Boys Basketball: Plainfield North shakes past Romeoville

Plainfield North coach Nick DiForti’s message and decision to shake things up for his starting lineup was received.

The Tigers cruised past host Romeoville 63-49 Friday night in a Southwest Prairie Conference tilt.

DiForti’s starting five included freshmen Trevor Stumpe and Jake Novak.

“I just felt that we needed a change,” DiForti said. “That first group did a fantastic job; we were only down 7-0 but it did light a fire under the other guys.”

Jeremy Bert poured in a game-high 21 points on 7-of-12 shooting from the floor for the Tigers. Plainfield North also had contributions from Matt Fenza (9 points) and Marcus Fair (8 points).

The Plainfield North regular starters entered the game at the five-minute mark, and although trailing 7-0, quickly got the Tigers back into the game. Kendal Interial’s three-pointer tied the game at 10 with 1:31 left in the first quarter.

“We battle hard every day, and I told our guys that one of these days it is going to click and tonight it showed,” DiForti said.

Plainfield North (2-6, 2-1) pushed the lead to 22-14 with 2:30 left in the half on a driving layup by Novak.

Plainfield North led 24-18 at halftime and was 10-of-28 from the floor but committed just two turnovers while the Spartans made just 5-of-25 shots and were 0-of-7 from long range.

A Bert trey extended the Tigers lead to 33-22 with 5:50 left in the third quarter.

“I felt like we came out and we gave coach exactly what he wanted tonight,” Bert said. “It was a great team win.”

Kurt Palandech’s dunk made it 48-31 with just under six minutes to play in the game and sent the Plainfield North crowd into a frenzy.

Nate Washington scored a team-high 10 points for Romeoville (1-5, 0-2) while Bien Bordas and Uchenna Akuba added nine and eight points, respectively.

“We got outplayed, outhustled, outcoached and out-everything tonight,” Romeoville coach Jeff Bambule said. “We need to do some sole searching right now.”

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