Analysis: Second Half Dooms Joliet West

It was a situation Joliet West hadn’t been in before.

Daviona Ervins drilled a three-pointer, Khadija Cooley sank a pair of free throws and made a nifty layup and Lanita Hinton scored back-to-back buckets off a pair of steals. In the midst of a 12-0 scoring run, momentum was on the Tigers’ side, the Crete-Monee crowd was at a whisper and, until the final minute of the second quarter, the Tigers hadn’t allowed a field goal since the 2:01 mark of the first quarter.

But then things started to change, and not for the better. As a sign of what was to come in the second half, Crete-Monee’s Destiny Harris went coast-to-coast for a layup and then scored again off a turnover in the final 49 seconds of the opening half. Still, the Tigers went into halftime with a 30-14 lead.

“We pretty much handed them the ball in the first half, and that’s totally unacceptable,” Crete-Monee coach Danny Wafford said. “I had to light them up in halftime and told them I don’t want to watch the game (Tuesday), I want to be involved in it, and then they picked it up.”

Joliet West (5-21) led 34-23 with a 1:30 left in the third quarter, but the Warriors took advantage of four Tiger turnovers over the final 1:25 of the quarter and made five straight field goals to pull within 34-33 on a Casey Ealey jumper with seven seconds remaining.

“Usually we don’t fold like that,” Joliet West coach Kevin Michaels said. “I’m not sure if they got complacent being up by (18 points), but we needed to keep up the intensity and our team is just not used to winning. I think to them it was just a moral victory to be up by that much.”

The teams would find themselves tied on four occasions in the fourth quarter before the Warriors took the lead for good. Harris (21 points) missed the second free throw of a one-and-one but collected the rebound, and her putback put the Warriors ahead for good at 47-45.  At game’s end, Crete-Monee had claimed a 52-46 victory to move on to the regional semifinals, and Joliet West’s season was over.

“You could see our lack of intensity,” Michaels said. “Things weren’t clicking—taking bad shots, quick shots and not sticking to the game plan. But give their coach credit. They brought the pressure on us and just turned the tides.”

Crete-Monee moved Ashley Henry to the top of the press in the second half and it caused all sorts of problems for the Tigers. The Warriors scored 38 points in the second half, and a great percentage of them came off turnovers.

“We knew we had to get the momentum back, so we just kept pushing,” Harris said. “We were a little out of it in the first half and just had to think smarter, push ourselves and control the momentum.”

The Best Play: It was like déjà vu. Crete-Monee’s Christine Bruce missed the front end of a one-and-one but the Warriors battled for the rebound and Bruce went to the line again. Once again she missed the front end and once again she recovered the loose ball and went to the line. The play proved extra costly for the Tigers as it was Khadija Cooley’s fifth foul and knocked her out of the contest with 3:38 left to play. Joliet West clung to a 40-39 lead after Bruce finally made one from the charity stripe, banking it in. She’d miss her second attempt.

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