I’d tell you how I got to Monroe, Wisconsin, except I don’t know. It was 189 miles from my house. Exited off I-39 somewhere near Rockford, drove through fog and rain and the gloom of night descending at 3:30 in the afternoon, did a couple U-turns in answer to that I’m-lost-again feeling, thought unkind things of Google Maps, inquired at two gas stations, and delivered my sorry wandering soul to the Monroe High School gym in time to see the Morton Lady Potters defeat the Cheesemakers, 57-40.

The old guy sitting beside me all night was a Cheesemakers fan. As to why he was in the Morton section, he said, “Like to see the other team closer.” He came to love the Lady Potters. “They’re just out-hustlin’ our girls. We got size on ‘em, but your girls are qui-eek.” I believe that means the Morton girls are double-quick if they’re so quick it takes two syllables to say how quick.

I asked him, “Do you know Monroe’s record?”

“Undefeated,” he said. “Other night, we let some team have nine points in the first half and nine in the second half. We didn’t look that good. That other team, it wasn’t like your team. Your team is good.” Then he asked, “You see ‘em play a lot?”

“Every game.”

“You take notes all the time?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long since we scored.”

I looked at my notes. “It was 24-23, Morton. Now it’s 39-23. That’s 15-0 in 7 minutes and 16 seconds.”

“Over,” he said.

There were 11 minutes to play in the second of the 18-minute halves that are Wisconsin’s unusual rule. But the old guy had it right, for on this night one of Illinois’s best girls basketball teams was a lot better than one of Wisconsin’s. That 39-23 lead soon became 50-28. Such was Morton’s superiority that the old guy said, “Hope we get 40. Look respectable.”

Morton won easily because its offense performed at a standard only slightly higher than its defense. Twice sensational – in the game’s first eight minutes and in the second half’s first 10 minutes – the Potters offense created any mid-range shot it wanted and consistently moved the ball into the paint for close-up work at the rim. In those collective 18 minutes, Morton scored 36 of its 57 points. Meanwhile, the Potters’ defense caused such discombobulation among the Cheesemakers that the poor girls threw as many passes to nobody as they did to somebody. In those 18 minutes when the Potters scored 36, the Cheesemakers (I just like to type that!) scored 12.

When I say Morton’s offense was perfect in the first eight minutes, I mean it was without flaw to a layman’s eye. The Potters led, 22-9, with Katie Krupa turning nifty entry passes into powered-up layups and Tenley Dowell dropping in mid-range jumpers as well as slashing to the rim.

The Potters’ 14-3 run starting the second half was more of the same: Dowell a 3-pointer, Courtney Jones an 12-footer, Krupa a layup, Dowell an attack on the rim, Raquel Frakes a free throw, Jones two free throws, and Peyton Dearing a 3. That made it 42-26 – and Dearing, a little left-handed guard, had just begun.

The 3 was the first of her 12 straight points in three minutes. After the 3, she scored on back-to-back fast breaks of the very best kind, which is to say the freshman Krupa ripped down a defensive rebound each time, sprinted up-court on the dribble each time, and each time threw beautiful long bounce passes to the flying Dearing for layups – and when I say flying, I mean she is  a D-1 soccer player and when those people get in a hurry, they fly.

Dowell led Morton’s scoring with 14. Dearing had 12, Krupa 11, Jones 6, Raquel Frakes 4, and five players had 2 each: Lindsey Dullard, Maddy Becker, Bridget Wood, McKenna Baughman, and Claire Kraft.

And how, you ask, after wandering north, did I get home?

Maybe the only thing I learned in college was that you don’t need to know everything, you just need to know how to find it out. So I asked people for help on Google Maps. I asked: 1) Bob Becker’s mother, 2) Tenley Dowell’s mother, 3) the old man in the bleachers, 4) Bob Becker’s daughter, Josie, 5) and my ace co-pilot, John Bumgarner, who said, “Don’t ask me, I’m not smart enough to have a smart phone.”