Joliet West experienced a particularly painful overtime loss to Bolingbrook on Tuesday night, and for awhile it looked like the Tigers were letting that loss spill over into its Thursday night matchup against crosstown rival Joliet Central.

The Tigers waited until the fourth quarter to finally put away the Steelmen, ripping off a 14-2 run to start the fourth quarter on its way to a 54-31 victory.

“The nature of this game always lends itself to what is going to be an uncharacteristic game for us and our style of basketball. It’s not an excuse. Crosstown rival. Thursday night. It’s just awkward,” Joliet West coach Jeremy Krieger said. “And again not an excuse, the letdown of the outcome of the Bolingbrook game, they are still feeling that hard.”

Joliet West (10-8, 7-2) still dwelling on that loss was evident early on as the Tigers seem to be working at about half speed.

The Tigers claimed a 15-5 lead over a Steelmen (3-16, 1-8) squad that is leaning heavily on underclassmen and is largely inexperienced, but instead of trying to force his starters to jumpstart themselves, Kreiger began giving some of his reserves a larger rein.

Elijah Wilson, a junior guard who finished with a career-high 14 points, took the extended playing time as an opportunity to try to give his team a spark.

“I just brought energy and effort,” Wilson said. “Our coach told us to just play as hard as we could and to not treat this game any different than any other game.

“Try to fix the things that we do poorly against other teams and just come out here and build better habits.”

The Tigers held Joliet Central to just five second-quarter points, but weren’t exactly executing all that well themselves offensively and took just a 26-13 lead into halftime.

“When you believe you are the supreme athlete because of talent it allows you to underestimate what is needed to execute,” Kreiger said. “And that’s where we were tonight.

“Our inability to value the basketball has hampered us.”

Those turnover problems also plagued Joliet West at times on Thursday and it helped spurn on a scrappy third quarter effort from the Steelmen that allowed them to climb back to within striking distance.

A Revell Gilbert basket midway through the third quarter allowed Joliet Central to pull to within 33-27, as close as it had been since early in the game. Joliet West did regroup to score the final four points of the third quarter and maintain its double-digit lead heading into the fourth.

Gilbert scored again to start the fourth quarter, but that would be the last the Steelmen would be heard from offensively until after Joliet West had scored 17 consecutive points and pushed its lead past 20.

Kaden Henry led Joliet Central with 10 points, and Gilbert finished with nine. Ryan Lipke joined Wilson in double digit scoring for Joliet West, finishing with 12.