Lady Potters 52, Normal Community West 26

After that Saturday evening East St. Louis psycho-thriller, I don’t know about you, but me, happy to be alive three days later, I needed a kinder, gentler movie. Perhaps a romantic-comedy. A happy story. Something predictable, delightful, pleasing. On arrival at the Potterdome tonight, yes, I needed pleasant. I wanted to be pleasantly bored.

The Lady Potters delivered. They provoked excitement early in the show and midway through. And they did it all so well that the happy ending was never in doubt. Early on, they created a 22-4 run. Later, a 19-0 sprint. The offense moved efficiently with crisp ballhandling, and the defense was so aggressive the poor Normalites seldom got a decent look. Me, I yawned a lot. Perfect.

It was the Potters’ fifth straight victory –- all in five days! – done in workmanlike fashion, solid basketball created by a good team against an overmatched opponent. It was work of a kind that would cause a Hall of Fame coach, in this case the Potters’ Bob Becker, to say a very coach-y thing, “We got a lot of productive minutes from a lot of people tonight.“ The production: the Potters starters scored 29 points, four reserves scored 23.

The best part of those productive minutes – it says here – were provided by the Potters’ Ellie VanMeenen, the 5-foot-9 sophomore who played so well at the end of last season when the Potters finished third in the state Class 3A tournament. Tonight, for the first time this season, she scored in double figures – 17 total, 12 in the first half, scoring from outside (one 3-pointer) and on attacking moves in the paint.

Becker’s summary: “Ellie was terrific at both ends.”

VanMeenen’s summary: “It was fun.”

Speaking of fun, I beg your kind indulgence. I want to go back to Saturday for a fun moment you might have missed.

I call it “Lumberjack Ejects Four Batavians.”

Batavia’s coach drew two technical fouls. Then a referee asked Morton High School’s security to remove two Batavia fans from the bleachers.

And here came the security man. He wore a lumberjack’s red-white-black checked flannel shirt. He had a dark, dark beard. He was 6-foot-8. He didn’t look like a man who needed a really big ax to chop down a tree.

He walked to the top row of the Batavia bleachers. He said something, at which point the four Batavians did what I would have done. They rose from their seats and left the building.

The security man was Jake Rutan. He’s a Morton High SchooI science teacher, chemistry and biology. He played basketball at IVC High School in Chillicothe.

Tonight’s scoring:

VanMeenen 17, Abbey Pollard 9, Dru Brubaker 6, Graci Junis 6, Tatym Lamprecht 5, Addy Engel 4, Julia Laufenberg 2, Emilia Miller 2, Izzy Hutchinson 1.