Lady Potters 38

Pekin 27

On my tour of good lunch spots, I stopped today at a favorite place, Jack’s, just off I-155, the Pekin-Tremont exit. I tell you this to delay the game report. Trying something new, I had the “Southwest Chicken Wrap.” It comes with red and green peppers, afloat in a volcanic sauce. I am here to say the thing explodes in you on the way home.

The game?

Well, if I must.

Two nights earlier, on the road against one of the state’s best Class 3A teams, the Potters were heroic, 49-46 over Peoria Notre Dame.

Tonight, not so much.

Before the tipoff, I told a friend in the row behind me, “I have a feeling they’re going to win big tonight, by 20, going away.”

My friend was less optimistic, perhaps more realistic. The Potters have created a mystery season. They’re now 16-9 overall, winners of five straight after losing five straight, dominant on some nights, dormant on others. No one knows which personality will assert itself on which night.

Hearing my happy prediction, the friend asked after my mental well-being: “You feeling all right? Maybe it’s something you ate.”

That’s why I mention the peppers.

As far as I know, though, the Potters ate a decent teenagers’ lunch and had no such culinary excuse for what they did not get done tonight.

They trailed after a quarter, 6-5. They made one field goal.

They led at halftime, 14-11. They had made four more field goals.

Except that it was Pink Night, and it was wonderful to see the Potters had raised $18,500 for Illinois Cancer Care, and it was beautiful to see the Potters in their pink uniforms climbing the bleachers to deliver pink roses to cancer survivors – otherwise, I’d have taken a halftime nap.

Name a way a basketball team plays poorly, the Potters did it against Pekin. They were sloppy with the ball, beaten off the dribble, and gave up too many good looks. It’s not that Pekin is a good team. The Potters won at Pekin six weeks ago, 58-25. In the weeks since, Pekin had lost games by 21, 23, 20, and 26 points. They were 10-12 coming to the Potterdome.

Afterwards, I asked the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, “What was going on?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t anticipate this, being that blah.”

Blah, as in a 5-point quarter followed by a 9-point quarter.

Blah, as in being so flat, so uninspired, that the coach could take only 5 minutes and 16 seconds of the listlessness before he walked down the bench and chose five new Potters to replace the five starters.

At that point, Pekin led, 5-2. In 5 minutes and 16 seconds, the Potters had scored two free throws.

The only good stuff came in the third quarter and early in the fourth. Up 14-13, the Potters scored the next 13 points. They did it primarily with a spark from a deep-bench reserve, Kerrigan Vandel, a little junior guard, a transfer from East Peoria. “Kerrigan was our one bright spot tonight,” Becker said. She finished with a game-high 13 points.

Vandel was in that first wave of reserves replacing the starters. Five of her points came in that 13-0 run. She also was a defensive asset, quick enough to harass the Pekin guards from midcourt to the free throw line. Her 3-pointer with 4:58 to play put the Potters up, 32-16, at which point I told my bleacher-bum friend, “See, they might win by 20 yet.”

No, no. As such games do, deterioration set in. Nobody could play. Everybody could foul. Pekin got lucky with a 3-pointer, the Potters’ last six points were free throws, and, finally, thankfully, it was over.

“We’ll take the win,” Becker said. Then he implied a coach’s frustration by asking a question and answering it. “How did we beat Notre Dame? We didn’t beat Notre Dame by showing up with a lack of intensity or a lack of effort or focus. We beat them because we showed up completely all-in. The energy, the effort, the intensity were all there. . . . Somehow we have to find a way to keep growing consistency.”

Told you lunch. Dinner at McDonald’s, $9.15 at the first window. Driving east of I-74 when the first slice of tomato slid onto my shirt. No peppers, though.

Saturday night the Potters play Limestone, an 8-14 team they defeated 65-55 a month ago. Becker said he’s worried. Should be.

Morton’s scoring tonight: Vandel 13 (“I’m happy, very happy,” she said.) Addy Engel 12, Ellie VanMeenen 5, Izzy Hutchinson 4, Graci Junis 2, Tatym Lamprecht 2.