Michael Crotty had enough. It was 8:02 a.m., and his Middlesex Magic 16U team’s game had barely started on a Sunday morning in Albany, N.Y., in April 2024. He called a timeout, then bolted on to the court to have a word with Quinn Costello.
Crotty later joked that he’d need a step stool to get eye to eye with the 6-foot-10 Costello, but standing on his tippy toes, he delivered a powerful message.
“I asked him, ‘When are you going to arrive? Like today in this building to play a game, and in general?’” Crotty recalled. “‘You’re out there, and you’re just not making an impact.’”
It was made loud and clear to everyone in the building, which included Costello’s grandfather in the stands. As they left the gym that day, Crotty crossed paths with him. He knew he had chewed his grandson out in front of him, and reassured him that he loved Costello.
“He goes, ‘I know you do, and everything you’re doing is great,’” Crotty said. “We’re so thankful.”
Costello, ultimately, did arrive – and in a big way. He was arguably the biggest stock-riser in the country this spring and summer, going from unranked to a universally recognized Top 50 recruit, and going from having no high-major offers to 25 of them, and ultimately a Michigan commit.
But it was never perfect or easy. A prospect who always had great potential, the road to Costello’s dream required perseverance, hard conversations and difficult challenges.
“We never stopped believing Quinn could be something great,” Crotty said.
And he needed to believe it himself.
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A ‘surreal’ moment
A native of Medford, Mass., Costello was always encouraged to play basketball because of his size. He played in the St. Raphael Parish recreation league and played with the Fidelity House program. He was always the best player in his friend group throughout middle school, but he didn’t start taking it seriously until he was a freshman at BC High.
Costello said his parents still joke about the tryouts that year. His mom told him that even if he had made the freshman B team, they’d be proud of him. But longtime coach Bill Loughnane had an eye on the then 6-foot-4 Costello, who called him a gym rat. Costello got home from the first day of tryouts and told his parents he had been moved up to the JV tryouts. The next day, he got moved up to the varsity tryouts.
“They were kind of blown away,” Costello said.
Costello made varsity as a freshman but mostly rode the bench for a legendary BC High team that went 25-0 and won the state championship. He scored a total of 17 points and started once because most of the team missed the game with COVID-19. The next season, he took on a bigger role after 10 seniors graduated, and he helped the Eagles make the Sweet 16.
But Costello was ready to take his commitment to the next level as he set a goal to play college basketball. That’s when Jackson Johnson recruited him to Newman, where he could train and play year-round. The way he looked at basketball completely changed.
Costello remembers the moment when his outlook shifted. During his first year at Newman, there was an open gym at their home at the Track at New Balance, and a coach from Holy Cross approached him.
“(He) came over to me and he said, ‘You got any scholarships?’” Costello recalled. “I was like, ‘No.’ And he was like, ‘How would you like to have your first one?’ And I didn’t really know because he didn’t say the words, ‘We’re going to offer you a scholarship.’”
A confused Costello checked with Johnson, and he realized he had to be offered through his coach because they hadn’t reached the June 15 contact period for sophomores yet. But Costello was left stunned.
“I had no idea what happened,” he said. “That moment was super surreal, that I’m a Division 1 basketball player.”
Mental blocks
Then the hard part started.
From Day 1 at Newman, Costello was consistently challenged by Johnson and John Carroll, the longtime coach and advisor. It was the same from Crotty with the Magic. But he didn’t always respond well to it.
After playing on Newman’s second team as a sophomore, Costello was pushed to the edge that summer by Crotty and the Magic. It carried into last fall and winter, when he was elevated to Newman’s top team and there were high demands and expectations. He began the season as a starter, but like that 16U season with the Magic, he would often not finish games.
Costello estimated that he was a main contributor for only about 15-20 percent of Newman’s games as they ultimately won a Class AAA championship. He admitted it was difficult to handle the hard coaching he was getting, and it translated to the court. He said his head was spinning.
“I was super in my head mentally,” Costello said. “I was letting things that were said to me get to me, and I was pretty weak mentally, so I was all wrapped up. I was there physically, but I was so wrapped up with everything mentally, I wasn’t performing as well as I could be.”
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Costello said there were a few times Johnson and Carroll went at him and he didn’t respond; he would just try to get through that practice or game instead of attacking the work. Johnson remembers a handful of times when Costello had the ball driving to the basket with another big man waiting to meet him at the rim.
“It was like, ‘Are you going to dunk it or not?’” Johnson said. “He would show a glimpse and punch it on somebody and we’d be like, see, I know it’s in there. But then he wasn’t doing it every time. We were like, this has to be who you are.”
Johnson, obviously, saw the potential. Despite the inconsistent performances, the coach saw enough incremental pieces of growth to suggest Costello was ready for an explosion.
“We were just ready for a big pop,” Johnson said. “Because we thought he had put in the inputs for a long enough time where it was time for him to decide to be great, not just solid. John and myself were trying to demand that out of him. When he was younger, it was encouraging and this is what you could be. Now it’s like, no, this isn’t in the future anymore, this is now. You’re capable of this now.”
A life-changing summer
The pop came quickly that spring. After the Class AAA championship in March, an honest postseason conversation between Costello and the coaching staff yielded immediate results. The day after the meeting, Johnson noticed a stark difference in how Costello was approaching his workouts.
Soon after, Costello and his family met with Crotty before the new Magic season. They talked about goals, and Costello asked Crotty honestly what he thought he could become. Crotty told him he could be anything, to remember all the battles of adversity and tough moments he’s overcome, and reaffirmed to him his belief that he was the best shooter and player in the gym.
A switch seemed to flip for Costello.
As the page turned to a new season, Costello viewed it as a fresh start. After overthinking and overcomplicating things for so long, he decided to simplify his approach. Instead of focusing on scoring, he discovered that rebounding and crashing the boards got him going. Crotty would run plays through Costello, and the points came. He played freely, instilled with renewed confidence.
“My mindset just turned into, ‘I’m the best guy out here, nobody can mess with me here,’” Costello said. “I started going out there to kill everyone, like I was the best guy. Every shot that I shot was going straight through the net.”
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In the second session of Under Armour Association circuit play in Cincinnati, Costello showed how far he came. Crotty remembers a game against Texas Impact – one of the best teams on the circuit – who tried a box and one defense against Magic point guard Ryan Moesch. That left Costello for five wide-open 3-pointers. The crazy part? He didn’t make any of them.
But Costello showed his growth by not sulking after any of the misses. He kept firing away with the same confidence, and he didn’t let the misses affect his play. He found other ways to impact the game; he got a tip dunk, he drove and scored and he hit a 3. The Magic won by 10, and college coaches were raving about Costello.
“They were like, ‘I loved his reaction to missing open shots,’” Crotty said. “It didn’t faze him. He kept his confidence, he found other ways to impact the game. Maybe a year before, he might not have been able to meet that with the same amount of mental toughness and confidence and belief in himself, and this year, he did. He battled through that.”
Costello stacked consistent performances where you could expect him to hit a handful of 3-pointers, rebound well, defend and impact every game. And naturally, college coaches appropriately took notice of the 6-foot-10 forward who can shoot, put the ball on the floor and play with physicality. Notre Dame was the first high-major school to offer him in late May, and two dozen more followed. Costello earned a late invite to the Pangos All-American Top 100 camp in June, excelled there, and kept soaring up national rankings.
“It was bedlam,” Crotty said.
Johnson, who followed Costello around the country for his big spring and summer, watched with great pride.
“It was always in there,” Johnson said. “He had to know it was in there and decide that’s who he wanted to become.”
Costello ultimately chose Michigan in September, trusting coach Dusty May’s vision and style of play. He said the wild spring and summer was never overwhelming; it was what he had dedicated his life to.
“It was a super fulfilling feeling,” Costello said. “Just knowing all the work I put in over the years, although it didn’t seem like it was going to pay off, it finally did. That was a super good feeling.”
Before he heads to Ann Arbor next year, Costello has more work to do. He knows the Big Ten is one of most physical conferences in the country, so he’s been in touch with Michigan’s nutritionist, strength coach and trainers about how to be ready. But at Newman, he’ll have a new challenge to conquer. Johnson knows Costello will have a target on his back this season, and he’s ready to see him take another step as one of the leaders of the Class AAA favorites.
“I’m excited to challenge him again, like we did last year,” Johnson said. “He’s a different player now, he’s just on to a different mountain or hill. Push him to respond differently and I’m excited to see that, because when he overcomes that, then he can handle whatever.”
Whatever happens next, Costello is proud of himself for how far he’s come.
“I never gave up,” Costello said. “I failed and failed so many times last year. I had so many opportunities to give up. It maybe wasn’t an instant reaction, I think just fighting through it. I was super down on myself, but I never quit or gave up.”
