Plainfield East excises some issues in win over Joliet Central

JOLIET – The Plainfield East boys basketball team doesn’t have the best track record of success in Joliet Central gymnasium.

So when the Bengals built a relatively substantial lead against the Steelmen in Saturday’s Southwest Prairie Conference game, Plainfield East coach Mike Fowler pretty much expected that the game was far from over.

Despite squandering a 15-point advantage in the third quarter, Fowler’s Bengals bucked his team’s recent trend of succumbing to the Steelmen in their venerable old gymnasium, scratching and clawing their way to a 46-43 overtime win.

“This is a thing over here,” Fowler said about playing at Joliet Central. “The last few years we’ve come over here and played three quarters about as well as can be, and then the fourth quarter ... we end up losing. We talked about it before the game and we talked about it again at halftime. But today we grinded it out and got the victory.”

Most of the credit for the victory has to go to the Bengals’ defensive effort as they never really let the Steelmen (3-3) get comfortable in half-court sets, twice holding Central scoreless for stretches of four minutes or longer in the game. Most of Central’s points came in transition, and even those opportunities didn’t come in bunches.

“The last two nights, last night with Romeoville and again today we’ve been stepping up our defensive intensity,” Fowler said. “And I like where we are at.”

Both teams started slowly in the game but the Bengals (2-3) broke away with an early 10-2 run sparked by a pair of 3-point baskets from Kobe Reed. The Bengals then started the second quarter with six consecutive points and looked to be on their way.

Things looked even brighter when East opened the second half with a Jayden Silva 3-pointer and a Dylan Silva basket, which allowed the Bengals to build their biggest advantage of the game at 29-14.

But then the offensive shut off for East, and Central slowly started to chip away at the lead. A Lavelle Hughes’ (13 points) 3-pointer pulled the Steelmen as close as they had been since early in the first quarter, as Joliet Central drew to within 33-29.

Michael Landa (10 points) capped the third quarter with a basket for East, allowing them to close the third quarter with a six-point advantage, but Central kept coming – helped by an increase in their own defensive intensity. East scored only a free throw from Bryant Tahoffa over the first 3:30 of the fourth quarter.

Central wasn’t exactly torching the nets during that stretch either, but did enough to put themselves in a position to win the game. A big 3 from Josh Adim, followed by a bucket from Hughes pulled the Steelmen to within 40-39. After a East turnover, Hughes could only split a pair of free throws after being fouled to tie the game and send it to overtime.

Jacobi Millhouse quickly opened overtime with a basket for East, and for a while it looked as if that might hold up over the entire extra quarter. But Troy Cicero tied it for Central with a pair of free throws with 1:36 to play, only to have Landa come up with a key basket a minute later to put the Bengals back in front. Cicero split a pair of free throws that had the potential to send the game to a second overtime, but Donovan Byrd sealed the outcome by knocking down two free throws for the Bengals.