Ben Murphy
Sports Scene
Bay City Western senior Matt Costello can add to his collection of high school basketball awards after being named Mr. Basketball for the state of Michigan earlier this month.
“It feels great, it means a lot of the hard work has paid off,” said Costello, who was also named Sports Scene’s boys’ basketball player of the year. “It was never a goal, but it was in the back of my mind because everyone always talked about it, but I would quickly forget about it because I knew I had some basketball games to play.”
With Costello’s gaudy numbers (25.1 points, 17.9 rebounds, 4 assists, and four blocks per game), and because he led his team to back-to-back district championships and the program’s first ever trip to the final four as a junior last year, it’s hard to make a case for anyone else.
“I felt he had a very good chance of winning based on his individual statistics and the success of our team,” Western head coach Chris Watz said. “I was very happy that he won the award. Having Matt in our program helped bring our program to a very high, competitive level.”
As Costello, who has signed on to play collegiate basketball at Michigan State University, has picked up award after award, his media exposure increased.
“The attention has never really got to me that much, because I know that I have a job to do and that’s to play basketball,” Costello said.
“I think Matt did an outstanding job handling all the media attention,” Watz added. “I do not believe that the media attention distracted him. He remained focused on playing basketball.”
Now, Costello can turn his attention toward playing for the Spartans and head coach Tom Izzo.
“I’m so excited I can barely contain myself,” he said of playing college ball. “I’ll be moving into State end of June, but it starts right now with my workouts at home. To have success at the college level, you have to be completely dedicated to whatever it is. In my case, it happens to be basketball.”
Costello leaves Western as one of the most decorated athletes in the school’s history, holding the career scoring (1518), rebounding (1069), and blocks (280) records, as well setting single-season records for points (564) and rebounding (421) this past year.
“The playoff run we made last year would have to be some of the best memories I will have made from high school,” Costello said when asked to reflect on his high school career. “[It’s] a little bit [hard to not play at Western anymore], but I know I will still be able to play ball at State next year.”