Don't you love it in high school girls' basketball when they do things no one expects them to do, maybe especially themselves, like this...

Addy Engel, driving down the left side of the lane, felt two hands shove her in the back as she rose to shoot. The shove propelled her across the baseline. She twisted in the air, floating backwards, and there she did with the basketball what every floating-backwards good shooter would do.

She shot the thing. Perhaps more precisely, we should say she put the basketball into the air with the idea/hope/guess it might rise high over the backboard and find its way straight down from the rafters into the net.

And danged if it didn't do just that. She even saw the great thing happen. She ker-RASHED to the floor and slid on her hind end maybe six feet until her ponytail ker-BUMPED against a padded concrete wall. Meanwhile, the idea/hope/guess had become reality.

She added a free throw, her 22d point, for a 56-27 lead, and the senior co-captain later said the easy victory, in the regional opener at Galesburg, was a very good thing and not much of a surprise.

"All season," she said, "we've been working toward this moment."

"We're playing connected now," Ellie VanMeenen, a junior co-captain, said. "We're all playing as one."

(Here's an all-as-one note. As Engel sat with her back to that wall, Potters rushed to her side. That's Potters, plural. Not one, two, or three helped her up. Four.)

Anyway, it was all fun, 22-4 after one, 42-21 at the half, 63-32 after three, and then a running clock, after which the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, smiling like a happy boy, said, “DOMINANT! That was fun. The kids took care of business, they GOT AFTER IT!”

Now 24-5, on a nine-game winning streak (20 of 22), and ranked #2 in Class 3A, the Potters were so good in so many ways that Becker also said, “We looked like a playoff team. We are poised to make a run.”

That run could gain momentum Thursday night, the opponent the host Galesburg. In the second game tonight, Galesburg raised its season record to 26-6 by beating Richwoods, 69-55. In the Potterdome a month ago, Morton defeated Galesburg, 46-33.

As for what she expects of the Thursday night date, Ellie V said one word and one letter.

"Another W," she said.

Morton’s scoring tonight: Engel 24, Ellie V 11, Izzy Hutchinson 9, Abby V 6, Payton Hays 6, Paige Selke 4, Anja Ruxlow 3, Bennett Swearingen 3, Magda Lopko 1.