Westview's Austin Schlabach tops Northeast Indiana boys basketball ladder

Austin Schlabach did more than fill up a stat sheet for Westview. He was the guard who helped push the Warriors into one of the most dominant runs Northeast Indiana has seen, then carried that momentum all the way to the Class 2A state championship game and, finally, to the top of Outside the Huddle’s postseason ladder.

The case for Schlabach starts with the numbers. He scored 545 points in 2025-26, finished his third varsity season with 1,098 career points and averaged 19.9 points, 5.7 assists and 5.4 rebounds per game. Those figures explain why he was named an Indiana Junior All-Star on April 1 as one of 18 juniors statewide, but they only tell part of the story. Westview did not simply have a scorer. It had the player who set the tone every night, bent defenses with his playmaking and kept a title-level team moving through pressure.

That impact showed most clearly in March. Westview finished 27-2, took a 26-game winning streak into the Class 2A state final and made its first state finals appearance since 2014. The Warriors were chasing their first boys basketball state title since 2000, when they won back-to-back championships in 1999 and 2000. Instead, the run ended at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis with a 57-56 loss to Parke Heritage on March 28, a finish that left Westview one play short of a long-awaited crown.

The final itself underscored how close Schlabach and Westview came. The Indiana High School Athletic Association said the game featured a near-record 18 combined made 3-pointers, and Parke Heritage’s Isaac Pickel scored the go-ahead layup with 8.4 seconds left before defending Schlabach’s final shot. That sequence turned Schlabach’s season into something more than a breakout year. It made him the face of a Westview team that forced the entire state to take notice.

His rise also carries a story few players in Indiana can match. The Indianapolis Star reported that Schlabach was raised in an Amish family and initially did not know whether he would attend high school. That background makes his climb from Shipshewana to one of the state’s most recognized junior guards even more striking. At Westview, Schlabach was not just the best player in Northeast Indiana. He was the player who helped put the Warriors back into the statewide conversation and positioned them as one of next season’s most compelling return teams.