Sometimes, at some basketball games, you forget to breathe. Except it’s not really about breathing. It’s about exhaling. Without meaning to, you’re holding your breath. And until you remember to exhale, you can’t breathe again. So there you are, waiting to exhale because lest you miss whatever wonder comes next. Some games just leave you breathless – such as tonight’s, the Morton High School Lady Potters beating Peoria High, 66-46, for a regional championship.

Imagine this. You’re in the fourth row of the bleachers and the Potters’ point guard, Josi Becker, has the ball. She’s sprinting against a defender who wants the ball. Only Becker isn’t giving it up, not now, not ever. The little engine that could, Becker is a 5-foot-3 dynamo with a high-rev motor. If she sprinted a mile tonight, she sprinted five, all with the ball in her hands, flying through and around a full-game, fully-clawed, total-body-contact, end-to-end press that scared the bejeebers out of breathless people in the fourth row. But not Becker. I don’t care if she had a single assist and I don’t care that she scored 17 points. Nothing mattered except getting the ball up-court. “We knew it would be an up-tempo, physical game,” she says. Tired? “I’m probably going to sleep in tomorrow morning.”

Imagine this. Peoria’s senior star, Jailynn Lawson, has not scored. Her team is down, 43-27. She has not scored because she can find no way to beat the Morton defense, particularly the in-her-face defense played by Morton’s senior star, Brandi Bisping. So here’s Lawson on a drive. Here’s Bisping on the low block, right side. I’m holding my breath because I know what’s coming. Lawson will not slow down. Bisping will not move aside. And Lawson flips up a no-chance prayer while ker-rashing into Bisping, who ker-rashes to the court. And the call, properly, is a charge. I exhale. I see Bisping flat on her back. I see her pump both fists in a defender’s celebration of victory. “The 66-46 was not representative of how the game felt,” she says. Meaning no quarters were asked or given. A quick smile. Then: “Some of us just don’t like each other.”

Imagine the Potters’ sophomore, Tenley Dowell. Imagine her rising high for her first shot of the game, a 3-pointer from the right arc. By the first quarter’s end, she scores three more times, twice hurtling inside for layups delivered with a veteran’s crafty elegance. A third layup comes with 45 seconds left in the first quarter. She picks the pocket of a Peoria rebounder. The theft caps a 12-2 run giving the Potters a lead they never lost. “We were just flowing together,” Dowell says. “Everyone was executing so well.”

I could go on imagining. I will. Imagine the Morton coach, Bob Becker, ripping his suit coat off. His team leads, 28-18 at 2:23 of the second quarter. But he sees what’s happening. He sees Peoria’s press as a threat, not least because the men in zebra shirts see only one of every 10 hacking fouls committed by the desperate Peorians. So Becker rips off his coat, a coaching move usually good for a technical foul – only he gets one arm hung up and is so slow at throwing down the coat that the zebra men don’t notice. “The kids had grit, toughness, whatever you want to call it – and they kept their composure way better than I did,” Becker says.

Imagine what it all means. Unless I am mistaken, and I have been many times, I believe the Potters now have played their most difficult game leading to the final four at Redbird Arena. It’s not so much that Peoria High is an outstanding team, though it did win 20 games this year and, on January 21, lost to Morton by only a point, 54-53. The greater difficulty is that Peoria has two very good players – Jailynn Lawson, a Bradley University commit, and Mackenzie Jenkins, strong inside – and its frantic pace of play can force an opponent out of its comfort zone.

The Potters refused to be shaken. They led only 22-18 halfway through the second quarter. They then went on a 16-3 run of the kind that has carried the team to back-to-back state championships. With great ball-handling they moved through the Peoria press for six layups, the last scored by Dowell cutting back-door for a bounce pass from Bisping. The Potters also were 4-for-4 at the free throw line. At halftime, Morton 38-21.

It was 48-29 – Game Over — before Peoria’s Lawson scored her first points. Until then she was 0-for-7 against Bisping (and wound up 4-for-16, scoring 9 points, two fewer than she scored in an injury-shortened appearance when the teams met a month ago).

Dowell led Morton’s scoring with 20 (17 in the first half). Becker’s 17 included 14 in the second half. Lindsey Dullard had 11, Bisping 10, Caylie Jones 4, Jacey Wharram 2, and Bridget Wood 2. (Bisping also had 7 rebounds, moving her career total to 1,047, two behind record holder Cindy Bumgarner.)

The Potters made seven 3-pointers, their season’s average, and now have 222 3’s for the season, a program record.

At 29-2 they are five victories away from another state championship. Monday night they play Galesburg in the Limestone sectional. It’s a rematch of the team’s game a month ago won by Galesburg 39-37. That night the Potters were shut out on 3’s, the only time that’s happened all season. I don’t expect it to happen again, nor, apparently, does tonight’s losing coach, Meechie Edwards, generous in his praise of the Potters.

He saw the Potters as a “smart team” that will run its sets repeatedly until it gets the shot it wants. He says Bob Becker “is too smart” to be fooled by the Peorians’ second-half decision to give Lawson the ball at point guard. ”They went to their zone,” he said. Asked to compare this season’s Potters to those of, say, a year ago, Edwards said, “I see them back down to State again.”