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Bikus, Mundelein manage to shoot down Vernon Hills

The boys basketball season is just a couple of weeks old, but Mundelein's Jeff Bikus was a bit concerned with his shooting through the first handful of games.

So he reached out to a former Mundelein assistant coach, Ceola Clark, now an assistant at Stevenson, and another assistant at Lake Zurich, Chris Pickens, who also played ball at Barrington.

The consultations seemed to help, as Bikus found the range in a 10-point comeback in the fourth quarter which propelled Mundelein past host Vernon Hills 56-53 in nonconference play at Vernon Hills on Friday night.

"I've been working on my shot quite a bit," said Bikus, who scored 5 of his team-high 14 points in the final quarter. "Ceola Clark has been helping me with my shot over the last few days. Also, Chris Pickens has been helping a lot. I owe it to them, and my shots have been a lot better this week than the last couple of weeks."

Bikus capped a 13-4 run with a jumper that brought Mundelein (4-2) back from a 41-31 deficit to start the fourth quarter. With 5:41 left, the Mustangs were within 45-44.

The final minutes back-and-forth was just beginning.

Andrew Silva (team-high 14 points) dropped in a couple of free throws for a 51-49 Mustangs lead with 3:13 left.

Vernon Hills (2-3) bounced back with four straight points on a Derrick Jones on layup and another from Tony Brown (19 points and 7 rebounds) that put the Cougars back ahead 53-51 at the two-minute mark.

Mundelein got enough free throw makes down the stretch to hold on. Conor Enright (14 points) made 2 on two different occasions, James Willman made the eventual winning short jumper with 1:03 left for a 1-point lead and Thomas Marcotte hit the last free throw with 7.4 seconds left for the 3-point final margin.

Vernon Hills had some issues down the stretch as turnovers, missed free throws and a couple missed 3-point attempts sealed its fate.

"I don't know if it was a nice win - but it was a win," Mundelein coach Matt Badgley said. "We still have a lot to learn. Part of ot os this group of guys, when the new coaches got here, they've gone 11-106 over the last four years. So we're in the process of trying to turn that mentality around a little bit, which means they have to learn how to win possessions. We lost a lot of possessions tonight."

Badgley also rued his team's struggles at the foul line.

"When you shoot 50 percent of free throws on the road," said Badgley, "you don't come out with a win very often."

Still, the Mustangs did have something go their way in earning a comeback win - something they also did last week in their own Thanksgiving tournament.

"That was absolutely a positive," Badgley said. "So that's two games that we've been able to win late. It's like a horse race in basketball. You have to be able to get out of the gate. There's two gates - at the start of the game, and the start of the second half."

Vernon Hills trailed 22-19 at the break but broke out in the third quarter - especially Luke Perlin, who scored all of his game-high 20 points all in the second half. He knocked down four 3s in the third quarter as the Cougars outscored the Mustangs 22-9 for a 10-point advantage.

The Cougars had starter Jack Himel scratched just a couple minutes before the game with a lingering thigh injury, and Brown filled in well in his place.

"We got down early, and I liked our resiliency," Vernon Hills coach Matt McCarty said. "We battled back and Tony Brown did great things in the first half to cut the lead to 3 at halftime. Then we got up by 10 as Luke (Perlin) got hot. We were kind of waiting for him to break out a little bit.

"I did like the effort for the most part. You have to give Mundelein credit, they hit the free throws when they had to. Hats off to Mundelein."

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