Washington 48

Lady Potters 25

Always, the worst part of the Potters playing at Washington has been that pep band’s all-brass-and-drums murder of music at halftime. They call it music. I’m a musical illiterate. My grade school music teacher heard my audition for a part in an operetta. She winced. She said, “David, you will RECITE your part.” So there is that, and anything I say about music is not to be taken seriously.

Besides, there was that cute Washington mother who came to sit near me when that pep band started. She wanted to take pictures as her son, Jackson, hammered away on a big ol’ drum. She was proud, and she asked if I heard that song the band did.

I said, “Song?”

I had heard an F-14’s jet engine at full thunder.

Song?

“Sweet Caroline,” the drummer’s mom said.

“Great,” I said, not the first lie I ever told a cute blonde.

Anyway, the way it went tonight, the way that pep band played its music was a relief from the way the Lady Potters played their basketball that first half.

It was 27-7 at halftime. At least eight times, by my count, the Potters did not finish on opportunities not only in the paint but point-blank at the rim.

“MOVE THE BALL!” the coach, Bob Becker, said more than a few times, seldom to any great effect. For somehow the Potters contrived to extend their miserable no-offense-of-any-kind streak. They came to Washington off the last two quarters against Dunlap in which they scored 3 and 6. They began tonight with quarters of 2 and 5. In their last four quarters, then, they had been outscored, 59-16.

Clearly, they would lose tonight for the fifth time in six games. Their season record would fall to 11-8 and 4-3 in the Mid-Illini Conference. It’s no shame to lose to a team that is now 16-2, undefeated in seven M-I games, and ranked #4 among the state’s Class 3A teams – all true of Washington. But to be down 20 at halftime with no suggestions of a comeback – that’s enough to cause Bob Becker to do, y’know, something.

So he benched three of his season-long starters. They did not play one second in the 16 minutes of the second half. Early in the fourth quarter, against a very good Washington team, Becker’s five players were reserves seldom heard from all season (two had played in the jayvee game).

Yet those Deep Benchers had scored 10 points in the third quarter, which amounted to an offensive explosion.

“The second half,” Becker said, “I thought was a bright spot.”

A bright spot?

“We competed the second half and lost it by three,” he said. (Washington 21-18 in that half.) “And the kids were coachable and fun to coach.” He praised the “competitive effort of the kids who played the second half. I loved there was no give-up, no quit.”

In all that, of course, there was a message to the starters consigned to the bench in the second half.

“The only thing I can control sometimes is that bench, that’s it,” Becker said.

The Potters have 10 regular-season games to play before regionals start in early February.

“I’m committed to finding a way and building this last month,” the coach said. “Every game from here on, we have to be the scrappiest, most hard-nosed team, and we have to do it 32 minutes every night.”

Morton’s scoring tonight: Anja Ruxlow 6, Emilia Miller 6, Abbey Pollard 5, Izzy Hutchinson 3, Magda Lopko 3, Julia Laufenberg 2.