Boys basketball: Plainfield East speeds way to win over Joliet Central

PLAINFIELD – The shot clock hasn’t fully arrived in Illinois high school basketball, but sometimes the Plainfield East boys basketball team plays as if it is working with its own internal clock.

Sometimes the clock works well as the Bengals’ up-tempo attack tries to push the issue at every opportunity, and other times the clock doesn’t function quite as smoothly.

But the good outweighed the bad Tuesday night as the Bengals collected a 68-60 Southwest Prairie Conference victory over visiting Joliet Central.

“We’re a type of team that right now is going through some ebbs and flows of a game,” Plainfield East coach Kanwer Sarkaria said. “And we’re trying to break out of that habit. It’s a game that’s played in two halves, and you almost have to break it down quarter by quarter.”

Plainfield East (4-1, 1-0 Southwest Prairie) looked spectacular at the beginning of the game, breaking out to a 23-14 lead after one quarter and getting points from seven players.

But the Bengals appeared to get complacent after their good first quarter of work and went almost six minutes without a point in the second quarter. Joliet Central (2-3, 0-1) managed to get firmly back into the game and trailed 33-29 at the break.

An 8-4 run at the start at the second half allowed Joliet Central to knot the game at 37-all with 5:08 to play in the third quarter. But almost as quickly as Plainfield East had let its healthy lead slip away, it rebuilt it and extended it with a 14-0 run that spanned the next four minutes of the third quarter.

Ehi Ogbomo, who led all scorers with 21 points, led the surge from Plainfield East, scoring seven points during the run as well as sparking others offensive efforts by collecting Steelmen turnovers.

“We’re trying to push the ball up the floor get easy layups, I know if I talk and get everyone engaged, we’ll be good.” Ogbomo said. “We were rushing it a little bit, and when that happens, we have to remain calm.”

Joliet Central had one more run in it and whittled the lead down one more time to 56-48 early in the fourth quarter. Plainfield East wouldn’t let Joliet Central get any closer, but it got a bit touchy down the stretch.

“We’re still a very young team. We only have three seniors that played heavy minutes last year, so we’re still learning,” Sarkaria said. “We still have a lot of guys that are still learning the varsity game and the pace and the consistency that you need to close out a lot of games.”

One of those seniors, Andrew Soensken, scored consecutive baskets in the fourth quarter to help the Bengals get a little bit of breathing room. He finished with 15 points.

And the collective ultimately won out for Plainfield East. Ogbomo and Soensken were the only Plainfield East players to finish in double-digit scoring, but six Plainfield East players scored at least seven points, and 10 players scored overall.

“Because of the youth, it behooves us early on, especially with the grind and the marathon the high school basketball season is, it’s good to see what guys can do in certain spots,” Sakaria said. “Ideally we’ll get that down, but we’re giving these guys experience and opportunities early on because we don’t want people to go in there shell-shocked the first time they are in a game.”

Joliet Central got a strong performance from Jayden Turner, who led the Steelmen with 17 points off the bench. Jaylin Murphy contributed eight points and a game-high 13 rebounds.