Boys basketball: Joliet West gets physical in toppling Rich Township

NEW LENOX – The Joliet West boys basketball team dropped a 17-point decision to Rich Township in mid-January.

Although all of the same players were involved in that loss, the Joliet West team that hit the floor against that same Rich Township team Friday night in the championship game of the Class 4A Lincoln-Way West Regional was obviously a different animal.

Joliet West played an entirely different brand of basketball than it did in the first time, displaying needed physicality as it collected a 65-57 victory over Rich Township to earn its place in next week’s Rich Township Sectional, where it will face the sectional’s top seed, Homewood-Flossmoor, at 6 p.m. Tuesday. Homewood-Flossmoor beat Stagg 64-56 at the Stagg Regional.

“So like we go and play a prime-time shootout game at T.F. North in January and with their size, It’s alarming. Like they’re they’re built like grown men,” Joliet West coach Jeremy Kreiger said of the first meeting with Rich. ”So I think our young guys walked out and they were like, I don’t know, man. These guys were kind of strong. They’re kind of big.

“So we were preparing for this game by watching film of them against Kankakee and film against Bloom, [similar] opponents. And what I said was all we have to do is bother them as ballhandlers and dare them to shoot and if we can neutralize the paint touches that will allow us to be in the game.”

Joliet West (22-9) mainly managed to neutralize those Rich Township paint touches because of the presence of 6-foot-9 senior Drew King. King finished with 12 points and, more importantly, a whopping 17 rebounds and five blocked shots. If Rich Township tried to get to the basketball, it was going to have to get through King to do it, and frankly it didn’t work enough for the Raptors (23-8).

“Physicality,” King said of what the biggest difference was between the two meetings. “In the first game we just didn’t come in and play as physical as we needed to. But this time we were able to flip it around. Now we just have to keep on moving.”

Joliet West appeared to be on its way to breezing into the sectionals as little-used guard Brilan Townsend gave the Tigers a mammoth lift to start the fourth quarter, burying a pair of 3-pointers and stretching Joliet West’s lead to 13 at 59-46. Contributions from players such as Townsend may have surprised some casual observers of Joliet West, but it came as no surprise to Kreiger and the rest of the Tigers.

“I think it was huge,” Kreiger said of the contributions of many, including Townsend, to the win. “We play all our guys in crunch time, for moments like this. The crowd might be surprised and be like ‘Who is No. 4?’ But we see him every day in moments just like this.”

Rich still managed to push back once more scoring eight consecutive points after the second Townsend 3-pointer to draw within 59-55. Potentially compounding the problem was the fact that the team’s leading scorer Justus McNair fouled out with 3:35 to play in the contest. McNair led Joliet West with 24 points, but more importantly serves as a floor stabilizer for the Tigers. But all the Valparaiso commit could do was watch the rest of the way.

“I was just worried,” McNair admitted. “You know sometimes as human beings, you have emotions. You worry. But our team is good enough to handle it without me.”

And after Rich pulled with 59-55, McNair’s confidence that his teammates could pull it out proved warranted as a big basket from Zion Gross (16 points) and pairs of split free throws from King and Corey Nobles pushed the lead back to eight and gave the Tigers enough breathing room to secure their third regional in the last four postseason contested seasons.

“Honestly, it means just as much as the other two,” Kreiger said. “When I was afforded the opportunity to come back and coach in our community, I never expected one win to me more than the other. They all were going to mean something because what our community means and what it represents in terms of basketball. We’ve always kind of been known as a basketball town.

“So to win it, it just feels good to win beyond that, specifically, it means a lot for me to see it from these guys. Because all they’ve heard all year was doubters. You graduate seven seniors. Jeremy [Fears] leaves for Michigan State. Jeremiah [Fears] leaves for AZ Compass. But the belief they had in each other and the way we wanted to coach, allows moments like this to happen.”