Plainfield North Tigers Take Down DGN at Regionals

After returning from an eight-game absence due to a broken thumb,  senior Jack Krieger was admittedly rusty.

He missed his four three-point attempts in his comeback game Thursday against Minooka. Then in Monday’s Class 4A Bolingbrook Regional quarterfinal game against Downers Grove North, he scored a grand total of one point in the first half.

But then, the switch game on.

Krieger scored 21 in the second half to lead the Tigers to a 69-65 win and set up a regional semifinal game against East Aurora at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.

“I went into the half frustrated and went into the locker room to try to cool down,” Krieger said. “I just told myself that I needed to have confidence and keep my head up. I came out strong and started scoring. It’s about time.”

The Tigers (15-12) were hot from the long range early, with Jeremy Bert hitting two three-pointers in the first quarter and Marcus Fair and Nick Corban following suit with threes. But Downers North (7-17) stayed in the game with its inside play, most notably DJ Cieniawa. That helped the Trojans enter the half down only 32-29.

Krieger scored Plainfield North’s first seven points of the half to push the lead to 39-34, but Cieniawa took over late in the quarter. Consecutive rebound put-backs and a hook in the lane from Cieniawa to end the third tied the game at 46-46. Cieniawa scored 14 points in the game.

“We wanted to win the rebound battle, and I thought we did a great job with that,” Downers North coach Jim Thomas said.

Downers North pushed the lead to 53-48 early in the fourth on a Cieniawa three-point play, but that’s when Krieger got heated up. He scored 10 unanswered points, the first nine coming off of three-pointers, to suddenly turn the tide and give the Tigers a 58-53 lead. They never trailed again.

“For about 45 seconds, we just had a meltdown,” Thomas said. “Krieger scored 10 straight points. Just a chaotic 45 seconds there. We worked on a lot of late-game stuff this week. We had 10 days off and we thought for sure that when we were up five points, that was it.”

Tom Wengren hit back-to-back threes late in the fourth for the Trojans to cut the lead to 62-60, but the Tigers were able to ice it at the line and move on to face East Aurora, which is led by Connecticut recruit Ryan Boatright, one of the most explosive players in Illinois.

“He’s more quick than anything,” Plainfield North coach Nick DiForti said. “He’s the fastest kid with a basketball that I’ve ever seen. We’ll do everything we can to contain him. Our kids are tough kids. They’ll step up to the challenge. Our kids play hard and we’ve played great competition all year. We’re not new to playing big-time teams. We won’t back down from anybody so we’ll see what happens.”

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