Boothe, Warren down Libertyville

Carrying three medium-sized boxes stacked one on top of the other, Nathan Boothe had his hands full on Friday night.

Full of cookie dough.

The Warren junior sold 23 tubs of cookie dough for the basketball team's fundraiser for a tournament in Galesburg over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend in January.

He left the locker room after Friday night's game against visiting Libertyville ready to take it all home so that he could deliver it to the friends and neighbors who bought from him.

The goods that Boothe delivered to the Wildcats earlier in the evening weren't quite as sweet.

The 6-foot-8 center scored a game-high 15 points and pulled down 8 rebounds to lead Warren to a 59-49 North Suburban Conference Lake Division victory over Libertyville.

The win moves Warren to 7-1 overall and 3-0 in the Lake Division. Libertyville, which was down by as many as 20 points early in the fourth quarter, but cut its deficit to 7 points with less than two minutes to play with some clutch 3-point shooting, drops to 4-4 overall and 2-2 in the Lake.

“We got the ball inside and we were finishing, for the most part,” Boothe said. “We were swinging the ball and we were getting good touches.”

Boothe also showed his touch from the outside. He hit a 3-pointer in the first quarter that helped Warren take a two-point lead that eventually ballooned to a 9-point cushion at halftime.

Adding some range to his game is just one of many improvements Boothe has made since last year, when he was playing on the varsity as a sophomore.

“I got stronger and I move a little better,” said Boothe, the younger brother of the best girls basketball player in Warren history, Sarah Boothe, who was named Illinois Ms. Basketball in 2008 and is now playing at Stanford. “I'm just trying to be one of the go-to guys.”

Boothe has that right. He wants to be ONE of the go-to guys. Because Warren seems to have many.

The Blue Devils' biggest strength so far this season has been balance. Against Libertyville, eight of the nine Blue Devils who entered the game scored. JoVaughn Gaines also finished with double-figures with 10 points while Darius Paul and Jeremiah Jackson each had 8 points and Brandon Ferguson and Jameris Smith each had 7 points.

“Everyone can be a go-to player on this team,” Boothe said. “It's just whoever has the hot hand in the game. No one on our team has even had a 20 point game yet.”

Libertyville has a 20-point scorer in Ryan Barth, who averages 23 points per game, to be exact. But, unfortunately for the Wildcats, he'll be out until January with a lower leg injury.

Luke Mathewson and Griffin Pils tried to compensate. They each scored 12 points against Warren, and had 5 three-pointers between them.

“It's tough to see Ryan sitting on the bench keeping the scorebook,” Libertyville coach Scott Bogumil said of Barth. “But we can't think about that too much. We have to keep moving forward.

“We were able to fight back with some threes tonight but when you get down by 20 to a team like this, it's tough.”

Warren has now beaten all the teams in the North Suburban Lake Division with a .500 record or better, including Zion-Benton and Mundelein.

“Right now, we're playing pretty well,” Warren coach Chuck Ramsey said. “But we know that every good team keeps improving and if we want to be a real good team, we've got to stay at it.”