Lady Potters 59
Dunlap 40
It’s not altogether true to say the Potters won this one sitting down. They won it in every way that good teams win big games. With a lightning streak of shooting. By playing confounding defense. By getting every important rebound. And, yes, by flinging themselves in pursuit of every loose ball until there came a time when they could win sitting down.
A fourth quarter loose ball meant Izzy Hutchinson would soon be on her butt with the ball in her hands because that’s what she does. The game was over by then, the Potters up 21. But no matter. This play was too much fun to ignore. It’s the kind of thing good teams do on good nights.
Izzy looked around. She saw Ellie VanMeenen sitting 15 feet to her left. How Ellie came to be sitting, I dunno, other than she’d been bumping into people, too. Teetering on her butt with Dunlappers buzzing around her, Izzy could not throw a textbook pass to Ellie. So she ROLLED it, just to get rid of it, and maybe Ellie then could do something sitting down.
Ellie made a real basketball pass, albeit an unusual one, made while seated, to Addy Engel, who drove to the hoop. She missed on a layup, but no matter because the smallest of the Potters, 5-foot-7 senior guard Tatym Lamprecht, somehow wrestled the rebound away from Dunlap’s big people. She scored on the put-back to finish the kind of whacky improvisation that happens when you’re about to win your eighth straight game.
Lamprecht’s bucket made it 53-30 and there appeared in front of the Potters’ bench a man in a sport coat and a tie doing a high-stepping happy-coach dance, Bob Becker exuberant, celebrating the kind of surprise success that really good teams create.
Only 25 days ago in the Potterdome, the Potters lost to Dunlap, 59-38. That defeat was one of five in a row to begin January 2023.
But now, eight straight victories, only two of them over cupcakes, and Becker was thrilled.
“We were dominant,” he said, “as dominant you can be, on the road, against a 20-win team . . . “
A team losing by 21 five weeks ago beat that team by 19 tonight, which caused a mathematician to ask Becker, “So does that mean you’re 40 points better now than you were then?”
He said, “We are.”
He so much liked his answer that he repeated it, more loudly, with an exclamation point, “We ARE!”
And, “We proved it tonight.”
From the get-go, Morton was the better team. It may have been the Potters’ best game all season. Lamprecht supplied the lightning offense. She made five 3-pointers, all under defensive pressure, three coming in a three-minute stretch of the second quarter when she lifted the Potters to a 30-18 halftime lead. Meanwhile Morton’s 2-3 zone was so confounding that Dunlap was hard-pressed to complete a pass. In Dunlap’s very first possession, the Potters deflected three passes to set a pattern of frustration that left Dunlap beaten.
.
It was 17-11 after a quarter, 30-17 at the half, and 49-26 after three. Dunlap never came closer than 11 down, at 32-21, and at that point the Potters went on a 10-0 run to close the deal: a Graci Junis 3 from the deep left corner, an Engel layup off a lob pass from the far side, a VanMeenen curl into a left-handed layup, and Lamprecht’s fifth 3 of the night (with one miss, an 83% night for the smiling shootah).
“We’re playing hard,” Becker said, “and we’re making plays, like sometimes we’d call out a set, but we’d play out of it. We’re making basketball plays. Sooo many great moments. Tatym shooting lights out. Ellie, early on, told me, ‘That girl can’t guard me,’ Addy dominant again inside. They’re all in it together. It’s absolutely fun.”
How to explain five straight defeats turning into eight straight victories?
“Same kids, same coach, who knows?”Becker said. “I do know we’ve got a team that’s never going to quit. They’re passing the nerve test every time. We’re playing together, we’re playing to each other’s strengths.”
Lamprecht said, “Everyone, I mean, not one person played a bad game tonight, it was an amazing game for the team.”
Engel: “We’re playing so well together. I feel like we’re in a really good spot heading into the post-season.”
Now 19-9 and 9-4 in the Mid-Illini Conference, the Potters close the regular season Tuesday at home against league-leading Washington.
Regional play begins the next Monday, Morton against Peoria Notre Dame at Limestone High School.
Dunlap is now 20-6 and 9-3.
Morton’s scoring tonight: Lamprecht 19, VanMeenen 12, Engel 11, Hutchinson 7, Junis 6 (two 3’s), Gaby Heer 3 (a 3 in only her second game), Julia Laufenberg 1.