Warren 81, Mundelein 57

What's the best way to avenge a big loss?

A 44-point swing in your favor isn't a bad place to start.

Almost one month ago, Mundelein played the role of ungracious host and sent Warren home with a 20-point loss.

On Friday night, the Blue Devils returned the favor by blowing Mundelein right out of Gurnee in almost the exact same fashion.

Warren shot out of the gate, made an obscene number of easy layups and putbacks and cruised to a 24-point, 81-57 victory in a North Suburban Conference Lake Division game.

Warren and Mundelein will face each other again in a first-round IHSA tournament game that is scheduled to be played in less than two weeks.

Warren, which improves to 14-9 overall and 6-6 in Lake play, is the No. 9 seed in the Barrington sectional. Mundelein, which drops to 16-11 and 5-7 in the Lake, is seeded eighth. The teams will face each other on Feb. 27 at the Libertyville regional.

"We really worked on what we needed to do to beat them and we had pretty good practices this week," said Warren guard Brandon Paul, who pumped in a game-high 27 points. He also pulled down a game-high 10 rebounds and dished out 7 assists. "The first time (against Mundelein), we just let them shoot too much and get too many offensive rebounds. This time, we sustained them on the boards. We beat them by about 21 (rebounds, 42-21) and we just got back on defense.

"We also found out that their weakness is that they don't really have strong post players so we just pounded it down in the post and took it to the basket. I think this gives us a lot of confidence for the tournament."

Mundelein, meanwhile, is struggling in the confidence department. The Mustangs have now lost seven of their last nine games, including six in a row.

"Confidence has been a big problem for us lately, but so has effort," Mundelein coach Dick Knar said. "They (Warren) killed us on the boards. That was one thing. And they also worked way harder than we did.

"I told our guys that they were going to play with a lot more aggression because they had revenge on their minds. And we backed away. We did not attack and they killed us. They kicked our butts in every facet of the game. Every single one.

"We had no business being in this game. From the start, they beat us at every aspect. And we did not have any energy to change that."

Mundelein guard Ben Brust did his best to give his team a spark. He scored a team-high 20 points, including 12 in the second half.

But it was too little, too late for the Mustangs, who were down by only 11 points at halftime but saw that deficit balloon to 22 points when Warren opened the third quarter with a 15-4 run over the first three minutes.

"We just didn't bring the intensity that we need to bring, especially the intensity that we gave (Warren) in the first game," said Brust, who was joined in double figures by just one other teammate. Navjot Singh had 11 points. "Our rotations were just bad. We weren't playing very good defense. And we gave them a lot of open looks and layups.

"We just couldn't get in a good flow. There wasn't a lot of positive energy."

There were, however, a lot of positives for Warren, which got 11 guys significant playing time. David Duncan added 17 points off the bench and Jake Anderson finished with 15 points.

"We got off to a good start and got the ball inside and played pretty decent defense. From there we executed pretty well," Warren coach Chuck Ramsey said. "But the next game (against Mundelein) is really the most important of the three and both teams are going to be ready."