Paige Selke, a sophomore, remembered the start of her Morton High School basketball career a year ago. A very good Peoria High team, coming off a Final Four appearance, jumped out to an 8-0 lead in two minutes and held on for a seven-point victory.

“They landed the first punch,” Selke said tonight.

She smiled.

“Tonight,” she said, “we landed the first punch.”

Whoa, Nellie, did they ever. In its season opener, Morton landed the first, second, seventh and umpteenth punch. Soon enough, the very good Potters had built a 21-0 lead that at halftime was 55-1.

I will spare you the details, save for a moment that surprised even seasoned observers. A Peoria girl, hurrying along on the dribble, caused the basketball to bounce over her head and, unsure of what to do next, she caught the thing on its way down and ran three of four steps with it before resuming the dribble. She stopped only on hearing a whistle. I believe she had committed the rarely seen violation of traveling while double-dribbling.

Anyway, the Lady Potters coach, Bob Becker, was well pleased with his team’s performance after 12 days of practice, especially the part, he said, where “we got out and ran.” Of their 20 first-half field goals, 18 came on breakaways and rebounds of breakaway shots missed. Whether the Potters can do that kind of work against good teams will be determined in the next month; still, very good teams are supposed to beat very bad teams badly. That, the Potters did.

The Potters scoring: Selke 24 (a career high), Ellie VanMeenen 17, Abby VanMeenen 13, Julia Laufenberg 9, Katie Brock 5, Jorja Farrell 5, Claire Ceresa 4, Abby Brooks 3, Anja Ruxlow 2, Bennett Swearingen 1.

Thursday the Potters travel to Rock Island.