Standout effort from Boudreaux, Lake Forest

Every player on the Lake Forest boys basketball team has bright buttery yellow high-tops.

Except for forward Evan Boudreaux.

His shoes are a few shades off. They’re kind of a greenish yellow.

And wouldn’t you know it, some student fans at Mundelein on Wednesday night were all too happy to point that out. When Boudreaux was shooting free throws, the question was posed, rather loudly, of course: “Why are your shoes different?”

“It’s funny. I’ve been getting fans from every school pointing out the fact that I’ve got different shoes,” Boudreaux laughed. “I tried to get the same color as everyone else, but my feet were too big and (the store) didn’t have the size I needed. I had to try to get the closest thing I could to (the yellow shoes). This was as close as I could get. They’re greenish. They’re a little off.”

Easy to spot because of his one-of-a-kind size 15 shoes, Boudreaux also differentiated himself in other ways.

The 6-foot-8 junior, who already has scholarship offers from seven major Division I colleges, including Iowa, which had a representative in the stands at Mundelein, muscled his way inside for a game-high 25 points to lead Lake Forest to a 70-59 North Suburban Conference Lake Division win over Mundelein. The Scouts dominated and maintained a 20-plus-point lead for most of the way.

Boudreaux, who was the only player for the Scouts to reach double-figures, also rolled up 10 rebounds.

“I’ve always been taught to go to the boards hard offensively and defensively,” Boudreaux said. “I think I can do a little bit of everything and I get a lot of my points from hustle plays.”

Overall, Lake Forest (6-2) got most of its points inside, thanks to its significant size advantage over Mundelein. Only three of the Scouts’ 29 field goals were outside the paint.

“We’ve been able to use our size. When we are patient and get it inside, we are pretty effective,” Lake Forest coach Phil LaScala said. “We were talking about that (before the game), to make sure we attacked the basket to get good shots. We don’t need to shoot a lot of threes.”

Mundelein, on the other hand, was happy to launch from deep.

The Mustangs (1-8) hit 12 three-pointers and used a spirited 30-point fourth-quarter to chop away at what had ballooned to a 27-point deficit.

“We’ve had this same conversation after five games this season, ‘If we just play like we did in the fourth quarter for the whole game, we’d be fine.’ That’s on me. I’ve got to figure out what it’s going to take to get them to play four quarters,” first-year Mundelein coach Corey Knigge said. “You aren’t going to beat the good teams in our league, or any teams in our league, falling behind like that.

“We finally started playing hard in the fourth quarter.”

The Mustangs nailed 7 of their 12 three-pointers in the fourth quarter. Derek Parola (13 points), Sam Nelson (9 points) and Tyler Olson (8 points) all had two 3-pointers in the fourth quarter.

J.T. Michalski also had a fourth-quarter 3-pointer. He finished with a team-high 18 points, all of which he scored after halftime. He had four 3-pointers on the game.

“I just got in a rhythm and I felt really good,” Michalski said of his second-half outburst. “We just started looking for me and I just tried to play hard. I came out as hard as I could in the fourth quarter and tried to play as best I could.”