Boys basketball: Plainfield North avenges loss against Plainfield Central

PLAINFIELD – Plainfield North boys basketball coach Robert Krahulik was disappointed with how his team played during a 58-44 loss at Plainfield Central when the teams first met for a Southwest Prairie Conference game Dec. 14.

But following a valuable appearance in the Pontiac Holiday Tournament, the Tigers coach was hoping that his team would turn in a better effort when they got the chance to host the Wildcats in Friday’s nonconference contest.

North kicked off its first action of its 2019 schedule by scoring the first 10 points and that fast start allowed it to hold the lead throughout as it claimed a 59-53 victory over Central.

“I think going down to Pontiac really helps our team,” Krahulik said. “You play good competition and we played New Trier to an overtime game and played a top-10 team in the state like Danville and beat Joliet West, who’s always tough to play against. You gain a lot of confidence, and hopefully, we built off of that and keep building momentum throughout the remainder of the year.

“This was nice because the last time, we did not play well against them at all. The energy wasn’t there, they beat us to every loose ball and rebound. We battled a lot harder today, though we didn’t play well in the last three minutes to make this a much closer game than it was. But those are great learning experiences for the boys, and now we know what we need to work on to close the games out. I like our team in this conference, and I expect us to be in pretty much every game, but they’ll all be a dogfight that can go either way.”

The Tigers (7-7) received four points apiece from Cooper Bridges (nine points) and Colin O’Rourke (10 points) to help them build their early 10-0 advantage, but the Wildcats (7-8) were able to close the gap to 11-7 by the end of that quarter.

North extended its lead to nine points on four occasions before Carter Thurman (18 points, nine rebounds) gave the hosts a 29-19 cushion with 51 seconds left before the intermission. But Maurice McCullum (20 points) answered with two free throws six seconds later to pull Central to within 29-21 at the break.

Thurman added five more points in the third quarter to help the Tigers to three different 12-point leads, with the last one coming on a rebound bucket by Harrison Pfeifer with one second left in the third quarter by to give the hosts a 39-27 cushion with one quarter left.

“I was coming off of stomach flu so I was pretty tired,” Thurman said. “We’re trying to turn things around and we’re trying to get there. We played pretty well at Pontiac and played good teams like New Trier and Danville tough. We’re trying to start off the New Year by getting on a run, and we’ve got a big game against Oswego next week. It always feels good to beat an in-city rival. We’re feeling good and trying to get confidence going into regionals. We’re excited since we have a lot of tough games left.”

North led by 14 points twice in the fourth quarter, with the last of those coming with 3:47 left after a layup by Bridges. But to the Wildcats’ credit, they kept battling and pulled to within single digits in the late going.

With Tavari Johnson (16 points) scoring 12 of his points in the final quarter and McCullum getting 11 of his in that same span, Central got to within six points before the Tigers closed out their victory. Javari Johnson also added 10 points for the Wildcats.

The Wildcats hoped to follow up on a good trip to the East Aurora Tournament, where they fell, 53-48, to Wheaton Academy for the tournament title. And while it didn’t help to have Brandon Shoemaker unavailable due to illness, Central coach Gregg Bayer wasn’t making any excuses about his team’s play in their rematch with the Tigers.

“There’s no excuses since they played better than us tonight,” Bayer said. “We’re missing one of our key players, who does a lot for us, but this was an opportunity for other people to step up and do things, and in spite all of that, you control what you control. And there’s certain times where we didn’t do the right things. We talked about charges and rebounding, and we had a lot of mental mistakes, and they’ll beat you. Physical mistakes, I can deal with. Mental mistakes, not so much.

“We couldn’t string anything together. We always talk about getting a few scores mixed with some stops by stringing together possessions, but it felt like all night that we could never string anything together. North’s a hard-nosed group, and we knew that they were going to come out hungry and wanting to get us, and they outplayed us today.”