Lady Potters 41

Galesburg 38

What we know for sure is all that matters, and what we know for sure is that the sophomore Ellie VanMeenen made the game’s last shot as the clock went to all zeroes, :00.0, her shot a lovely 3-pointer from 2 o’clock on the arc, swish, no iron, a pure thing giving the suddenly alive Potters a third straight victory after a couple weeks in a quarantine of defeat.

But how did the ball wind up in Ellie VanMeenen’s hands outside the arc when it had not been there all day long?

The truth is, I have no idea.

All I know is that at 38-all with about 30 seconds to play, a Galesburg girl threw up a shot backwards, an awkward prayer that deserved no answer. Then came a mad scramble for the loose ball with bodies flying every which way in collisions and entanglements that only teenagers could survive without multiple orthopedic injuries.

So, more truth here, damned if I know how Morton came up with the ball, and my excuse is that the infernal noise machine of the Galesburg pep band six rows behind me was so loud I couldn’t see. Many things happened, and there were 12.8 seconds to play, and here came Tatym Lamprecht with the ball, and the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, stood at the bench, thinking of a timeout but deciding to let affairs settle themselves.

Somehow Lamprecht got the ball to Izzy Hutchinson on the right side, and numbers were falling off the clock, :07, :06, :05, and Izzy did a two-hands soccer pass – they call it a “skip” – over everybody to the far side, having seen Ellie open, Ellie all alone there, and the best I can do is have Ellie tell it.

“Nobody was guarding me,” she said, “because either they were in help (on the other side) or they just weren’t guarding me.”

No reason to guard her because she had not taken a 3-point shot all day, and maybe no one in Galesburg knew she had Morton’s best 3-point shooting percentage as a freshman (36.6), and maybe Galesburg figured that once the ball was out of Lamprecht’s hands (she had made three 3’s), what’s to worry about a sophomore non-shooter on the other side of the court?

“Well,” Ellie said, “there were about two seconds left, I thought . . .”

She thought just shoot it?

“Yeah,” she explained.

Bob Becker also explained it: “I thought in those last 12 seconds we could have done a better job attacking, but, thankfully, we skipped it to the weak side and Ellie had the awareness to catch and shoot. It was a great rhythm 3 for her. A great pass on target by Izzy, and what an heroic play for Ellie, and what a crazy, exciting finish.”

Here’s what Ellie VanMeenen thought as the 3 set off a celebration, every Potter on the floor and off the bench racing to her: “Did this happen? This is crazy.”

Even as VanMeenen spoke, Lamprecht, the team’s star 3-point shooter, chimed in. “Ellie’s the shoot-ah,” Tatym said, italics on the last syllable. “I knew the shoot-ah was going to make it. Nothing better could have happened today. I feel the one missing piece that we had to get for our team was to get Ellie’s confidence back. After this game, it’s back. She’s the shoot-ah.”

This was, to get technical about it, a raggedy-ass game. Lovers of tenacious defense might have been thrilled. It was 12-7, Morton, after a quarter and 16-11 at halftime. Midway through the third, led by Lamprecht’s pair of 3’s (fouled on one, she added a free throw for 4 points), Morton had an 11-point lead. But in two minutes, Galesburg went on an 11-0 run to get to 28-all and set the stage for a fourth quarter turned into a frantic, frenzied mess by Galesburg’s full-court press.

Galesburg took its only lead of the game at 34-33 with 6:19 to play.

Addy Engel’s driving layup-and-one put Morton up, 36-34, at 4:11, and she reprised the drive for a 38-36 lead at 2:58.

Galesburg tied it on two free throws with 1:47 to play.

Nobody could get anything done after that – until the ball found its way into Ellie VanMeenen’s hands.

“We were a little sluggish,” Becker said afterwards. The game started at 1 p.m., about a night’s sleep after the Potters’ Friday night victory over Metamora. “But we found a way. We didn’t do a lot of things well. We just didn’t have the laser focus. But we overcame that and got a win. Now the challenge is to stay driven, keep improving. We still have a month to play.”

A “month to play,” said the coach whose regular season ends in two weeks. Then comes the regionals and another two weeks leading to the Final Four at Redbird Arena (or whatever commercial name the place goes by now).

Twice in a week now, Morton, 14-9 and ranked #26 in the MaxPreps Class 3A ratings, has defeated teams ranked in the top 20. First it was Mahomet-Seymour, 17-5, #17. Now, Galesburg, 19-5, #20.

Next comes Peoria Notre Dame, 19-2 and #5. That game, scheduled for Monday, has been moved to Wednesday at Notre Dame.

Morton’s scoring today: Engel 15, Lamprecht 13, Hutchinson 7, VanMeenen 5, Julia Laufenberg 1.