Ellie VanMeenen ker-RASHED to the floor. She’d gone up for a 3-pointer from the left side. Fouled, she fell backwards. From across the way, we heard a CLUNK. Me, I would need an ambulance. Not VanMeenen.

She is 16 years old. With the wonderful invulnerability of youth, VanMeenen bounced up and made all the Potters feel better. She made her three points the hard way, three free throws, nothing but net each time.

The game’s first 24 minutes, she scored three points. The first two minutes of the fourth quarter, she scored eight. Two and a half minutes later, the Potters completed a 17-1 run for a 44-22 lead.

Until then, the Potters had been soporific. Maybe the hour-and-so bus ride north and west to Abingdon mellowed ‘em out. Maybe the sounds of silence in Abingdon’s little gym did it. Maybe no one much cared about the Abingdon/Avon Shootout with 16 anonymous teams playing eight games from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. (Well, we know Peoria Notre Dame too well.)

This much is certain. The Potters aren’t where they want to be. They want to be Class 3A state tournament contenders. Macomb is a Class 2A team with no size and no strength that had lost seven of 11 games, including one this week by 46 points.

Against that team, the Potters scored 11 points in the first quarter, 13 in the second, and THREE in the third. Scoring 19 in the fourth made it a runaway, and the Potters won’t throw back the W, their sixth in the last seven games, those by an average of 21 points a game.

And yet . . .

“We weren’t with it for three quarters of the game,” the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, said.

Truth is, no one was much with it. No buzz in the neat little gym. One team represented two villages with a combined population of 336.

“Like, the gym empty,” VanMeenen said.

Addy Engel, a senior captain and the Potters’ leading scorer, said there’s a fix for the not-with-it, empty-gym problem.

“We have to create the energy ourselves,” she said. “We have to create it on the court and on the bench.”

Now 7-3 for the season, the Potters next play at Pekin, a 5:30 p.m. game with the Morton-Pekin boys' teams following.

Engel led the scoring today with 18 (11 in the second quarter). Ellie VanMeenen had 13 (10 in the fourth). Abby VanMeenen and Paige Selke had 4 each, Anja Ruxlow 3, Izzy Hutchinson 2, and Magda Lopko 2.