Suddenly, this is something. Nine straight wins. Two more and they’re the State Farm Holiday Classic champions. Who’da thunk it? We all should start thunkin’ it. Each win lately is better than the one before. I’d shout out, “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat” except I don’t know what “jumpin’ Jehoshaphat” means except Yosemite Sam used to shout it out in shock and surprise in the Saturday morning cartoons. (Oh, lord. A ‘60s TV allusion. Shoot me.)

Still, something’s going on here.

A #7 seed isn’t expected to do this to a #2. Maybe a 7 could upset a 2. But this wasn’t that. This could’ve been a running clock. This was one team better than the other in every way that matters. This was a beat-down done so convincingly that a Potter senior, Izzy Hutchinson, the everywhere-all-at-once guard, said, “This just shows that we’re better than what all the people think we are. . . . We’re kind of a silent killer.”

“We’re really good now,” freshman Paige Selke said, “and we’ll get better.”

“Our game plan was to own the paint,” senior Addy Engel said, “and we executed it perfectly.”

“I tried to not let #23 get the ball and if she did get it, not let her get to the basket,” freshman Abby VanMeenen said.

Hyde Park’s big center, #23, is a scoring and rebounding machine, 6 feet 4 inches tall. She was made to disappear by the Morton defense that gathered in the paint and pestered the girl to air-ball distraction. The team’s leading scorer, a little 3-point shooting guard, was encouraged by the Potters defense to just try it from out there, and tonight, harassed at all turns, she couldn’t drop one in the ocean from a rowboat. The Chicagoans’ famously frenetic full-court press was so full of holes found by the Potters’ precise passing that in the game’s first 3 ½ minutes, Morton ran off to a 12-0 lead.

And, I swear this to be true, the Potters chased down every bouncing-away rebound, won every wrestling match for possession, and met every physical challenge with their own bump-and-run game.

So I proposed to Bob Becker, the Potters' coach, that a certain physical toughness presented itself on full display tonight.

“Determination,” he said. “That’s what separates good teams from great teams, and we’ve got that in the making.”

That 12-0 start went like this . . .

Selke dropped in a short jumper. Engel threw in a 3-pointer and followed it with five more points. Then Hutchinson a breakaway layup.

“At the start we were terrific,” Becker said. He also said, “I love the mindset. They’re not coming in intimidated. In fact, our goal is to be the intimidator.”

Only once did Hyde Park close within 9 points, and then only for a moment. At 31-22, Ellie VanMeenen, from the top of the key, a 3. A minute later, VanMeenen another 3. Among the many champion-making things the Potters did tonight, what they did most clearly was make every loose ball theirs. About here, a Hutchinson layup scraped off the rim, got batted around and fell to the court under a scramble of bodies before reappearing in Selke’s hands 10 feet out on the right – an easy two.

Magic was happening. Next time down, unseen by everyone except Engel, who threw her the ball, Selke had materialized, wide open, in the paint, two more.

It was 42-27, a minute left in the third quarter. And here, ending all suspense, the best thing. Ellie VanMeenen, at speed, made a layup. She made it at such speed that on landing, she slid through the baseline and crashed into a padded wall, a wall not so padded, though, that the clunk of VanMeenen’s head could not be heard 10 rows up in the bleachers.

“I didn’t realize the wall was that close to the baseline,” she said later.

But, Ellie, that clunk, it didn’t seem to bother you.

“Adrenaline, I guess,” she said. “I just got up and got running.”

Next up for the Potters a semifinal game against Quincy, 8:30 Friday night at Illinois Wesleyan’s Shirk Center.

Four Potters scored in double figures tonight. Engel had 14, Ellie VanMeenen 12, Hutchinson 10, Selke 10. Anja Ruxlow had 3, Abby VanMeenen 3, and Julia Laufenberg 2.