Most teams don’t relish drawing the first game on the schedule at their holiday tournament.

Joliet West took a different approach to its opening-round assignment against Oak Park-River Forest at the Pontiac Holiday Tournament on Monday.

They embraced the opportunity, and that mentality helped lift the Tigers to a 60-57 win over the Huskies. Joliet West will now face the tournament’s top seed, DePaul Prep, on Tuesday at 1 p.m. in the quarterfinal round.

“Embracing that 9 a.m. challenge is something we loved,” Joliet West coach Jeremy Kreiger said. “We just appreciate the opportunity to be here, but as soon as we saw 9 a.m., our break practices shifted to 8 to 11 to get their mind ready for what they are about to see.”

The Tigers (7-4) adapted quickly and leaped out to an early 13-4 lead, largely behind the efforts of Aamir Shannon and Deven Triplett, who led all Joliet West scorers with 23 points.

“The key for us was in preparation and just relying on what we worked on in practice for the nine days since our last game,” Triplett said.

But it was a game of ebbs and flows for the Tigers. After building a 20-8 lead early in the second quarter, OPRF (4-5) rushed back with a 16-2 scoring run fueled by sophomore Trent Williams, who led all scorers with 26 points. That allowed the Huskies to take a 24-22 lead, but Triplett helped Joliet West reclaim control by scoring seven points in the final two minutes of the second quarter to send Joliet West into the locker room with a 34-29 advantage.

The Tigers kept that momentum into the second half and quickly rebuilt the lead to double digits on a bucket by Ryan Lipke, and Triplett pushed it to 11 by knocking down his third 3-pointer of the game.

Once again, the Huskies found a way to claw back, slicing the Joliet West lead back to five midway through the final frame before Triplett stopped a scoring drought with a bucket that pushed the lead to 56-49. However, the Tigers would go cold, and OPRF pulled to within 56-55 on a D’Angelo Perkins 3-pointer with just under two minutes to play.

Triplett once again helped Joliet West stay afloat on a basket with 1:15 to play, but the Tigers failed to put the game on ice by missing a pair of free throws with under 30 seconds left.

Williams hit a 10-foot runner with under 15 seconds to play to cut the lead to 58-57, and the Huskies promptly fouled Luke Grevengoed, who stepped to the line and knocked down both free throws to make it 60-57.

Oak Park-River Forest had a little under 10 seconds to run the length of the floor and attempt an equalizing 3-pointer. Still, a perfectly executed defensive pressure effort from Elijah Wilson not only forced a rushed shot but also a deflected one, which didn’t allow the last-ditch attempt to get close to hitting its mark.

“He’s a junior point guard, very high IQ and works his tail off, but he’s a defensive pest,” Kreiger said. “But in the first half, he had four fouls. So we jokingly said, ‘Why did you wait until the last possession to do what we know you’re capable of?’ ”