There’s no sugarcoating that Joliet Central hasn’t had a boys basketball season to remember. Coach Larry Tompson has acknowledged that this year’s team has struggled with numerous issues amid their 2-14 start to the year.

Look a bit closer than the final score, however, and there have been signs of promise from a team whose rotation mostly consists of freshmen and juniors. That was true during Wednesday night’s 55-40 loss to Crete-Monee.

On the surface, a 15-point loss may not look like progress. Look deeper. The Steelmen were tied after a quarter and kept the game within single-digits most of the evening against a team that now sits at 9-6 on the season.

This was on the heels of a loss against Oswego East that saw the Steelmen down just six at the midway point. Joliet Central added its second win of the season the game before against Sandburg and only lost to Normal West by six at the end of December.

All of that’s to say Joliet Central is getting better, whether the win/loss column reflects it or not.

“At the start of the season, we weren’t playing like a team,” freshman Revell Gilbert said. “As the year goes on and we practice more you see the games getting closer and closer. If we keep working hard we can win and beat these kind of teams.”

Thompson, for his part, has praised the effort of his squad and noted the improvement. He’s still looking for them to keep doing more, however, especially for a team that, outside of the 6-foot-6 Gilbert, is lacking in size [three Steelmen are 6-foot to 6-foot-2, everyone else is 5-foot-11 or smaller].

“They’ve grown a whole lot,” Thompson said. “Even just since Christmas. We’re getting better overall, but it’s just the little things [we’re working on]. We’ve got to make the extra pass and drive the ball better. Those are things we’re stressing on offense, but defensively they always give their best effort.

We’re hoping this is all going to pay off in the second half of the season. We’re going to see if we can get better each day.”

Neither team scored in the opening two minutes as the defenses reigned supreme. Crete-Monee managed to take a 7-2 lead midway through the quarter thanks to a balanced scoring effort. The lead grew to 14-4 before a 3 by Bernal Fox with 90 seconds left in the first. That triggered a 9-0 run to close the period for the Steelmen, tying the game at 14-all after eight minutes.

Each team began the second with 3-pointers before the defenses took over once again. The Warriors’ Joseph Jones scored on a layup with 42 seconds left in the half to give them a 27-21 edge at halftime.

The Warriors came out strong in the second half, but credit Joliet Central for hanging around. Midway through the third quarter the Steelmen were right there, down 32-25.

Crete-Monee is a winning program for a reason, however, and they showed why as they stretched the lead to 11 with two minutes left in the period. The Steelmen got it back within nine, but a last-second 3 by Zyheir Gardner made it 41-29 Warriors entering the final quarter.

Joliet Central refused to let the Warriors run away with it. Their defense held strong for the first four minutes of the fourth before Crete-Monee finally wore Central down. The Warriors lead grew as large as 48-31, but Fox made back-to-back 3s to narrow the deficit.

A 3 by Michael Stokes after that stretched the run to 9-0 and brought the Steelmen within single digits again. The damage was done by then, and a late flurry by the Warriors in the final 90 seconds made the final score appear more lopsided than it actually was.

Fox led the Steelmen with 16 points. The Warriors were led by Jones (18 points), Gardner (16) and Brian Sampson (11).