This year’s Boys’ Basketball team is striving for a better berth at playoffs than last year. The Tigers last season ended in the Regional Final against Plainfield East.

Despite the fact of losing school record breaker, Trevor Stumpe, the Tigers leave it up to Captains Kevin Krieger and Richie Elias to play the roles that Stumpe and Jake Nowak played last year.

“The team needs to adapt based off who we have. There is a different dynamic this year, we should be quicker than last year. We will press more to make teams commit turnovers and our odd sized players will be able to throw the other teams off balance,” said varsity assistant coach Jim O’Hara.

The team this season is a smaller team with former player Cody Conway who stood at 6’7” playing at Syracuse for football. The only player who is close enough to Conway’s height is senior Kyle Speas, who is injured and won’t return until late December due to an injury to his collarbone.

“Now that Kyle is hurt, it gives other players more playing time. Although he is a 3 year varsity player, it is easy to tell that the team is effected in their overall performance,” added O’Hara. “Kyle brings leadership and has a strong work ethic which plays a major role when it comes time to get serious for the season and the upcoming games.”

For the past two years, North has ran the tables when they played in the Joliet West Thanksgiving Tournament. Both years bringing home a first place trophy. This year the Tigers are participating in the annual Pontiac Christmas Tournament. Pontiac being the tougher tournament between the two.

“The best part of the Pontiac Tournament is it is outside of conference teams that we are playing. The players gain experience to play top teams in the state and testing themselves to play other teams for playoffs,” said O’Hara. “For the first round of bracket play the whole town shuts down because it’s such a big event in such a small town. It is nice to play in it before entering playoffs.”

The Pontiac Tournament consists of teams like Simeon or Stevenson who are top teams in the state and makes most teams work hard for their wins. And gives a lot of experience for any teams, even those who are more prestigious than others.

“The Christmas tournament is always a fun one and we get to play some good teams. We should do pretty well,” said three year starter Kevin Krieger.

The Tigers are coming from a 21-4 season after losing their last game of the season to Plainfield East, looking to improve and go further into the playoffs this year and of course, winning a conference championship.

The team is looking for possible answers from all players to step up as leaders and take their team to a winning season and even further than just earning a playoff berth.

With the season only going until February 23 against Oswego East High School. Then after the last regular season game the Tigers will start their first round of playoffs and depending on the team’s performance, they will go further.