The Plainfield South girls basketball roster only contains 10 players, even though they are allowed to have 15. Joliet West is in the same position.

One player was a major difference Thursday night in the Cougars’ 52-40 Southwest Prairie Conference win over the Tigers. South’s Layla Lesure was a force in the paint, collecting 22 points and 16 rebounds to help her team to the win.

Even though her half-court position is under the basket on both offense and defense, she spent much of her time in transition. The Cougars’ pressure defense forced West into 26 turnovers, and South’s style of play dictates that all players run the floor in order to fill lanes on the fast break or collect a rebound in case of a miss.

Lesure did that to perfection, scoring several baskets off of fast-break rebounds. She also anchored the Cougar defense with four blocked shots.

“Our focus is always on our defense,” Lesure said. “We focus on playing tough defense and then that leads to offense and easy baskets. If we play good defense and keep the other team from scoring, we are going to be in most games.

“We have been doing well so far. We are playing well together and we’re starting to gel.”

Joliet West (1-6, 0-2) kept things close early, taking a 4-2 lead on a basket by Temperance Jackson (11 points, 10 rebounds). South (3-1, 1-1) got a pair of free throws from Lesure and then four straight points from Asia Sudberry (8 points, 6 rebounds) to move ahead 8-4. West got seven points from Jada Thompson (11 points, 8 rebounds) to pull to within 12-11, but that was close as the Tigers got. Lesure scored on a putback basket to make it 14-11 at the break.

West got to within 19-16 midway through the second quarter, but South countered with a 12-2 run the rest of the half to take a 31-18 halftime lead.

The Tigers opened the second half on a 7-4 run to get to within 35-25 before South put it out of reach with a 13-2 spurt to end the third quarter. LaNiya Willis had three of her 10 points in the run, while Lesure had four points and Zahaira Edwards, Sudberry and Makayla Hill all had two as the Cougars led 48-27 entering the fourth quarter.

“We got after it defensively,” South coach Alana Warren said. “Everyone wants to practice offense, but we work on our defense. We want our defense to create offense with transition baskets and we did that tonight.

“Layla Lesure was fantastic. She’s one of our leaders, and she works hard on her box outs and getting putback baskets. She is really committed to working hard, and when your leader does that, everyone else does, too. She learned from watching and playing behind Destiny McGruder and Jazlynn Foster when she was a sophomore. Those are some big shoes to fill, but she’s doing it, averaging about 14 rebounds a game so far. The big thing with this team is that everyone has accepted their role and they are happy with it.”

Joliet West came alive in the fourth quarter, outscoring the Cougars 13-4 as Jackson had seven points to lead the charge, but it was too late.

“We had some foul trouble early and had to play without a couple of starters for a while,” West coach Breanna Blackmon said. “But I give credit to our girls. They played hard until the final whistle. We will get better. I’m not as concerned about how we are playing now as long as we learn from it and finish strong.

“Jada Thompson had a nice game for us, and Temperance Jackson was big on the glass for us. Niyonna Reddington’s shot wasn’t falling tonight, but she kept her head in the game and kept playing hard.”