I’m puzzled. There’s a thing I want to write about. I really want to write about it. Problem is, it’s not much about basketball. And we’re here for the basketball. Again, the Morton High School Lady Potters won easy, 80-31 at Limestone tonight. Their 23rd straight victory raises the Potters’ record to 26-1. They’re 12-0 in the Mid-Illini and may have clinched the league title. That, I dunno. I also don’t care because I’m vamping here while trying to dream up a way to write about what I want to write about.

Thirty-one seconds into the game tonight, Limestone had the lead.

It was 2-0.

Twenty-four seconds later, Morton began a 20-0 run.

The Potters did it the way they usually do it. The three-times-running state champions did it with a trapping defense so good that Limestone had cause to celebrate if it completed two passes in a row. Their transition offense was sensational. If the Potters coach Bob Becker shouted “Let’s go, let’s GO” one times, he shouted it a dozen times. His team turned interceptions, steals and other daylight robberies into 3-on-1 fast-breaks. They scored from outside, with three 3-pointers by the Becker sisters, two by Josi, one by Maddy, and they scored inside with crisp passing, such as a Lindsey Dullard pass to the back-cutting Tenley Dowell.

The 20-0 run took four minutes. It was 22-4 after a quarter, 45-16 at halftime (Becker had called off the trapping defense), and 66-23 after three.

Delighted by what he’d seen, especially in that first quarter when the Potters stood on the accelerator every second, Becker said, “I liked our energy and I liked our confidence. It’s nice to play at that level.”

It was nice, too, to play so well on a night when Cindy Bumgarner was in the crowd. She’s one of the Lady Potters’ all-time greats, a 1984 graduate who went on to star at Indiana University. Her name is all over the Potters’ record book, second in scoring to Brooke Bisping, second in rebounds to Brandi Bisping, and both first and second in season scoring average: 23.3 a game in ’83, 24.4 in ’84.

After the game, Becker gathered the Potters and introduced Bumgarner as “the legend” and “maybe the best Potter ever.”

Bumgarner, smiling, said, “Maybe?”

Becker recovered quickly: “Well, I never saw Cindy play. But you have to have that kind of ‘humble swagger.’ You have to believe in yourself.”

Bumgarner told the players they “must focus on what’s ahead.” Yes, nice to have won three state championships in a row. Yes, nice to be riding high now. But looking back doesn’t help you go ahead, and looking too far ahead doesn’t get you there. “The focus now has to be one game at a time,” she said.

By now the careful readers has noticed that I still haven’t figured out a way to write what I want to write. I’ve tried to work in words that might suggest the odd thing, words such as “anatomy” and “dismemberment” and “post-mortem,” even “autopsy.” They’re all good sportswriterly words that have been used in talking about games in which one team left the other for dead.

I’ll give myself another couple minutes of thinking. Here’s the Potters’ scoring: Dowell 16, Josi Becker 13, Dullard 9, Maddy Becker 8, Peyton Dearing 8, Kassidy Shurman 6, Kathryn Reiman 6, Caylie Jones 4, Megan Gold 4, Claire Kraft 2, Addi Cox 2, Courtney Jones 2.

I also want to say something about my favorite moment of this game.

It came in the last minute. The score was 77-31. Morton had the ball. It came to Megan Gold low on the left side, near the 3-point line. Gold is an inside player, seldom allowed outside the paint. But here’s the thing. She used to be a barrel racer. If you’ve ever met a barrel racer – I knew one named Monique Gattreaux – you know barrel racers are not only strong enough to ride horses hell-bent for leather, they’re absolutely fearless.

Anyway, the ball came to Gold.

She realized where she was.

So she took a step back behind the 3-point line.

And the barrel-racing post player put up a step-back 3.

“We were up 50, so I was, like, OK . . . ” Gold said, all smiles.

Oh, if only it had gone in. But it caught the edge of the board.

It would have been the Potters’ 12th 3-pointer of the night. Dullard had one. Five players had two each: Reiman, Maddy Becker, Josi Becker, Dowell, and Shurman.

Kassidy Shurman – she’s the one who caused me all this writing angst. There I was in the bleachers wondering what to write about another runaway game. That’s when the woman next to me said, “You know about Kassidy and the cadavers?”

Uh, excuse me, “WHATTTTT?”

“They go to the Pekin cadaver lab and cut up cadavers,” the woman said.

So afterwards I asked Shurman about cutting up cadavers.

She said, “You start at the back and cut around to the chest and . . . .”

She went on until she was cutting into a hand. “It’s so cool,” she said,

Shurman wants to be a doctor. She figures she’ll be dealing with dead bodies. Might as well start now.

“You want to see some pictures?” she said.

I said, “NOOOO.”