Boys basketball: Joliet West starting to find its way, earns gritty win over Pontiac in tournament opener

PONTIAC – The Joliet West boys basketball team doesn’t exactly have the name recognition that it has had in years past at the Pontiac Holiday Tournament.

What it still has, however, is a significant amount of will to make a solid accounting for itself at one of the state’s premier holiday tournaments.

And while it wasn’t always perfect, the Tigers did what they set out to do and stayed on the right side of the bracket with a gritty 55-47 victory over the host school Thursday night.

Joliet West (9-4) moves into the quarterfinal round, where it will face either No. 4 tournament seed New Trier or Bloomington on Friday night at approximately 7:30 p.m.

“I think throughout the course of the year, it’s going to be a feeling-out phase when you come back off a very successful team that was led by what you would call alphas,” Joliet West coach Jeremy Kreiger said. “And now Justus [McNair] and Drew [King] are taking the reins of that, and they’re learning with each game, how it’s their team, it’s their floor, and it’s their game.”

McNair flexed that leadership muscle early for the Tigers. He put up 10 of Joliet West’s first-quarter points as the Tigers took a 17-15 lead into the second quarter.

“I’ve been working on my leadership, trying to step up into that role,” McNair, a Valparaiso recruit, said. “This is my senior year, my final year, and I’m trying to lead the guys, especially the younger players, that are coming up.”

The emphasis turned to defense in the second quarter, and renewed efforts led to Pontiac netting only five points in the quarter. Although Joliet West was unable to clearly break free from a gritty Pontiac team, the Tigers gained some much-needed breathing room.

“We’ve been very consistent with [our defensive intensity], but it’s about the ebbs and flows. But the beauty of what we do is that we want to wear people down over the course of four quarters,” Kreiger said. “Ultimately our goal is just to be more consistent over the course of a game doing all the little things well not just guarding.”

Pontiac (6-7) closed to within three points to start the second half, but the Tigers got an offensive spark from all over their roster. McNair, who finished with a game-high 18 points, and Zion Gross (11 points) pushed the lead to above double digits, and the Tigers never were threatened the rest of the way.

“I’m embracing the responsibility of that,” McNair said. “The coaches have been pushing me to be a lead guard, because in college I’m going to have to be a point guard. You have to rise to the occasion. My mom always told me faith over fear. So rising to the occasion is big.”

Joliet West grew its lead to as large as 16 points before allowing Pontiac to tighten the score by scoring nine of the game’s last 10 points. But Kreiger is well away his team won’t have the luxury of stepping off the accelerator if it wants to continue moving in the right direction on the bracket.

“It may be tough to match up against a Curie or a New Trier or a Benet or a Simeon. But at the end of the day, if we come out confidently, we just want to guard them. It changes the complexion of the game, whereas other teams think we have to go outscore them. We’ve never really been a team that wants out score people we want to guard and defend,” Kreiger said. “So coming back here, while we may be lower on the totem pole in terms of known players, or prospective high major players, we got a lot of quality basketball players in there.

“And we believe now that we’re on the right side of the bracket, that’s Step 1, make it to the major side. And now with each step, try to catch up to those teams that traditionally have been really good in this tournament.”