Lady Potters 47

Mahomet-Seymour 23

This one was a song sung in sweet harmony. The Potters’ 2-3 zone kept Mahomet-Seymour on the outside failing to get into the paint. With the ball, the Potters were, for once, five people moving freely, creating space, delivering passes only where the ball’s next stop is the bottom of the net. It was enough to make a guy think of a song the darling Maria sang in West Side Story . . .

I feel pretty
Oh, so pretty
I feel pretty, and witty, and bright
And I feel pity
For any girl who isn’t me tonight

Here I beg forgiveness from hoops junkies for lapsing into kitschy Broadway sentiment, but really, if you, like the Potters, had endured only misery in 2023, you, too, might have been as happy as Graci Junis, a Potter who did good work off the bench tonight and, to the surprise of many, perhaps including Graci, threw in a 3-pointer from the low left corner late in the third quarter.

You may well ask how happy Graci was when I reminded her, “And you made a 3.”

She said, “YES! I DID!” And her face rearranged itself into the prettiest, wittiest, and brightest face for miles around.

“How’d that happen?” I said.

“I DON’T KNOW!”

About time for unknowable good things to happen for the Potters. This miserable patch had reached five straight losses, six in seven games, the program’s longest such stretch during a decade in which it won four state championships. Only the most optimistic of observers drove east on I-74 tonight expecting the Potters, at 11-9 for the season, to have an easy time of it against a 17-5 team ranked in Class 3A’s top 20.

But an easy time it was, 12-3 after a quarter, 22-7 at the half, and Graci’s 3 made it 34-10 after three. This was a Mahomet-Seymour team averaging nearly 50 points a game. It scored one field goal in each of the first three quarters, and those were 3-pointers because it could find no way inside against Morton’s hustling, aggressive defenders. It didn’t score in the paint for the first 27 minutes.

Meanwhile, as in games early this season but not so much lately, Morton’s offense moved so smoothly that 12 of its 17 field goals came inside, the result of full-out attacks at the rim and the occasional steal and breakaway layup.

“I was happy for the kids,” Bob Becker, the Potters’ coach, said. “I was proud. Lesser kids, lesser teams, considering the trials and tribulations we’ve been going through – maybe without the persistence and the perseverance, the never-give-up, some lesser people might have gone, ‘Oh, man . . . ’”

“We’re all just tired of losing,” Tatym Lamprecht said.

“We played more together,” Julia Laufenberg said.

“More of a team having fun, everyone enjoying it, and a lot of players got their confidence back,” Izzy Hutchinson said.

“We were diving on the floor, we were hustling to get rebounds, we were having fun,” Ellie VanMeenen said.

I asked, when did the fun begin?

“After the first quarter I saw the score,” she said, and the score was Guests 12, Home 3, and she recalled memories of misery not yet wiped out, “Like, ‘Wow, that used to be us.’”

Three nights earlier, the Potters’ bus ride home from a Canton misery took them down ghostly Route 24. Tonight they came home on I-74, a wonder of 20th century engineering. Near Farmer City, they passed that skyscraper with the DeKalb corn sign lit up. They crossed the mighty Kickapoo Creek where, a long time ago, my Dad dropped his hammer into the creek, fell in after it, and lived to say, “Both of us swam like a rock.” I laughed when he told that story and I laughed tonight.

The Potters’ next game: Friday night, Metamora, at the Potterdome.

Morton’s scoring tonight: Addy Engel 16 (with two 3’s), Hutchinson 11 (and eight rebounds), Lamprecht 10 (two 3’s and eight steals), Julia Laufenberg 3, Junis that smiling 3, VanMeenen 2, and Annelise Heppe 2.