Breaking News: The popcorn machine did it again, jangling nerves.

Breaking News, Part Two: The Lady Potters also did it again, jangling Dunlap’s nerves, 54-37.

I arrived at the Potterdome just before 5 o’clock tonight. A front door was propped open. People inside were fanning smoke out of the building. Two home games in a row now, the popcorn machine has not just popped corn, it has set it on fire. Or at least caused it to smoke enough that alarms sounded, lights flashed throughout the school, and, in the fourth row of the bleachers, the coach’s wife said, “Not me this time.”

This time Evelyn Becker had an alibi. This time, unlike the first time when someone forgot to put popcorn oil in the popper, the coach’s wife was nowhere near the popping machine. This time Evelyn sat in the fourth row of the bleachers. I’m her alibi. We were talking about candy-striped pants. She had pointed out two small children across the way. “Bob’s mother made those warm-ups for Josi and Maddy,” Evelyn said. So a long time ago, Bob Becker, the Potters’ coach, may have had in mind this season when both daughters would play for him.

Winnowing the accumulated clothes of girls growing up, the Beckers gave the candy-stripes to Deidre Ripka, an assistant principal at Morton High. She put them to good use. Her daughter, Izzy, 7 years old, and son, Andy, 6, were the most stylishly dressed kids in the Potterdome tonight. Evelyn couldn’t remember how old Josi and Maddy were when they first wore the stripes. “But I’ve got a picture somewhere,” she said. And that she did, as you may have noticed attached to this story. I love it.

There’s a rule in life as well as in sportswriting. If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with, y’know, bullfeathers. Thus, those few words on the infernal internal-combustion popping corn conflagration contraption. Not to mention a few words on candy-striped satins created by the coach’s mother, Connie. Still, there comes a time when a guy must earn his Milk Duds by typing sentences about the basketball game. So here:

1. I yawned. It was early in the third quarter, Morton led, 33-17, and Dunlap had scored eight straight points, exciting some Dunlap folks. Not me. I yawned. I knew what would happen. I’d seen this movie before.

2. What happened was the Potters went on a 14-2 run in 4 minutes and 57 seconds. At the end of three quarters, it was 47-19.

3. The Potters are playing so well as to make decent teams look helpless. Undefeated and winners of nine games in a row, their narrowest margin of victory is 15 points. Their average victory margin is 24 points, 55-31.

4. Here’s how they’re doing it. The Potters’ offense is as relentless, opportunistic, and versatile as it is careful, patient, and resourceful. It can score on the run, from sets, from outside the arc and inside the paint. It is eight players deep, which matters against decent teams and will matter a lot against really good teams. The Potters’ defense is simple. It drives people bats. Either in man-to-man contesting every move and/or pass or in a scrambling zone trapping everywhere, the defense has not yet allowed more than 40 points in a game. It is, too, eight players deep, a very good thing at all times.

This one was over, really, in less than three minutes. The end came at 5:13 of the first quarter. Ahead only 4-3, the Potters were throwing the ball in at their end. The great old coach, Hubie Brown, is famous for his clinics, some of which have him talking for three hours about in-bounds plays. I don’t think the Potters needed Hubie’s help on this one. Someone tossed the ball in to Brandi Bisping in the deep right corner. She caught it and shot it. A three. Morton led 7-3. They could have stopped then.

It certainly was over 2 minutes and 22 seconds later. By then Bisping had scored five more points, on a put-back and a powered-up drive with a free throw added. Morton led 12-3. Yawn.

Bisping led Morton’s scoring with 18. (Here’s a laugh. Late in the game, a Dunlap player went to a referee to complain that when she cut through the paint, Bisping bumped her off stride. Yeah, so? As Pat Summitt often said, “Suck it up, buttercup.”) Tenley Dowell had 11 points. Talk about eight-deep offense, four players had 5 points apiece: Josi Becker, Lindsey Dullard, Courtney Jones, and Kassidy Shurman (who had a sensational ball-handling night, five assists, no turnovers). Caylie Jones had 3 points, Olivia Remmert 2.

Breaking News, Part Three: Before leaving the Potterdome, the assistant principal Deidre Ripka spoke with a woman who said the school plans to replace the thing. She said, “We’ll have a new popcorn machine before the next home game.” Evelyn Becker must be relieved.