. It’s gone quick.”
As Urban’s freshman center Bradly Basila would say, “Le temps passe vite quand on s'amuse.” Time flies when you’re having fun.
Chesterton’s 79-17 win at home over visiting Whiting on Saturday night was Urban’s 174th at Chesterton, one more than Tom Peller, now assistant coach to daughter Kelly Kratz for the Valparaiso girls basketball team that made it to semi-state.
Urban quietly has turned down opportunities to coach at other prominent programs in the state, before and after his 2021-22 team went 29-1 as 4A state runner-up.
“It’s a special place. I work for really good people. I work with really good people, and we have really good kids,” Urban said of Chesterton. “I can go on and on about our feeder coaches, how great they’ve been. We’ve got a good strength coach. … There are a lot of things that go into us winning, but that’s what makes this place fun, and it makes it a special place. You feel a lot of pride saying you are part of Chesterton basketball. That means something.”
That means more, he said, than any number ever could.
Urban takes a 174-55 record and .760 winning percentage into Friday night’s regular season finale, a home game vs. Culver Academy, tipping off at 6:30. The winning percentage ranks sixth among active Indiana high school basketball coaches.
“Obviously, it’s the players, it’s the coaches, it’s my family,” Urban said. “There are a lot of things that play into it, but it’s about trying to find ways to win championships because when you win championships, it bonds you forever. That’s what makes what I do fun. So, it’s a number, but it’s about these guys, it’s about chasing championships.”
Urban will try to win his fourth sectional (2019, 2022, 2023) since he arrived at Chesterton and coached his first season in 2016-17. The Trojans open sectional play against DAC co-champion Portage in a semifinal at Valparaiso on March 7, 6 p.m.
A graduate of Indiana State, where he spent three seasons as a men’s basketball team manager and his senior year as a walk-on player, Urban came to Chesterton from Lake Central. He was a boys basketball assistant coach at LC for six seasons and then became head coach of the girls team there. In four seasons, he went 80-17 (.825) with two sectional championships before retired Chesterton athletic director Garry Nallenweg hired him to replace the retiring Peller.
A look at this season’s statistics for the 14-8 Trojans begs a question: How can a team that averages the same number of rebounds as the opposition (23) and doesn’t have as many steals have a record that’s six games above .500 against such a difficult schedule?
The stat sheet leaves a trail of breadcrumbs toward that answer.
Year in and year out, as the relative strengths and weaknesses of his athletes changes, Urban’s players take better shots than they allow the guys they’re guarding to take.
In basketball, the team that takes better shots usually wins the game.
Shooting statistics speak to the quality of the shooters, but also sometimes every bit as much to the quality of the shots they take.
The best statistic to illustrate both of those factors is effective field goal percentage (eFG%), which weighs made 3-pointers 1.5 times more heavily than made 2-pointers. An eFG% of .500 is about average.