Joliet West cruises past Joliet Central and into regional final

JOLIET – Joliet West opened regional play with a 69-25 victory over Joliet Central on Tuesday evening. This game was originally scheduled to be played in Moline but was switched because of two local teams playing each other.

The top seeded Tigers (25-3) will travel to East Moline for the regional championship game against fourth-seeded Moline at 7 p.m. Thursday.

West jumped out to a 20-3 lead in the first quarter and never looked back, but the scrappy Steelmen outplayed the Tigers in the second quarter as they outscored them 17-14. West led 34-20 at the break.

The third quarter was all Tigers as they outscored the Steelmen 16-2 and raced to a 50-22 lead heading to the fourth quarter.

West’s Lisa Thompson scored 29 points on the night, as the junior scored 11 in the first quarter and led the assault in the third with 10 more points.

“Tonight we wanted to get back into the rhythm of our offense,” West coach John Placher said. They [Central] are a scrappy team and number 15 [Lovely Tua-link] is a very good player. She had 15 points on us at the half, and we really talked about help side defense. Our kids did a great job with that in the second half. That is one thing you really need to be good at come tournament time.

“We had three days off practice, and we practiced against a lot of different defenses that we might see down the road.”

[ Photos: Joliet West vs. Joliet Central girls basketball ]

Two key seniors for the Tigers, Grace Walsh (6 points, 6 rebounds) and Caside Snapp, played their final game on the Tiger court.

“You don’t think about that till it’s over, and to be truthful I didn’t even realize that till now,” Walsh said. Tonight and every game in the tournament you have to be ready to play and believe that every team on the other side is better than you. We cannot play down to our competition.”

“It’s sad that we will never play another game on this floor and in front of our fans here at home,” Snapp said. “But moving forward we have to be ready to play each game. It’s one game at a time and you cannot look ahead. We just have to focus on each other, believe in each other and do what we are capable of doing.”

Lovely Tua-ling had 17 points for the Steelmen (2-20). She scored 13 of those points in the second quarter when the Steelmen made a run.

“We are so young with only two seniors on the team,” Central coach Laura Brumfiel said. “We want our seniors to be leaders and set them up for after high school and get the underclassmen experience for next season. We want to use this to help build their confidence for next year.

“I know this year was a struggle, but these kids play hard, and they play hard the entire game. We are already looking forward to next season, and we just need to keep getting better each day and win at the small things.”