New teams reshaping SW Prairie
The Southwest Prairie Conference needed Joliet basketball.
When Joliet Central and Joliet West joined the league two years ago, the addition brought more credibility and history to a conference lacking a basketball identity.
Both schools made their presence felt immediately. Joliet West ran the table in conference play two years ago and Joliet Central captured the league title last year with a 13-1 record.
“Joliet is a basketball town,” said Oswego coach Chad Pohlmann, who spent five years at Lincoln-Way Central as an assistant coach competing against Joliet. “Joliet brings a toughness to the league and also a different style.”
The conference has produced a ranked team here, a sleeper there, and a few individual stars over the years. But gaining basketball respect has been a burden.
Joliet West coach Nick DiForti saw it firsthand while he was the head coach in the Southwest Prairie at Plainfield North, particularly the year his team finished 26-5 in 2008-09.
“We were like 21-4 at the time of the sectional seeding and we get the No. 5 seed,” said DiForti, who left Plainfield North for Joliet West in 2013. “That shows you a little bit there of where our league was in terms of the respect it was getting.”
But Joliet Central and Joliet West have provided a boost to the league. Joliet Central has won backto-back regional titles. Joliet West has won two regionals in the past three years, including a sectional championship in 2016.
When the two Joliet schools combined athletic programs from 1993 to 2010, the basketball program won 10 regional titles and reached the state finals three times, finishing fourth in 1995.
That doesn’t even dip into the tradition-rich days of the mid1930s when Joliet made three trips to state, winning a 1937 state title, or the historic gym Joliet Central plays in today.
Plainfield North coach Bob Krahulik agrees that the league’s reputation has been enhanced with the arrival of the two Joliet schools.
“I think it gives our conference more credibility,” Krahulik said. “Adding the Joliets has made this a better basketball conference with great coaches and a different style of play.”
Aside from Oswego’s run as a Class 3A school in 2009 and 2010 — the Panthers won back-to-back sectional titles, including a Class 3A state runner-up finish in 2009 — there has been almost no postseason success in the league.
There isn’t a team in the league outside of Joliet and Oswego with a sectional championship. Romeoville won a sectional championship in 1986, but that entire season was ultimately forfeited.
And next season, the winning culture in the league will be amped up even more with the addition of perennial power West Aurora. The tradition-rich basketball program will join the conference, along with Yorkville, for the 2019-20 season.
But this is the season when everyone should get a crack at the two Joliet schools and wrestle back the conference title.
While talented, Joliet West is very young and probably a year away from being back in any type of favorite role. Joliet Central will be solid but lost a good player, 6-5 junior Kee Hargrow, who transferred to Hyde Park.
“I think the league this year will be very strong [and] probably very underrated around the Chicago area,” Krahulik said. “The conference is deep.”
Oswego East, led by three returning starters, including star guard RayJ Dennis, will be favored. But a much-improved Oswego team, Plainfield North, Plainfield East and Romeoville will be beating up on one another all winter.
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