Joliet West earned its seventh consecutive Southwest Prairie East Conference title and joined the 20-win club with a 71-40 victory over Joliet Central on Tuesday night.

But there were definitely moments where it looked like both of those standards might elude the Tigers this year as their record stood at just 7-7 after 14 games.

The second half of the season has been an entirely different story and more like the standard the program has now set for several seasons.

“I just feel like with the work that we put in and how hard we go in practice from the start of the season until the end of the season, it’s kind of an expectation for us,” Joliet West guard Aamir Shannon said. “We know the work that we put in and we know we should beat everybody in our conference and win our side.”

Those early-season hiccups seem well behind the Tigers (20-9, 14-2) now.

“I always believed in Coach Kreiger and the players that we have for us, even with losing a few guys,” Shannon said. “I just know that everybody from the front of our bench to the end of our bench is going to put in the work that we have to do.”

Some of that second-half success has been borne from a new offensive philosophy that has been implemented largely over the second half of the season. Joliet West’s only losses during that 13-2 stretch were an overtime setback at the hands of Bolingbrook and a two-point loss this past weekend at the hands of the upcoming sectional’s top seed Homewood-Flossmoor.

The crux of the philosophy centers around shot selection. The Tigers don’t take what are classified as mid-range jump shots. They only take three types of shots: dunks, lay-ups and catch-and-shoot 3-pointers.

“For the first half of the season we let them shoot mid-ranges, and you see all the shot charts with a lot of misses,” Joliet West coach Jeremy Kreiger said. “And then you pull up an old clip of Dusty May at a coaching clinic and he talks about we only take four kinds of shots: dunks and layups, and catch-and-shoot 3-pointers and what you are elite at.

“We’re high school shooters, there’s nothing we’re elite at. That’s no disrespect to the kids we have, it is just for right now you need to have a better understanding of where offensive efficiency comes from and that’s been leading to higher percentage scoring chances and more offensive rebound opportunities.”

At times it doesn’t look pretty, and it didn’t early in Tuesday night’s game as the Tigers held just a 3-2 lead through the first four minutes of play, but then Joliet West connected on four 3-pointers, and in a matter of a minute the lead grew to double digits. Despite liberally using reserves for most of the rest of the game, Joliet West was never threatened.

Shannon led Joliet West with 15 points and Ryan Lipke added 10 as nine different Tigers players netted at least three points in the game.

Joliet Central (4-26, 2-14) got a strong game from freshman center Revell Gilbert, who finished with 15 points. Valentin Cornejo added 10.