She’s thin and she’s a teenager and she looks light. So the coach, Bob Becker, decided to pick her up and carry her. He wouldn’t just help her get to the locker room, letting her lean on his shoulder and hobble along. No, the coach picked Tenley Dowell up, half of her, anyway, with assistant coach Megan Hasler taking the other side.

“Wow,” the coach said afterwards. “Heavier than you’d think.”

“She is tall,” Hasler said, leaving unsaid the truth that a 5-foot-11 sophomore who has played basketball forever comes with an athlete’s body, all bone and muscle, all weightier than anything Big Macs can do for you.

By game’s end tonight – Morton’s Lady Potters 49, Metamora 25 – the only moment anyone cared about was that instant when Tenley Dowell fell to the court. Dowell is a rare talent, capable of scoring from anywhere in any way and eager to defend the other team’s best. She went down early in the fourth quarter. She had made a pass out of a trap and taken a long step to follow the ball. Suddenly, she cried out in pain.

Becker’s first thought was a knee. He had seen ACL’s come apart. His daughter, Josi, lost a season two years ago. The all-stater Chandler Ryan played only nine games last season. But Dowell immediately reached back to her right ankle, and even as she dropped her head to the floor sobbing, even as Becker and trainer Katie Gavin knelt at Dowell’s side, there was some relief in knowing she reached for an ankle, not a knee.

Last season I asked Dowell a “on a scale of 1 to 10” question. In the sectional championship, she made two free throws to assure victory. She’d shot 50 percent at the line all season, so how nervous was she with that game on the line? “Like, 7,” she said. Tonight I asked, “How much did the ankle hurt?” She said, “Like, 8.” Translated into old sportswriter language, that means it hurt like hell. The good news is, a rolled ankle will fix itself in time, a couple weeks maybe, but no scalpels are needed.

There’s not much to say about the game. In horse racing, they’d call it a walk-over. In boxing, it’s the champ knocking over a tomato can. In baseball, a laughter. For the undefeated, two-time defending state champion Lady Potters, it was their sixth straight victory this season, their 19th in a row overall, their 26th straight at the Potterdome, and their 72d in the last 78 games.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the mismatch was what seemed to be Metamora’s absolute determination to commit as many offensive fouls as possible. I made notes of seven offensive fouls, five charges, one illegal screen, one a push-down from behind. Some of those fouls could be attributed to good defensive positioning by the Lady Potters. But most came as Metamora’s stumblers stumbled toward the hoop. That, and acts of frustration by girls who knew they had fallen into the deep end of the shark tank.

Look, it was 30-11 at halftime.

About the third quarter, I will not type a word other than to say Morton led at quarter’s end, 32-13. You do the math.

Dowell’s two free throws early in the fourth quarter had raised the lead to 34-13 before she made that long step and rolled onto the outside of her foot. After that, nothing mattered except the extent of Dowell’s injury. She returned to the bench with 5:14 to play, an ice pack on the ankle. Her father, Troy, in his day a Pekin High basketball star, came from the training room with her, carrying her shoe and a bottle of Gatorade.

“Sprained,” he said later. “She’ll be OK.”

Brandi Bisping led Morton’s scoring with 17. Dowell and Jacey Wharram had 8 apiece, Kassidy Shurman 6, Caylie Jones 5, Josie Becker 3, and Lindsey Dullard 2.

Last I saw of the Dowells, a half hour after the game, they were headed back to the training room for treatment. Again, Tenley didn’t have to hobble. This time her father picked her up and carried her.