Warren’s season of hope began with a brainstorm in early November.
Alone in a room, the players drafted a list of goals they hoped to accomplish this season. The half-hour players-only chat session yielded what seemed to be realistic expectations.
Win the North Suburban Conference title. Go undefeated at home. Beat the teams they lost to a year ago. Things like that.
“Then we just got carried away,” said senior Langston Hughes. “Someone was like, `Let’s get Downstate.’ We said, `No, we want to win the state championship.’ “
What? Warren? The mere thought sent the room into an uproar. “Everybody started yelling,” Hughes said. “We went out and gave it to coach (Chuck Ramsey). He looked at it and smiled. He said, `This is what we wanted to see.’ We haven’t looked back ever since.”
They certainly will look back at this weekend with fondness. The Blue Devils fell one victory short of their goal Saturday night, losing to St. Joseph 61-51 in the Class AA state title game at Carver Arena.
But not too many people outside of Gurnee thought the Blue Devils (27-5) would even make it Downstate, much less advance to the title game.
“The papers said that we were going to finish ninth out of the eight teams down here,” said senior Mike Brandow. “That got us all riled up.”
The Blue Devils carried that chip on their shoulder all season. They felt slighted by the media, fans and opposing teams, and they were determined to prove every last one of them wrong.
“We looked at all the papers and everybody is being mentioned but us,” Hughes said. “We just kind of laugh and say, `OK, we get no respect.’ We said we could win this whole thing and it wouldn’t make a difference. Teams would still be like, `Who’s Warren?’ We just used that as motivation.”
The Blue Devils also used the phrase “no respect” more this weekend than Rodney Dangerfield does in an hourlong comedy routine. It became a rallying cry of sorts.
“This team put Warren basketball on the map this week,” Ramsey said. “They just refused to quit.”
Such was the case in the fourth quarter when Warren trailed St. Joe by 16 points. But as the fans headed for the exits, the Blue Devils kept battling.
Warren cut the lead to seven points with two minutes left before running out of gas and miracles. But that didn’t stop the players from celebrating their accomplishment.
“This is the greatest experience I’ve ever had,” Hughes said as he balanced the second-place trophy on his head. “No one gave us a chance to do anything down here. But we proved them all wrong.”
Not that the Blue Devils didn’t enjoy playing the woe-is-us part. They used it as motivation all the way to the title game.
“We’ve had a lot of fun with it,” said junior Jourdain Milot. “We wanted to go out there and show that we are a good team defensively and offensively.”
Perhaps more so defensively, which is what carried Warren all season. The Blue Devils held their opponents to 46 points a game and 38.5 percent shooting.
“I feel like we have experienced, savvy players,” Ramsey said. “This is a very experienced team both in season and out of season. We play a ton of basketball–summer-team camps and leagues and shootouts. These kids have been coming to my camp since they were in the 5th grade.”
Now the seven seniors leave the program with a second-place finish to their credit.
“We had high expectations,” Milot said. “We wanted to be the best team to ever play at Warren. I think we’ve come down here and shown that we are the best team that’s ever played at Warren.”
And they earned a little respect along the way.
