Boys basketball: Oswego East thwarts Joliet West at every turn

JOLIET – The Oswego East basketball team has somehow found a way to get less than the best effort out of their rivals from Joliet West.

This isn’t meant as an insult to either team, but the Wolves have demonstrated twice this season, in a regular-season game and then again Friday in a contest with much more at stake, the Class 4A Bolingbrook Sectional title game, where the Wolves once again got the better of the Tigers in a 71-64 win.

The victory gave Oswego East (29-5) the school’s first sectional crown and lifts it into Monday’s Illinois State Supersectional, where it will face highly touted Moline (32-3) at 7 p.m. Moline defeated O’Fallon 62-38 in its sectional championship game.

Joliet West closed its season with a 28-6 record.

There were a number of factors that led to Oswego East’s win, but probably the most defining one was that Joliet West was never able to find its ryhthm.

“I feel like Coach [Ryan Velasquez] has a really good game plan. And we have so many defenses that we can throw out to you,” Oswego East senior forward Tyler Jasek said. “We have the 2-3, the 1-3-1 to three of the ones that we want. We even threw the triangle and two in there on like one possession. He gives us the game plan like what we need to do and I feel like he did and we and that’s what made the difference.”

It also didn’t hurt that Jasek and Ryan Johnson fueled an extremely productive and somewhat unexpected amount of success from 3-point land. The Wolves connected for eight 3-pointers in the first three quarters, with four of them coming from Jasek (who also didn’t miss from long range) on his way to a season-high 16 points. Johnson also finished with 16 points before fouling out.

Most of that flurry came in the third quarter, where Oswego East outscored Joliet West 20-9 and took a 49-37 lead into the final quarter.

Despite some free-throw shooting woes that made the road home a little bit bumpier than maybe the Wolves’ faithful would have hoped, Joliet West never got closer than five points the rest of the way.

“So we know that it starts off on the defensive end digging our heels in and keeping guys in front, and although we didn’t do that the whole time ... I feel like they believe in each other and they have each other’s back. And when things may break down, someone may step up,” Velasquez said. “And I thought we did a pretty good job on the glass. No second-chance opportunities for them. Offense wins games, defense wins games. Rebounding wins championships in my eyes. And I thought our guys did a good job of that.”

They did a good job at most things in building a second-quarter lead that grew to as large as nine points (26-17) after a 13-0 scoring run washed away what turned out to be the largest lead Joliet West would manage in the entire contest at 17-13.

The bigger problem came when standout Joliet West sophomore Jeremiah Fears picked up two fouls quickly in the game and was forced the bench for stretches of the first half. That problem compounded after the halftime break when he quickly picked up his third foul and then his fourth with 5:45 left in the third quarter.

Despite sitting for almost the entire third quarter, he still managed to get enough floor time to notch a game-high 27 points, but he was the only player consistently capable of finding ways to score as Joliet West struggled through its worst shooting night of the season.

The Tigers hit one of their first 11 shots from the 3-point range and didn’t exactly post great shooting numbers from areas closer to the basket.

The loss also capped the high school career of one of the best players in Joliet history. Jeremy Fears Jr. netted only five points in his final game when he fouled out with 2:35 to play, but the nature of his game usually went far beyond just scoring points. Fears returned from an Indiana prep school to play his senior season with the hopes of guiding his hometown team to the state tournament. He and the Tigers fell two steps short of that goal.

“Yeah, it just it didn’t help I think their two guys [Jasek] and [Johnson] shooting that well to start the game it messed with us mentally,” Joliet West coach Jeremy Kreiger said. “We were second guessing how to really guard how to defend it shouldn’t change anything. But then Jeremy and Jeremiah get in foul trouble and everybody knows that’s a recipe for disaster because they’re our lead ball handlers.

“They missed so many free throws and it gave us an opportunity but we couldn’t secure the rebounds and there were so many things that contributed to why our season unfortunately ended tonight.”