In 10 minutes and 21 seconds of the first half tonight, the Morton High School Lady Potters outscored Chicago North Lawndale, 48-0. At halftime it was 55-6. Game’s end, 86-26.

That set of bizarre numbers is not even the most bizarre thing about the Potters’ opener in the State Farm Holiday Classic.

The weird part came during pre-game warm-ups.

I’ve made a habit of watching the Potters’ opponents warm up. The star is usually easy to find. She’s an ego kid. She sets herself apart, perhaps by shoes that don’t match her teammates’, certainly by her cool, aloof swagger. The hardest part of my little game is deciding which five girls are the starters. Get three right, I give myself a B+.

Tonight, during North Lawndale’s warm-ups, I spotted all five starters of the Lady Phoenix.

I could attribute my A+ success to decades of keen-eyed observation of basketball players.

Or I could tell the truth and say North Lawndale dressed only five players from what once was a 14-player squad.

I’d never seen a game in which one team had only five players.

The Chicagoans’ coach, DeWan White, explained: “We had four young ladies who quit. Two other young ladies are injured. One has Lupus. And two are academically ineligible.”

So North Lawndale brought the surviving five to Bloomington-Normal to play four games in four days.

“I wanted to bring up some freshmen,” White said, “but their parents wouldn’t let them make the trip.”

Even early in the season, at full-but-quickly-declining strength, North Lawndale had its problems. It had lost 11 of its 12 games. And tonight its five players were asked to go against the three-time state champion Potters, who came in with 14 players and a 10-1 record.

The full measure of the mismatch was evident early. After North Lawndale tied it at 2-2, Morton scored the next 48 points. I won’t even tell you how they did it, other than to say the Potters were good at basketball in many ways. Example: Lindsey Dullard once finished an alley-oop play off a Josi Becker cross-court pass that she caught at the top of her leap and banked in. Meanwhile, North Lawndale was bad at basketball in all ways. Example: a Phoenix once put up a baseline shot that hit the back of the backboard, yes, it did.

Morton’s 36 points in the first quarter set a Holiday Classic record. Its 55 points at halftime set a record. Its 39 field goals for the game set a record. Its 86 points for the game were two short of the record.

Of Morton’s 14 players, 13 scored and the other, Olivia Remmert, missed such an easy layup that she was seen laughing halfway through the shot and laughing still as she fell to the floor. Dowell led the scoring with 25 (13 in the first three minutes). Maddy Becker had 10. Peyton Dearing and Courtney Jones each had 8. Dullard and Addie Cox had 6 apiece, Bridget Wood and Kassidy Shurman 5 each, Megan Gold 4, Kathryn Reiman 3, and 2 each by Josi Becker, Caylie Jones, and Claire Kraft.

Afterwards, I had one more question for the North Lawndale coach. What did he tell his five girls before the game?

“I told them to play hard, have fun, respect the game, and enjoy the game,” White said.

All that, they did.

I sought out Jamia Lockheart. She is a little guard who handled the ball 95 percent of the time against Morton’s pressure defenses tonight and led her team in scoring with nine points.

Two years ago, she was a benchwarmer on the North Lawndale team that defeated Morton in this State Farm tournament, 48-46, in four overtimes. That team then lost to the Potters in the state championship game, 58-41.

“Back then, De’Asa Almon made three buzzer-beater 3’s for us to win,” Lockheart said. Yes, Morton remembers those 3-pointers. Almon is a senior now, the one with Lupus. “Tonight was tough,” Lockheart said. “Morton’s a great team with a great program and even beating us like that, they showed good sportsmanship all night. They helped us up if we fell. It was tough, but it was fun.”

I stood with Lockheart outside the North Lawndale dressing room. Three of her teammates stood in the doorway, eavesdropping on the interview, cracking up at the sight of Lockheart, the star. When we finished, the teammates set up a raucous cheer. Turns out, apparently , it’s possible to lose by 60 and have fun.

That said, it’s more fun to win by 60, and the victory sends Morton into a second-round game Thursday night against Normal West at the Normal Community High School gymnasium. Game time, 7 p.m.