When it’s a 77-33 victory – the Morton High School Lady Potters defeating Pekin tonight – and it comes after a 74-21 victory following 56-22 and 84-11 victories, the poor sportswriter is left scratching his haircut to think of ways to say the same stuff again. But God is good, and God provides, and early in tonight’s game a handsome gentleman took the seat next to me.

“Go easy on our Pekin girls,” he said, and there was a great old friend, Tom Brandt, once a fleet-footed center fielder at Atlanta High School, once a stalwart on the Redwings’ basketball team, now living in Pekin. Two years ago I introduced him at an alumni banquet featuring the class of 1956: “Here to speak for them is Tom Brandt, known back then as ‘Smilie.’ Senior year, on the baseball team, he hit .389. A freshman named Dave Kindred hit .159.”

Tonight’s score was 33-11 midway through the second quarter. That’s when Tom asked about the Potters’ leading scorer, Tenley Dowell. A long-time observer of Pekin High School basketball, Tom had seen Tenley’s father, Troy, when Troy was a star on Dragons’ teams. Now he had seen Tenley score on a layup with her left hand. She had glided through the Pekin defense gracefully and put the shot against the glass so smoothly that someone who had never seen her play would ask, as Tom did:

“Is she left-handed?”

She is when she wants to be. Dowell is a right-hander, but she can move to the rim on the dribble left-handed and once there she can score with either hand.

“My Dad always taught us to dribble with both hands,” she told me later. “And now I’ve done it so long and so much in practice that it does feel natural.”

As Morton built a 40-14 halftime lead, Dowell scored 17 of her game-high 24 points. She did it easily, on two mid-range jumpers, two short floaters, and three layups, two with the off-hand.

Tom and I talked some golf. We talked some basketball. He said he didn’t watch many girls games. So I brought him up to speed on why the Lady Potters are worth a spectator’s time, even on a 77-33 night.

First, they have talent. Second, they know how to play. Third, they play hard the full 1,920 seconds every night. While talent and mastery of fundamentals distinguishes the Lady Potters, the “play hard” element separates them from almost all other teams. Not many girls teams even know how to play hard, let alone do it every second. (Bob Becker, the Morton coach, tonight scribbled a note on a whiteboard for his players: “Max. Effort.” They gave it.)

They play defense as if defense is the most fun a girl can have on a basketball court. (I don’t know how many steals they had tonight, nor do I know how many times a Pekin player just threw the damned thing into the stands to get rid of it before three Potters descended upon her. Whatever the numbers were, they’re the kind of numbers that get you beat 77-33.)

Tom noticed another important thing that is easy to forget if you’ve seen the Potters all year, now 25-1 for the season and on a 22-game winning streak. “I like the way they move without the ball,” he said.

And as the Potters move, so does the ball. It moves until it finds an open man. (Tonight’s example 1: a Bridget Wood pass from the top of the key down the paint to Courtney Jones underneath. Example 2: a Courtney Jones fast ball from the 3-point arc to Dowell on the low block.)

They put pressure on the other team offensively and defensively. The Potters never give the other side an extra breath. Defensively, they dare you to pick up your dribble; you’re dead the second you do. Offensively, they need a minimum of space to get off a 3-pointer. (Five players made a total of nine 3’s tonight, with Kassidy Shurman making four, one in each quarter. “We can all score,” Dowell said. “It make it hard to anybody to guard us.”) Fact.

Here’s another fact. It was 61-24 with 2.2 seconds to play in the third quarter when Bob Becker, for some reason, called a timeout. A timeout up 37? A timeout with 2.2 seconds on the clock? Well, “Max. Effort” applies to the coach, too. He wanted to run a side-court out-of-bounds play because, you never know, you might need to run a side-court out-of-bounds play in a big game down the road.

So Josi Becker took the ball out. Three 3-point shooters ran to her. The post player, Addi Cox, moved into the paint. If all the defenders went with the shooters – as they did – that would leave Cox open for a lob – and it did.

“I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, I have to do this,’” the seldom-used reserve said. She caught the lob but missed the short shot. (She did make the Potters’ last bucket of the night, a short one with a minute to play.)

One more Atlanta note. A woman tapped me on the shoulder. She was Max Young’s daughter. Max was another of Atlanta’s best athletes. His daughter, Beth Heitman, lives in Wisconsin, in Hayward, up by Lake Superior, seven hours from Morton. But she is a Potters’ fan, thanks to reading some stuff here.

“We came down to Lincoln to see relatives,” Beth said, “and we had to come over here and see the Potters in person.”

She was smiling, and she bought three copies of “The Unbelievables,” and I was smiling.

Dowell’s 24 points led Morton. Dullard and Shurman had 12 each. Courtney Jones had 9, Josi Becker 6, and Megan Gold 4. Caylie Jones and Maddy Becker had 3 each, and Peyton Dearing and Cox had 2 each.