With a mystery girl in the middle, the Morton High School Lady Potters opened the 2016-17 basketball season Monday night at the Potterdome with a 51-24 thumping of Chatham-Glenwood. I say “mystery girl” because she came in disguise. It was baffling. I first saw her during the jayvee game when the Potters’ varsity took seats in the bleachers a row ahead of me. That brown-haired girl? Who was she? I had seen the varsity three nights earlier in a scrimmage. But not her. That girl with the brown hair, where’d she come from?

At halftime of the jayvee game, the varsity girls strolled onto the court to shoot around. The brown-haired girl was out there. Good size. Moved smoothly, confidently. Looked like she had played before. But I still hadn’t caught a glimpse of her face. Even while trying to puzzle out her identity, I wondered why the Potters’ star, Brandi Bisping, was not on the floor. The mystery deepened — until I saw the brown-haired girl shoot a 3 from the corner.

Then I knew. That girl, she used to be a blonde. That brown-haired girl, she used to be a blonde, a shimmering blonde, a blonde sometimes so blonde as to put canaries to shame. The brown-haired girl was the formerly blonde Brandi Bisping.

When she returned to the bleachers, I said, “Uh, Brandi, the hair . . .”

“Too expensive,” she said.

No more cut-and-colors at $90 apiece.

“I’d have recognized you,” I said, “when the game started.”

“I hope I show up,” she said.

No worries there. Four minutes into it, Bisping had two offensive rebounds, a steal leading to a fast-break layup, and another layup off a nifty in-the-paint pass from Josi Becker. The Lady Potters had an 8-0 lead that became 17-5 at quarter’s end. Though Morton never shot well, especially in a dreary second quarter, the 8-0 run established a dominance never in question.

To call the Potters’ second quarter dreary is to be kind. They scored once in the first six minutes and allowed the visitors to move within five at 19-14. The Potters scored only once in those six minutes mostly because they were busy throwing ill-advised passes and clanking open shots. There was so much ill-advisement and rim-rattling, in fact, that a team as good as the Lady Potters would soon decide, “Enough of this ratzenfratzin’ tomfoolery.”

From 19-14, the Potters got serious. They scored the first half’s last six points and the second half’s first nine points. The 15-0 run made it 34-14 with 2:38 to play in the third. Dreary had become electric. The Potters contested every rebound, winning most of the contests. While their defense never rose to last season’s shut-down-anybody quality, it limited Chatham-Glenwood to 5 points in the first quarter, 4 in the third, and 6 in the fourth.

Morton shot poorly, 5 for 27 on 3’s. With an ordinary performance from out there – say 9 for 27 – the Potters might have won by 40. Not that the coach, Bob Becker, was much worried. His little guard, Kassidy Shurman, missed her first six 3-point tries. During a timeout, he gave her a knuckle-bump and said, “Keep shooting.” Her seventh sailed softly to the rim, bounced once, bounced on the other side, rolled to the glass, and fell off even as Becker leaned this way and that, hoping to coax the shot in. “Kass has been shooting terrifically in practice,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”

Sophomore Tenley Dowell led the Potters’ scoring with 16. Bisping had 13, Josi Becker 10 (with three 3’s), and freshman Lindsey Dullard 7 (all in her first two minutes of varsity play). If we count those victories at the end of last season – of course we count them, they led to a state championship – the Potters now have won 14 straight games.

One more thing. Chatham-Glenwood’s star, Mackenzie Bray, needed 17 points to reach the 1,000-point mark in her career. She had 10 points at halftime. Then came the second half. And for much of that game-deciding time, it was Bisping on Bray, Bisping of whom Bob Becker once said, “If Brandi doesn’t want you to get the ball, you’re not getting the ball.” Needing seven points for 1,000 and finding Bisping in her face, Bray scored four more, leaving her at 997.

“Not getting her 1,000,” Bisping said. “Not in the Potterdome.”

The Lady Potters now have 23 straight games in the mystery girl’s house.