Boys basketball: Joliet West breezes past Joliet Central

JOLIET – Midway through the third quarter, as his Joliet West basketball team lead comfortably against crosstown rival Joliet Central, Tigers coach Jeremy Kreiger took time to loudly correct some missteps his team had made on some previous possessions.

Those outbursts don’t come often from Kreiger, at least not publicly, but the messaging was more important for down the line than what the scoreboard ultimately read in Joliet West’s 86-53 win over its hosts on Saturday.

“Typically when we play a Joliet, Plainfield South, Romeoville there’s a connection between the kids and then it becomes a personal battle or a mental state where we try to relax,” Kreiger said. “So as a coaching staff and as players we wanted to focus on remaining diligent in what we want to do to be great down the road. If we allow them to relax at noon on Saturday that can translate to 7 p.m. in Champaign and that’s what we don’t want.”

It took a 16-0 scoring run midway through the second quarter for Joliet West to fully shake a Joliet Central team, that at least early on, looked like it was up to the task of trying to make a game of it.

But ultimately there’s just too many weapons on the Joliet West (7-2, 4-0 Southwest Prairie Conference) on the roster to be contained. That scoring run featured points coming from a variety of sources and through a variety of ways most notably by Tigers attacking the basket and hitting eight-of-nine free throws.

After the flurry was over a Danny Thompson 3-pointer at the halftime horn was the only thing that kept Joliet Central (2-6, 0-4) from going scoreless over the last four minutes of the second quarter.

The Tigers weren’t sharp for most of the third quarter either and a 9-0 Joliet Central run that capped the frame and pulled Joliet Central to within 56-37.

But the final quarter demonstrated how dominant the Tigers can be when things are firing all cylinders, with Jeremy Fears Jr. dissecting the Steelmen defense from his point guard position all the pieces seemed to fall in place coupled with shots falling from all over the court.

“It’s always been a rivalry since the schools separated,” Fears Jr. said. “This is my first time playing in the game since my freshman year and it was a good experience. We watched film on Central and we saw that they play hard and tried to keep the focus on being us. Just be us. Play defense and play offense, and overall just be us, and we should be able to come out with the win.”

Joliet West connected on seven 3-pointers in the fourth quarter, many from very long range, including three from Fears Jr.

Fears Jr. and his brother Jeremiah combined to score 43 points, with Jeremiah bouncing back from being held scoreless for the first time in his high school career in Tuesday night’s win over Plainfield East.

They were far from the only Tigers to make an impact as Jayden Martin and Justus McNair each scored 11 points and proved to be a big part of Joliet West’s tenacious defensive effort that forced turnovers and altered shots on the regular.

Jamarcho Holman scored 13 points to pace Joliet Central and Jaylin Murphy scored a flurry of late points to finish with 12.