A year ago the Warrenton boys basketball team ended a near decade-long drought, beating Mexico in the first round of the district tournament in Hannibal.

This season, the Warriors want more.

Warrenton earned the No. 3 seed and will face No. 6 St. Dominic (6-16) Monday at Wentzville Liberty.

Liberty and Fulton earned the top two seeds and received byes into the semifinals.

“We lost two games going into the seeding meeting and Fulton had a lot of momentum, and Liberty has beaten a lot of Class 5 schools, so I’m not surprised,” Warrenton Head Coach Mike Uffmann said. “And after we lost to Clopton, I told the guys not to be surprised with the three-seed. We have to play well next week anyway, so it’s just an added game.”

St. Dominic is led by senior guard Jared North, who averages 13.3 points while shooting 43.1 percent from 3-point range.

No other Crusader averages more than six points.

“He’s a 1,000-point scorer and he can shoot it from anywhere,” Uffmann said of North. “They run a lot of sets for him. Defensively, they’ll probably pack it in on us. They play hard and they’re tough defensively.”

To combat the pack-line defense, Uffmann hopes his outside shooters are ready to fire.

Sophomore guard Jake Tonioli leads the Warriors with 46 3-pointers this season, but has struggled of late.

He scored two points in Warrenton’s double-overtime win over Washington Monday, and had scored 11 points or less in his last seven games heading into Tuesday’s meeting with Francis Howell Central.

“He gives us an outside element, and against a team like St. Dominic that could pack it in defensively, we’ve got to have an outside threat to spread them out,” Uffmann said. “Dylan (Chandler) has been shooting it well from the outside, and Brenden (Smith) shoots it well when he shoots it. So we have three guys that are an outside threat, then we can go back inside.”

The inside duo of Caleb Strauss and Trevor Alberternst has led Warrenton most of the season.

The pair averages 11.3 and 12.8 points, respectively.

Strauss led Warrenton with 22 points in last year’s district win over Mexico.

Alberternst and Smith added 12, and Uffmann hopes last year’s experience will lead to a district championship game appearance this year.

“We’re an older team and we played a few more Class 5 schools, so we’re more prepared,” he said. “We’re competing at a much higher level now. And a lot of that is our mindset. We’re going into games now expecting to win, whereas last year we were just hoping to win.”

The championship is scheduled for next Friday at 6 p.m.

“You can’t win a district unless you’re playing in that final game, so we want to be playing Friday night,” Uffmann said. “It will be a great environment, but we have to take care of two good teams first before that.”