Lady Potters 57, Dunlap 51
Beautiful stuff, Addy Engel’s reverse layup, sliding left to right across the lane, a shot with her off-hand, her right, softly kissing the glass.
No prettier than Izzy Hutchinson’s layup 13 seconds later, down the left side of the lane, a right-handed shot in traffic with her back half-turned to the board.
This was early second quarter, the Potters up, 23-15.
The best stuff came in the third quarter. My note: “A series of FGs as good as any lately.” There were five buckets in 2 minutes, 11 seconds. There were consecutive 3’s by Hutchinson and Engel (splashes) a third by Paige Selker (rattler). Hutchinson added a mid-court steal and breakaway layup. Selke drove hard through traffic for two.
Suddenly, it was 45-26 with two minutes left in the third quarter.
Here you step on their throat.
Nope.
Here the Potters became the reverse image of the Potters who were so brave a week ago.
Then they made a fourth-quarter comeback that nearly got them the State Farm Classic championship against #1 seed Normal Community.
Tonight’s Potters, in the fourth quarter, frittered away that 19-point lead. It got to be 55-51 with 36 seconds to play.
They did it to themselves. Against Dunlap’s full-court press, the last-week-brave, tonight-discombobulated Potters made passes as poorly conceived as they were poorly executed. They went over-and-back once. They traveled once. They couldn’t get the ball in-bounds once, costing a timeout. They missed four of six free throws in the game’s last 20 seconds.
“We were fantastic in that third quarter,” Bob Becker, the Potters’ coach, said, “and it was a good thing.”
He called it a good win on the road that kept his team undefeated in the Mid-Illini Conference, 6-0 and 15-4 for the season. (Dunlap is 9-8, 3-3.)
Becker also said, “Obviously, in the fourth quarter, we were, to put it kindly, poor in handling the ball. We turned it over, inexplicably, over and over. The focus in practice Monday has to be we got to get better. We can’t just show up for practice like we did this week.”
I, for one, was happy to show up at Dunlap at all. I don’t talk to myself much, except when I walk into a room and ask myself, “Why did I come into this room?” (Happens, kids. Just wait.)
But when I drive from Morton to Dunlap, I often talk to myself. The question then is, “Where am I?”
I’ve been making that drive for 14 winters now. You go to the Grand Prairie mall and turn right. Simple, yes, and still I have often been lost and wandering out there in the dark, flat lands beyond civilization.
Tonight, I got lost sooner than usual. We were on War Memorial in Peoria – until, inexplicably, to borrow the coach's word, I noticed we were on Knoxville. The “we” includes my navigator, John Bumgarner. Celebrating yet another birthday, John was a carefree passenger right up to the moment he said, “Uh, Dave, we should be on War Memorial going the other way.”
So I did a U-turn, the 1,139th of my career, and we got to Dunlap in time to see it all. We could’ve done without that fourth quarter.