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JOLIET — Joliet West coach Jeremy Kreiger is a strong advocate of playing the best possible schedule he can manage to piece together.
And on Saturday that philosophy brought one of the state’s best players, Warren’s Jaxson Davis, to Joliet for a nonconference showdown.
Davis was as a good as advertised, pouring in 38 points, but the sum of Joliet West’s parts was even better as the Tigers collected an impressive 80-68 victory.
The win improved Joliet West to 12-5 on the season and seemingly righted the ship for the Tigers, who had dropped three of their last four games heading into the contest.
“I feel like our team had something to prove,” Joliet West’s Zion Gross said. “We just started playing as a collective group and were playing for one another. We understand that helps our chemistry as that helps as long as we stay consistent.”
Gross was about as consistent as it comes for the Tigers. He finished with a team-high 26 points, including 10 in a pivotal third quarter where West seized control of the game.
Joliet West led 43-39 after a furious, fast-paced first half. But the Tigers surged quickly after the break with Gross, Nasir Sears (14 points) and Ethan Hillsman (15 points) leading the surge that at one point pushed the Joliet West lead to as large as 14.
Not surprisingly, Davis wouldn’t let Warren get ran away from. He pumped in 11 third quarter points and Warren did manage to shave the Joliet West lead down to seven points at 63-56 entering the fourth.
Davis pulled Warren back to within six early in the fourth, but a flurry of scoring from Hillsman once again pushed the lead back to double digits and Warren wasn’t able to get the lead back under 10 points the rest of the way.
“It’s been a maturation process for him,” Kreiger said of Hillsman. “We know he’s not going to be a center at the next level and I’d be doing him a disservice to try to win games to make him play the five because he’s tall. But when you have a guy with his athleticism and how academically astute he is, we’re just trying to teach him how to play basketball for the next level with the tools that he has.”
It was a sum of its parts type of night for Joliet West, which got vital contributions from deep on its bench. Some of that didn’t show up on the stat sheet, particularly in how the Tigers elected to defend Davis.
One player wasn’t assigned the brunt of that workload but instead several players, including Aamir Shannon, Sears, Brockton Goehrke and Mickeis Johnson drawing the assignment for shorter stints.
“That’s all we could do,” Kreiger said on his thoughts about how to try to rein in the talented Davis. “When you play great players that are so multi-faced like Jaxson that can score at all three levels, sometimes you have to let him get his and let nobody else get theirs and that’s pretty much what we were able to do.”
It looked at times as if the philosophy might not be enough. Davis needed just four seconds to score his first points of the game and finished the first quarter with 14 points. He finished the first half with 20 points and had a strong third quarter, but the army of Joliet West defenders seemed to wear on him late in the game as he connected on just one field goal in the fourth quarter.
Warren was without one of its starters in the loss, Jack Wolf, and the Blue Devils (12-4) struggled to get much help for Davis. Zach Ausburn was the only other Warren player in double digits as he finished with 11 points.