Romeoville uses ‘unselfish’ effort in dominant win over Plainfield East

ROMEOVILLE – It’s no secret at this point that Damion Porter Jr. is a fantastic basketball player. He has a Division I offer from Tarleton State for a reason, after all. It’s not uncommon to see him dominate the stat sheet for Romeoville on any given night.

The way things unfolded for the Spartans on Monday against Plainfield East, however, should have other teams very scared, for it showed that they don’t need Porter to be dominant to dominate a team.

Nine different players scored points for the Spartans on Monday with three reaching double-figures. It was Danny Thompson that led the way with 16 as Romeoville led the Bengals by 20 points most of the way and ultimately won 67-46.

Romeoville (3-3) has played a brutal schedule in the early going of the year, which led to the Spartans dropping their first three contests. They’ve been on a tear lately, however, knocking off Joliet West and Joliet Central entering Monday night before earning their third victory Monday. While Porter finished in double-figures as usual with 10, it was Thompson and Adrian Ivey (14 points) who led the scoring effort.

Jamarri Fears (eight points), Jacob Milock (six points) and Daylyn Porter (seven rebounds) all had big nights for the Spartans as well.

“I thought we played a very unselfish brand of basketball today,” Romeoville coach Marc Howard said. “We shared the ball very well and knocked down some shots early to give us some space. Defensively we were aggressive, got some 50-50 balls and created some turnovers while rebounding well in the first half.”

There wasn’t much fault in the Spartans’ game in the first half as they jumped out to a 7-0 lead, holding the Bengals scoreless for the first three minutes. Romeoville’s first 14 points were scored by six different players as they built up a 14-3 edge.

The Bengals managed a few more buckets before the quarter was over with Kobe Jordan’s layup cutting things to 19-8 with 33 seconds left. However, Thompson’s buzzer beating three made it 22-8 Spartans entering the second.

Ivey kept the offense flowing in the second period with an early three-pointer and the lead only grew from there. Thompson made it a 21-point game midway through the second with a triple that made it 35-14 Spartans. A trey by KJ Miller cut it back to 19 with 3:04 until halftime, but Ivy’s layup with 1:38 to go made it 20 points again. The Spartans led 45-23 entering the break.

Credit the Bengals for refusing to quit. They scored the first two baskets of the third with Howard calling a timeout to get the team reorganized.

“I thought we had to call that timeout just to refocus,” Howard said. “(Plainfield East) came out very aggressive. Credit to them for fighting hard to get back into the game, but after we called the timeout I thought we settled the guys down and got them locked back in.”

Lock in they did as Porter Jr. got going on offense with back-to-back contested baskets to make the edge 50-27. Plainfield East was far more competitive in the period, being outscored just 14-13, but that still left them trailing 59-36 heading into the final period of play.

The fourth quarter saw no change to the flow of the game. A Miller triple cut the deficit to 19 at one point, but another three by Thompson stretched the lead back to 22 and the Spartans remained firmly in front the rest of the way.

“We’re working on putting wins up on the board,” Thompson said. “We started off with a hard schedule so we lost to out of state teams. When we get (back home) we have to make it known that we’re one of the best teams in the state. We came out with a different type of fire because we needed to win and put ourselves on the map.”

Plainfield East (4-5) will play Bolingbrook on Friday on the road while Romeoville will host Minooka the same night.