Author: Dave Kindred

Morton’s Lady Potters 79, Geneseo 48

My notebook is full of “Dull” does this, “Dull” does that, “Dull” being Lindsey Dullard, Lindsey Dullard never dull, Dullard being five kinds of sensational tonight, and six kinds if we count cheerleading, which we do because after scoring 28 points in about a half, the 6-foot-1 senior all-stater walked the length of the Lady Potters bench slapping hands with teammates before taking a seat, her smile lighting up the arena.

Had she ever before scored 28?

“Not that I know of,” she said.

Even in grade school?

“Nope.”

Look at the notes, all in the first quarter: Dull steals. Dull FT, Dull 3 left c, Dull driving, Dull LU, Dull 3 left c, Dull LU, Frakes off Dull pass, KK pass to Dull LU, Dull 16 pts . . .

Thing is, it looked easy. It looked easy the way the good ones make the hard stuff look easy. It looked more than easy, it looked inevitable. Every time Dullard touched the ball, she would score. That, or she’d make a pass that only she saw – only she saw Katie Krupa flying ahead of the pack, only she saw a way to get the ball from mid-court to Krupa a step away from a layup while everyone else, mostly Geneseo players, watched her do what only she saw could be done.

The further thing is, it was 28 points on its way to 50. Dullard had 16 in the first quarter, 23 in the half, 28 two minutes into the third quarter – at which point Morton led, 66-24, game over, case closed, mercy declared, time for Dullard to take a smiling seat.

The quarter-final victory in the State Farm Holiday Classic gave the undefeated Potters their 13th victory and moved them into Saturday night’s semis against New Lenox Lincoln Way-West. Counting last season, the defending state 3A champions have won 23 straight games.

Wait. On Dullard, did I say five ways of sensational?

1) As long has been Dullard’s habit, she nailed three 3’s, all from the left side…2) after a summer’s work adding a powerful weapon to her offense, she showed it off tonight by weaving her way through crowds for driving layups finished with either hand…3) she stole passes she had no business reaching and helped shut down Geneseo’s inside offense . . . 4) the team’s leading rebounder all season, she ripped them down with a strongman’s authority again tonight…and 5) she made those passes that no one else imagined, the one to Krupa a beauty and the best a pass to a sliver of daylight with Peyton Dearing waiting to finish a fast break.

“I love making those passes,” Dullard said. “My teammates are running the floor hard and I love getting the ball to them.”

If the ultimate test of a player is what Michael Jordan always said it was – does he make his teammates better? – Lindsey Dullard’s performance tonight was one more piece of evidence that she has lifted the Potters to a month-long streak of exceptional play.

Look, Geneseo was no bunch of stiffs. Like Morton, it was undefeated in 12 games. But, alas, alack, and sad to say for the Geneseoans, some 12-0 records are better than others, as Morton proved in the first 32 seconds tonight.

Twelve seconds in, Maddy Becker’s 3 announced the Potters’ intent. Twenty seconds later, Dullard’s interception of a cross-court pass and sprint for a layup-and-one pretty much sealed the deal, psychically if not emperically.

Soon enough, relentless at both ends as always, the Potters went on a 14-0 run for a 24-6 lead in only six minutes of play. At that rate, Morton wins, 127-32. It still seemed like a game – well, not really, but play along with me – when Morton’s lead was 35-16 midway in the second quarter.

But at 3:40 Krupa scored on a layup to send Morton on an 18-5 run for a 53-21 lead at the half.

My favorite moment in that run was a Dullard moment, of course. Driving from the left side, she somehow threw an airball off the glass. But she caught it on the other side and put it back in. So the stats would show her with two shots and a rebound and two points, all in one move. (For the game, 11 of 14 shooting.)

Well, let’s call it my second-favorite moment. At the buzzer, Dullard threw in a three from the left corner, as if to show, again, that the Potters play every second of every minute of every quarter of every game.

Afterwards, I asked the Geneseo coach, Scott Hardison, what he thought of the Potters.

“I’ll give you the backstory first,” he said.

He’s in his eighth season as the Geneseo coach, and he’s had success, some 20-victory seasons, but not success of the Potters’ state-trophies kind. He called Bob Becker and asked if he could drive down to Peoria and take the Potters’ coach to dinner. You pick the place, Hardison said, I’ll buy.

They wound up at Tyroni’s Pizza in Bartonville. There Hardison asked, in essence, how is it done, how do you build a program that succeeds at the highest levels?

“Bob was very generous.” Hardison said. “He went through his entire history, the Tracy Pontius teams and on, and that’s the kind of program that we want. In Class 3A basketball, Morton is the model. We’re still building toward that.”

As for this Morton team, Hardison said, “You’ve got the two D-1 players (Dullard, Krupa) who can score inside and out. Courtney Jones is the glue that holds them all together. They’ve got the little left-handed guard who beats you (Dearing), and you’ve got Bob’s daughter, Maddy, who’ll make 3’s all day. And you’ve got the kid from Lewistown (Frakes) who can jump out of the building. And if you somehow stop them inside, they get it out to one of their seven shooters.

“Defensively, they’re great. I saw them play Bloomington here the other night, and I saw video of their Sycamore game last week. They played different defenses in both those games — and tonight they played another defense against us. We couldn’t run anything we normally run.

“And they never stop. Late in the second quarter, we were winded and so were they. But Bob came out on the floor and shouted at his kids, ‘They’re tired – and we’re NOT.’ And his kids believed it.”

The coach then said, “We’re looking forward to getting another chance with them, we’re likely to be in the same sectional.”

“Really?” I said. “You want them again?” (Morton made 28 of its first 37 shots tonight. It’s first six players were 31 for 41.)

Hardison almost smiled. “It’ll be a measuring stick for us.”

Dullard’s 28 led Morton. Becker had 12, Dearing 11, Frakes 10, Krupa 8, Jones 6, Maggie Hobson 2, Cailyn Cowley 2.

Morton’s Lady Potters 64, Bloomington 17

Ah, sweet spring. ‘Twas 65 degrees right after noon today. I thought, “Just another sunscreen-lathering day in the heartland. San Diego, eat your heart out. Suddenly we’re Florida, only without alligators.” An hour earlier, as I watched the Lady Potters do their Lady Potters thing, I thought – actually, I said it out lout – “Shoot it.”

Yea, verily, we had the best of two worlds on this day after Christmas. No blizzards, no ice, no below-zero temps. And indoors we had basketball – the first round of the State Farm Holiday Classic, which is where I heard myself advise Peyton Dearing, “Shoot it.”

The little guard had made two 3-pointers in 33 seconds, bang-bang, one from the low left corner, one from high on the right. And, next thing you know, 18 seconds later, the ball was in her hot hand again.

Unguarded again.

Looking at the rim.

Tempted.

But she didn’t shoot.

She even smiled as she passed to Maddy Becker, who made a 3 of her own.

So a girl makes two 3’s in 30 seconds and the ball comes back to her – what’s her thinking?

“I said to Maddy, like, I make them if I’m not thinking about making them and I miss them if I’m thinking about making them . . .”

On hearing that thought, the old sportswriter waited for elaboration and Ms. Dearing added helpfully, “I was thinking about making another one, so I thought, ‘I can’t shoot it, I can’t shoot it.’”

Well, ok. But I, from the far end of the building, had advised her, “Shoot it,” and now her coach, Bob Becker, leaned into our conversation to say, “Don’t think, just shoot it,” because, as an old shooter himself, he believes in keeping the hot hand hot until it goes cold.

Anyway, Dearing’s back-to-back 3’s provided a nice moment as the Potters’ raised their season record to 12-0 and took the first step toward ending The State Farm Superstition.

In the last five seasons, the Potters have won the State Farm tournament one time. That was the only year of those five that they didn’t win the State Class 3A state championship. Thus, the superstition: Win the State Farm, lose the State.

I am here to say not to fret. The way the Potters played today, they’ll will win both State Farm and State.

This game was no test. The Potters are seeded No. 1 in the large-school bracket and Bloomington No. 16. Still, the Potters did to Bloomington what they were supposed to do. Before tipoff, one expert was outrageous in his prediction: “Morton wins, 78-12.” Well, 64-17 is proof enough that the Potters are playing at an exceptionally high level that makes outrageous predictions reasonable.

They led 9-4 after four minutes.

They then scored 32 straight points in 11 minutes and 23 seconds and led at halftime 41-6. Three quarters, it was 56-11.

Their defense was formidable, their offense unstoppable.

Somewhere in there, bored by the beautiful work upon beautiful work at both ends, I decided to write about two things: 1) the Dearing episode, and 2) what was the oddest Christmas gift a Potter received?

Assistant coach Megan Hasler asked around and reported to me, “A mannequin head. Talk to Abby Steider.”

Abby Steider is a 5-foot-10 senior, a volleyball player until this season when she added basketball to her resume for the first time since eighth grade.

An old sportswriter may put a lot of questions to a lot of people for a lot of years without ever once asking what I asked Abby Steider, which was, “A mannequin head?”

“It comes with long, straight hair,” she said. “It’s a ginger. I call her ‘Cinnamon.’ She comes with utensils, too. My mom gave it to me for Christmas because I want to be a cosmetologist.”

About here, Steider’s red-headed teammate Raquel Frakes walked by and said, “She should’ve named it Raquel the Second.”

Morton will play undefeated Geneseo, the 9th seed, at 4 o’clock Friday at Normal Community High School.

Lindsey Dullard led Morton’s scoring today with 14. Maddy Becker had 10, Courtney Jones 8, Katie Krupa 8, Dearing 8, Sedona McCartney 6, Olivia Remmert 4, Makenna Baughman 4, and Cinnamon Raquel 2.

Morton’s Lady Potters 76, Sycamore 54

It’s not true that I’m writing tonight’s blog just so we can print that picture of the young Bob Becker.

But, really.

Has anybody ever been that young?

Look at him, in the gold-lettered jersey of Sycamore High School.

He’s a freshman there. So he’s 15.

“He looked like he was 17,” Lynn Rudin once said of the Becker who came to work in Morton in 1993, then 24 years old. He’d never heard of the Pumpkin Capital of the World (poor kid) when he attended a job fair at the University of Illinois and came away as an elementary physical education teacher, assistant varsity baseball coach and freshman-sophomore coach on Rudin’s girls high school staff. “And,” Rudin said, “he still looks like he’s 17.”

Only now Becker is 50 and in 20 seasons as the Potters’ head coach his teams have won 490 games – 11-0 this season, on a 21-game winning streak carried over from last year. And his Potters are on a history-making run of four Class 3A state championships in the last five seasons.

Not bad for the perpetual youngster who sat in his Potterdome office this afternoon and remembered his own high school basketball career at Sycamore on fair-to-middling teams. He said, “As a junior, I was the sixth man – and sometimes I didn’t get in games.” As a senior, he became Sycamore’s co-MVP, an off-guard averaging “about 11 points a game, on seven or eight shots a game, pretty efficient.” Here he brightened up. “If we’d had a slick guard who could penetrate and dish out,” he said, “I could’ve made a LIVING at that.”

Ah, memories.

Such as the night he had 12 points at halftime, only to sit out most of the second half.

“I don’t know why the coach took me out, but he did,” Becker said, still a touch burned. “All I know is I wasn’t tired. Like the other night. Peyton Dearing was on FIRE for us. I wanted her shooting. You don’t get tired when you’re shooting and making them.”

So it was old-home night, sort of, when Sycamore’s girls made a two-hour and 45-minute bus ride down from DeKalb County.

And no matter what the score suggests, Sycamore is good. It had won 7 of 10 games. It has a legitimate Division-1 commit, it has three or four 6-footers who can play, it has shooters (8 3’s tonight, matching the Potters bomb-for-bomb). Sycamore’s only problem was the Potters, who are more than good at the moment and of whom one Sycamore player said, “They NEVER get tired. Constant pressure on defense, constant moving the ball, they NEVER stand still.” In fewer words, the Sycamore coach said, “Just relentless.”

For this they rode a bus 130 miles?

And then, worn out, they have to get back on the thing and go home?

“Be sleeping,” one said, eyes on the way to sleep even as she spoke.

Thing is, they asked for it. It began last summer when the Sycamore coach, Andy Wickness, had a bright idea. Morton had made itself into one of the premier programs in all of Illinois basketball. Besides, there was the fact of Becker’s 1987 graduation from Sycamore.

“Because of what Bob has done at Morton, I picked his brain by email,” Wickness said. “He was very helpful in describing his program’s culture, the fan base, his experiences. I was very grateful for his sharing his thoughts on all that. It’s just that our conference is not very good. We’re winning by 30 and 40 points. To get to the state tournament level, the way Morton has, we need games like this.”

It’s one thing to play Morton when the Potters are playing well. It’s another to play them when they’re playing exceptionally well. On those exceptionally-well nights, the Potters kick butts, take names, and put you back on the bus home, exhausted.

Sycamore was only a point down, at 14-13, with a minute and 36 seconds to play in the first quarter. Those 96 seconds later, Morton’s leade was 24-13.

“The game turned there at the end of the first quarter,” Sycamore’s Wickness said. “Our defense let down.”

Well, a defensive letdown is in the eye of the beholder. It seemed to me, for instance, that Sycamore’s defense was just fine. Morton’s offense was simply better. After Peyton Dearing made two free throws at 1:36, Olivia Remmert’s steal gave the ball right back to Dearing for a 3-pointer. A minute later, Lindsey Dullard stole a lazy pass in the open court for a layup. And 20 seconds later, one of Raquel Frakes’s flying rebounds led to the first of Maddy Becker’s five 3-pointers tonight.

That 10-0 run in 96 seconds was followed by 8 more points, two on Katie Krupa free throws, six on two more 3’s by Becker. In a total of 3 minutes and 23 seconds, then, Morton had moved from 14-13 to 32-13 and on to leads as big as 27 points.

Thus did Becker welcome his alma mater to the big time.

“We’re playing at a really high level,” Becker said. “The way we’re playing will win a lot of games.”

What’s most obvious about Morton’s play lately is its – let’s borrow that word from Sycamore sophomore Ella Shipley – constant reach for dominance at both ends. The Potters are on attack constantly. Either they want the ball back or they want to take the ball to the rim.

“We want to attack,” Dullard said, “and we want to get into the paint. If we don’t score in there, we kick it out and” — here the senior smiled — “we ALL can shoot.” Early in the season, she said, there was a turnover problem, maybe 16 a game. No longer. “We’re going to the ball,” Dullard said, a fundamental move that diminishes the prospects of passes gone awry.

Maddy Becker, with her five 3’s, led Morton’s scoring with 21 points. (Another indication of the Potters’ strength: she is the sixth different player to lead the team in scoring this season.) Dullard had 12 poinits, Dearing 11, Krupa 10. Courtney Jones had 7, Frakes 6, Sedona McCartney 4, Makenna Baughman 3, Cailyn Cowley 2.

Morton’s Lady Potters 67, Washington 33

Like, seriously? A running clock against a team that had been undefeated? Doing it on that team’s homecourt? Early, the Potters went on a 20-0 run. Late, a 17-0 run. Such runs happen because the defense is so good it creates offense. “A champion’s DNA,” is how their coach, Bob Becker, puts it. The defending state champion Potters were 22 for 23 on free throws. Every loose ball, they were on it the second it became a loose ball. I mean, seriously? Wow. They’re 10-0 for the season. And dare I say out loud what I’m thinking?

Yes. I dare.

They could go undefeated.

The last five seasons, they’ve been 33-3, 33-3, 34-2, 31-2, and 33-3.

Counting last season’s run to the state title, they’re now on a 20-game winning streak. Tonight’s victory was their 50th straight in the Mid-Illini Conference.

They’re doing this kind of thing on a regular basis.

So why not 36-0?

Washington came in with an 8-0 record looking to re-establish itself as a legitimate rival to Morton’s years of primacy. Washington has beaten decent teams, mostly because it has good shooters and competitive defenders. This is to say, Morton’s dominance tonight was not a case of catching lightning in a bottle, nor was it an aberration or an exception. It was everything the Potters are capable of.

They led by a point at 17-16 in the first minute of the second quarter. Then that champion’s DNA showed itself. Unable to get inside on the Potters’ defense, Washington stopped making the 3’s that had kept the game close. On a 12-0 run in the last seven minutes of the quarter, Morton led, 29-16.

And if you’ve seen the Potters play, you know how they play the early minutes of the third quarter.

Like this: they scored 8 points in a minute and a half, completing that 20-0 run, and they were up 37-16.

How they got those 8 points is telling because it shows that the comfortable halftime lead wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy the Potters.

It began with Morton’s little guard, Peyton Dearing. She’d jammed a finger on her right hand and came out for the second half with the finger taped against its neighbor. She’s a left-hander, so she could put up with the tape – except when the half started, who needs tape? Seriously, who needs stinkin’ tape when what you’re doing is batting the ball away from a Washington player, diving on it, wrestling it away from the unfriendly, passing it to a friendly, hauling yourself up off the floor, sprinting to your 3-point spot, getting the ball back, and throwing in a 3-pointer – all this in the first 25 seconds of the half before taking a Lindsey Dullard pass 30 seconds later for a layup and free throw.

In less than a minute, then, Dearing’s 6 points put Morton up, 35-16, and Dullard finished the run 32 seconds later with two free throws when fouled on a put-back.

Though Washington made a small move to close within 14 points at 41-27, no one believed it could sustain the move. Morton is not only talented, it is indefatigable. Becker’s white board carried a pre-game message that included this reminder, “COMPETE 32,” with the 32 in a bold circle, meaning bring it, guys, for the full 32 minutes. It’s hardly a necessary note, for Becker’s teams have gone full-bore at both ends every minute for years, but if you’re going to go undefeated it doesn’t hurt to be reminded how you got good enough that people would dare suggest 36-0.

As evidence that Morton simply wears out its opponents, consider the Potters’ work in the last 96 seconds of the third quarter.

At 1:36, Dullard threw a 30-foot pass to Raquel Frakes for a layup.

At 1:17, Dullard threw a 30-foot pass to Makenna Baughman for a layup.

At :24, Dullard threw a 30-foot pass to Frakes for another layup.

At the buzzer, Dullard threw a 30-foot pass to Olivia Remmert for a layup.

All these passes were made possible by Dullard’s great court vision, her strength and accuracy passing, and the truth that Washington’s defenders were all tuckered out and ready for bedtime. They no longer could get back on defense.

Soon enough, it was 61-31, merciful running-clock time.

“THAT was fun,” Bob Becker said, and he said. “We had it dialed-in at both ends,” and he said, “That was terrific,” and he said, “Tonight was supposed to be WASHINGTON’S night, homecourt, undefeated, and it became our night,” and he said, “Our depth was great tonight, through eight kids, and that’s what the Sisterhood is about, everybody contributing, and we need all 16 of them,” and he said, “It’s so fun to be part of it.”

Becker’s first eight players all scored. Frakes led with 12, Dearing had 11, Maddy Becker 10, Dullard 10, Courtney Jones 8, Katie Krupa 8, Baughman 6, and Remmert 2.

 

Morton’s Lady Potters 62, St. Joseph-Ogden 27

During pre-game warm-ups, I like to watch the other team. You can see which players can shoot. The ball comes off their hands easily. You can see the athletes, those girls who move with a kind of easy swagger that says, “Yeah, I can do this.” So I watched the St. Joseph-Ogden people warm up. There was one girl. She had an athlete’s body, an athlete’s moves. She put up 3’s with a flick of the wrist.

But.

While her teammates loosened up without being seen, the girl did fancy stuff with the ball, quick-step fakes this way and that. She seemed to be working on crossover dribbles.

Isn’t that interesting, crossing over against … air?

I had two thoughts.

**She thinks she’s pretty good.

**She’s about to find out how good Morton’s defenders are.

Cutting to the chase: Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by the Potters’ trapping man-to-man defenses, the girl spent most of the first half on the bench and did not score all night.

One small scene told a big story. She put up four 3-point shots in the third quarter. When the fourth bounced off the rim, she stood at the top of the arc and slapped her hands in frustration – and must have felt a tremendous rush of air as Morton’s Maddy Becker went sprinting past to take a long pass for an uncontested layup.

I hope I’m not being unkind to a teenage athlete. It’s just that those two shots comprised a basketball morality play. The St. Joseph-Ogden player did the wrong little thing of sulking while the Morton player did the right little thing of hustling to make the next play.

It was the kind of moment that moved the St. Joseph-Ogden coach, Kevin Taylor, to say, “Morton is what we want to be.” The Potters have won four of the last five Class 3A state championships. St. Joe finished third in last year’s Class 2A tournament. “Morton’s a good team with a lot of talent. Even with Division-1 talent, they’re unselfish with the ball. And they’re well-coached. It’s not fun getting beat this bad, but we scheduled them, last year and this year, because you have to play teams like that if you want to get to their level.”

Morton scored the game’s first 14 points in four minutes. At the quarter, it was 22-9. A 16-2 run in the second quarter made it 40-15 at halftime. In that third quarter, Morton outscored the hosts 20-2 for a 60-17 lead that made the fourth quarter a running-clock yawner.

But that third quarter, my my my.

Katie Krupa opened with a 3-pointer from the right arc. Katie Krupa? Yes. She is now 1-for-1 on 3’s this season.

Courtney Jones followed with a 3 and a layup off a nifty inside pass by Krupa.

Then a Peyton Dearing 3 and that Maddy Becker layup and a Jones steal/breakaway layup and Raquel Frakes scored the last five points on slashing layups and a free throw.

Morton is now 9-0 for the season. (If we count last season’s last 10 games, they’re on a 19-game winning streak.) St. Joe is now 8-3, most of it done against Class 2A teams.

Jones led Morton’s scoring with 16. Lindsey Dullard had 13, Frakes 11, Dearing 9, Becker 5, Krupa 4, Makenna Baughman 2 and Sedona McCartney 2.

***

My Friday report featured commentary about “hair bands.” I come now to confess and clarify.

When I began to write last night, I didn’t know what to call that little elastic thing that basketball-playing girls use to bunch their hair into ponytails. I invented a term, “hair band.”

Well. Recognizing my flawed state of being – old and male – three women today tried to educate me.

One kept it simple: “Ponytail holders.” Another said, “Scrunchies,” to which I said, “????” A third declared, “They’re hair ties.”

Next time, I’ll just call them “hair thingies.”

Morton’s Lady Potters 62, Pekin 20

Yes, you bet, most of what happened was really good stuff.

There was also this. Raquel Frakes’s hair band broke. Her ponytail fell apart. As the second quarter was about to begin, Frakes was on the bench signaling to assistant coach Brooke Bisping that, Hey, my hair band broke and I need a new one. So Bisping went, Don’t look at me, I don’t have a hair band. And then Bisping became as resourceful a coach as she was a Lady Potter in her all-time-leading-scorer-they-retired-my-jersey day.

Bisping reached into assistant coach Megan Hasler’s hair and poked around long enough to steal her colleague’s hair band. She tossed it toward Frakes, who retrieved it and replaced her ponytail with what I am told is a “messy bun.” (The things an old sportswriter learns.)

Here the drama moved into a second act, for Hasler’s hair was now a mess of its own – until she walked a few rows up into the bleachers where a spectator happened to have a spare hair band. (I once saw Dean Smith reach under the North Carolina bench to replace a player’s shoe that had ripped. But this was my first hair-band emergency.)

Perhaps all this was coincidence. Perhaps the hair repairs had nothing at all to do with it. But a guy’s gotta write something. And I am here to report that once Raquel Frakes got her messy-bun together, the 5-foot-10 junior became a flying star of such brightness that her coach, Bob Becker, said, “There’s not a better sixth-man in the entire state than Raquel.”

Two minutes into that second quarter, Frakes made a 3-pointer from the deep left corner. And as nice as that was – an excitement in the middle of a 31-3 run – Frakes did better, more important work without the ball. When she didn’t have the ball, she went and got it. A remarkable jumper (a killer outside striker on the school’s volleyball team), Frakes became a rebounding machine. A scrawl in my notebook: “FRAKES! REBS!!” A look at coach Hasler’s statistics chart showed Frakes with four rebounds in the quarter, including one that moved Becker to say, “She was like my waist high off the floor.”

Most of the time, it seemed, a Frakes rebound led to a Peyton
Dearing 3-pointer. The 5-foot-5 guard – a left-hander, just as Frakes is a left-hander – made 4 3’s in that second quarter. She needed only 4 minutes and 28 seconds to do it. “The hot hand,” Becker said, “and we got her the ball. No reason not to.”

Pekin once led, 8-6. Morton led at the quarter, 17-8. At halftime, 45-13.

If that halftime score seems outrageous, it is. But readers of long memory know that a year ago, in these teams’ December game, the halftime score was 53-0 (the final 68- 18). However mediocre Pekin may be, especially with its leading scorer out with an injury, the full truth is that the Potters were simply unbeatable tonight. Their ball-handling was crisp, deft and careful, their shooting sensational (8 3’s, 10 layups/put-backs), their defense suffocating. (I don’t know how many prayerful 3’s Pekin launched. A bunch. I do know how many 3’s they made. Zero.)

This was not cruel and unusual punishment by an undefeated, defending state champion team now 8-0 overall and 2-0 in the Mid-Illini Conference (with a 49-game league winning streak.) This was a clinic staged by high-achieving athletes practicing basketball’s fundamental skills beautifully.

Courtney Jones, the senior point guard, has taken note of all that. “Our team chemistry is getting better off the court because we’re getting to know each other better,” she said, “and we’re jelling on the court, too.”

Katie Krupa and Dearing led Morton with 12 points each. No one else reached double figures. Lindsey Dullard had 8, Frakes 7, Maddy Becker 6, Olivia Remmert 4, Courtney Jones 3, Maggie Hobson 3, Cailynn Cowley 3, Makenna Baughman 2, and Sedona McCartney 2.

Morton’s Lady Potters 75, Pontiac 35

I have this friend with a wicked smart sense of humor. After years of observation, she decided to give me, as an early Christmas gift, a pair of socks emblazoned with the words, “Grumpy Old Man.” How she came to that assessment is a mystery. Across PotterWorld the consensus is that I am grumpy only when the Potters run late in delivering my Milk Duds. But then, maybe that is it. “Seven games,” she said, “and you’ve got what? One box? You ol’ grump.”

Absent the caramel chocolate darlings, I made it through this game with the help of a second friend, one not nearly so wicked but just as smart and kind enough to ship into the Potterdome a Tupperware container of buttery sugar cookies frosted with Christmas trees. Yummy.

I mean, what’s a sportswriter to do when an undefeated team,the defending state champion, now 7-0 and imagining a fifth state title in six seasons, creates a 40-point blowout and the two biggest questions of the night come in the first 16 seconds and in the last two seconds?

First question: 16 seconds in, how in the world did Pontiac get three shots from inside the paint?

Very good teams do such work. Pontiac is not a very good team. It had lost 9 of its first 11 games.

So when Morton’s coach, Bob Becker, saw the visitors get two offensive rebounds in those first 16 seconds, he rose from the bench and in the voice of a teacher who had come to the realization that his students couldn’t count as high as two decided to shout, “THAT’S TWICE!”

Meaning that on two successive shots the Lady Potters had failed in rebounding’s ultimate fundamental.

“BOX OUT!” Becker suggested/orderered/demanded.

Second question: Would Morton, with two seconds to play, score one more 3-pointer, its 10th of the night, and reward the gathered faithful with tickets for FREE CUSTARD! at Culver’s restaurant?

After the 9th 3-pointer with 4:46 to play – by sophomore Maggie Hobson from the right side – Morton managed only one more 3-point attempt, that one at 3:10 on a running clock.

After that, Gabby Heer, a freshman and a capable 3-point shooter, drove for a layup and there was heard in the crowd a man saying, “We don’t want no stinkin’ layup,” and I believe the voice was that of a grumpy old man who had no Milk Duds and had run through his buttery sugar cookies frosted with Christmas trees and now was willing to go into a 19-dregree night to fetch his FREE CUSTARD!

Then, with maybe two seconds to play, here came Heer with the ball again – only this time she was at the far end of the court, 60 feet from the hoop, and the buzzer sounded before she could launch a FREE CUSTARD! prayer from mid-court.

Anyway, after that fundamentally-flawed first 16 seconds, the Potters pretty much were sensational in every way a team can be sensational. Its offense was relentless, its defense was merciless. The Potters scored from set plays and from ball movement that found the open shooter (Maddy Becker with four 3’s). It scored in the paint (Lindsey Dullard on drives, Katie Krupa at the rim, both players adept with either hand). Bewitched and bewildered by the Morton press, Pontiac considered itself triumphant if it so much as got the ball past midcourt.

Remember Morton’s awful, terrible, horrible, no-boxing-out start? It helped Pontiac go in front, 4-2.

Eight minutes later, Morton led, 30-9.

Halftime, 46-16.

Midway the third quarter, 66-19.

And when it was over, I asked Bob Becker what the game meant.

“We can be so, so capable,” he said. I could sense a “but” coming. Sure enough “We have to understand that we can get by against some teams without doing the little things. The seniors want to win another state championship. I know I sound nit-picky, like I’m a cranky old jerk, but we can’t beat sectional-final opponents and win at Redbird without doing all the little things right. We need every single player, all 16 of them, bringing their absolute best effort to every practice and every game every single time.”

About here, I showed my Grumpy Old Man socks to the Cranky Old Jerk.

He laughed.

Krupa led Morton’s scoring with 15, Dullard had 14, Maddy Becker 12. Raquel Frakes had 9, Courtney Jones 7, Sedona McCartney 5, Cailynn Cowley 4, Maggie Hobson 3, Makenna Baughman 2, Peyton Dearing 2, Heer 2.

December 3, 2019: “Even the not-so-pretty ones count”

Morton’s Lady Potters 53. Normal Community 43

In addition to being big, strong, quick, and relentless in pursuit of good things at both ends of the court, the Morton High School Lady Potters are sneaky.

They’ll steal from you when you’re not paying attention. You think they’re just casually bringing the ball in-bounds from under their own basket. They’re not.

Next thing you know, they’ve tossed the ball in-bounds and somebody has dropped in a layup. One pass, two seconds, they’ve scored. They’re sneaky that way.

Four times tonight, they did it. Once in the second quarter, three times in the third.

It happens this way: A Potter is assigned to toss the ball in. She’ll stand a foot in-bounds until her four teammates get into their sneaky spots. Then the ball handler steps out and takes the ball from the referee.

She makes a pass. Takes two seconds, maybe three. And the Potters have scored. It happens so quickly you might miss it. It happens so easily you’d think the defense fell asleep. Somehow it all looks like a mistake when, in fact, the Potters planned it that way.

I asked the Morton coach, Bob Becker. “How many in-bounds plays do you run that you try to score on?”

“All of them,” he said. (Well, duh. The questions some sportswriters ask.)

Three examples of Morton’s in-bounds sneakiness came in the third quarter and they came at a good time. Suddenly, the Potters were in a little trouble. They’d sprinted to a 17-4 lead at the quarter. After that, refusing to fold on the home court of the undefeated defending state champions, Normal Community’s hustling, scrapping Lady Iron made it a game and trailed only 31-23.

Then Lindsey Dullard dropped in a layup off an in-bounds pass from Courtney Jones. A minute later, Dullard took a Katie Krupa pass and did it again. The third in-bounds layup, by Raquel Frakes, happened before your faithful note-taker thought to identify the passer. The sneak.

With those three easy ones, and with Dullard opening the quarter by peeling down the lane for a layup after a fake hand-off at the free throw line – shades of the great one, Brandi Bisping, who scored on that play maybe two dozen times in her Potters days – Morton’;s lead was 37-26.

The lead grew to 45-28 on a Courtney Jones layup, a Dullard 3-pointer, and a Jones 3 with 1:20 left in the third quarter.

At quarter’s end, it was 47-30, a comfortable margin by any measure – until Morton’s offense disappeared. In a nervous-making fourth quarter, the Potters did not score a field goal. They scored nothing for nearly five minutes. Normal Community’s 9-0 run moved the Iron with eight at 47-39. Finally, Krupa made two free throws at 3:19 and two more at 2:43. The lead was 51-39. Two free throws by Dearing moved Morton up, 53-41, with 36 seconds to play.

Later, breathing easily again, Becker said, “First and third quarters, good.” They were so good that in those 16 minutes the Potters were 36-13 winners – which means they lost the other half, 30-17.

A couple other numbers are interesting, too.

“The most important minutes of a game, I think, are the first three minutes, the first three minutes of the second half, and the last three minutes of the game,” Becker said.

Morton won the first three minutes, 8-2.

The second half’s first three minutes, Morton won 8-5.

The game’s last three minutes, Morton won, 6-4.

In Becker’s most important minutes, then, Morton had a 22-11 advantage.

“Maybe we didn’t have our best intensity all night, I don’t know,” Becker said, “but it wasn’t all our problem, either. We give Normal Community credit. They handled the ball well, they kept after us on defense. We just had a couple good runs on defense, like once we had six straight stops and scored on four of those possessions.”

The Normal Community coach, Marcus Mann, said, “Morton’s a great team, they’re big, they’re strong, they’re unselfish with the ball, they can light it up with 3’s. We like to play them because it always shows us where we are in competition with the best teams. After that first quarter, we came back and stuck with them. I’m proud of how we stayed in there tonight and fought to get back in it.”

Dullard led Morton’s scoring with 18, Jones had 13, and Krupa 12. Frakes and Dearing had 4 each, Makenna Baughman 2.

Now 5-0, Morton next plays at Canton on Friday night. Alas, I won’t be there. I’ll be in Washington, D.C., with a panel of sportswriters who couldn’t make things worse up there.

Morton’s Lady Potters 60, Richwoods 53

This is how fast Peyton Dearing runs.

Z
O
O
M
!!!!

First she’s standing in the backcourt, waiting to take an in-bounds pass. Then she’s . . .

G
O
N
E

The issue was in doubt with just under three minutes to play. There was a Morton timeout, the Potters leading 56-50, but uncomfortably leading. Once up by 13, the Potters now feel the heat of a Richwoods rally. So they have the ball in the backcourt, on the far side, away from their bench – and it comes in to Peyton Dearing, a little guard, 5-foot-5, who in the sunny months is a big-time soccer star but now, in the winter, takes the in-bounds pass at a spot maybe 60 feet from the basket.

And here’s what Peyton Dearing sees.

“I was open,” she said. Well, of course, she was open. Who guards a little guard taking a pass in-bounds at the other end of the court?

And here’s what Peyton Dearing knows.

“I’m fast,” she says.

So here’s what she does. She does that soccer thing.
“I’m fast and I’m open and I’m going to the goal.”

Z
O
O
M

Only she has the ball on her left hand instead of her feet, and while the Richwoods people are in the gym, it’s as if they’re not in the same universe with Peyton Dearing, who is fast and open and sees the goal and is flying hell-bent for leather across the midcourt line, past the three-point arc at the left edge of the free throw circle where she tilts right and bends down the lane and toward the hoop, leaving a gobsmacked gaggle of Richwoods players asking . . .

W
H
A
T???

In let’s say six seconds, from catching the pass to curling the ball off the board and into the hoop, Peyton Dearing has won the basketball game.

Yes, she did. It made the lead only eight points, with 2:40 to play, and Richwoods surely had time to come back. But not this time, not when they thought they had Morton stopped only to see the Potters transform an ordinary in-bounds pass into the kind of extraordinary play in which an opponent takes your heart out and stomps that sucker flat. Richwoods scored only three points the rest of the way and two were meaningless in the game’s dying seconds.

You gotta love Morton-Richwoods basketball. The Potters have won four of the last five Class 3A state championships. Richwoods won the other one. The last three years, either could have won it all. Morton has a state-champion look about it this season as well, and while Richwoods is a lesser team without its two-time all-stater Cam Taylor (now at Marquette University), its returning stars, Jaida McCloud and Nia Williams, know how to win big games.

Richwoods led this one early, thanks to its typically aggressive, scrambling zone defense and its quickness on the boards. But once Morton switched from a man-to-man defense to a variety of zones that shut down the Richwoods offense, it was inevitable that the Potters’ offense would control the game. The big names in that offense were Lindsey Dullard and Katie Krupa. Dullard’s 22 points came from inside and out, on slashing drives to the hoop, and on 3-pointers where she twice rose above Richwoods’ zone to hurl her daggers. Krupa’s 19 came on delicate, bruising work inside where she powered through Richwoods’ clawing defenders to finesse shots off the glass with either hand.

Four Krupa free throws and a Maddy Becker 3-pointer gave Morton a 7-0 run in less than two minutes of the second quarter. It gave Morton a 21-15 lead and the Potters never trailed again. They led at halftime, 32-24, and 51-40 after three.

Getting late in the fourth quarter, that 11-point lead fell to six when Nia Williams threw in a 3-pointer with 2:52 to play.

Morton called timeout at 2:50.

Did the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, draw up a play for Peyton Dearing?

“No,” she said, smiling at the things that happen sometimes.

Maybe next time he will draw it up. Or maybe he’ll do what all good coaches do. Let the players play. For that was a player’s play. Catch it, keep your head up, see what’s in front of you – and if no one’s in front of you, do the Peyton Dearing thing. Just stand on the gas. If no one gets in the way, keep going.

“I mean, like, I was open,” she said again.

Z
O
O
M

Yes, there is that. And it was good. It was even sensational. But the other stuff was just as important, the other stuff being taking three charges (none called), taking an elbow in the jaw that knocked her flat (offensive foul), and eagerly participating on hands, knees, and ponytail in more than one mad scramble for a loose ball, not to mention a steal and nifty pass to Krupa for the third-quarter’s last two points.

I bring all that up because it was obvious that Dullard and Krupa would be all-tournament choices. Not so obvious was Morton’s third player on the all-tournament team. Peyton Dearing scored six points.

Along with Dullard’s 22, Krupa’s 19, Dearing’s 6, Becker had 9 and Courtney Jones 4.

***

Lady Potters 61, Champaign Central 54

In the morning game, the Potters might have won by 100. Instead, Becker put his starters on the bench halfway through the third quarter. Morton led then, 54-26.

1. Dullard led Morton with 23 points, Krupa had 11. Raquel Frakes had 7, Jones 6, Dearing 5, Becker 3, and three players had 2 apiece: Cailyn Cowley, Maggie Hobson, and Abbie Steider.

Morton’s Lady Potters 55, East St. Louis 51

So, a half-hour before tip-off, I’m watching the East St. Louis High School Flyerettes warm up before the final game of Morton’s Thanksgiving Tournament’s first day in the Potterdome.

Wait. Flyerettes?

Hmm. Might Morton High School drop the Lady from its girls teams nickname? So dainty, so genteel, those Lady Potters, a nickname suggestive of perfumes and flowers, not so much suggestive of a dynasty that has won four state championships the last five years. Might the powers that be rename them the more muscular POTTERETTES?

No, not likely, and anyway ’tis a question for another day because the question during the East St. Louis warmups was, like, OMG, really?

All that skipping and hopping? Then all the stretching and twisting? And after all that came the that-has-to-hurt-bad part. They all threw themselves onto the floor and arranged their limbs in splayed-out positions suggesting a chiropractor would be hard-pressed to un-pretzel everybody.

I thought, “Yeah, I could get into that position and I would never walk again.”

The news is, East St. Louis survived its calisthentics. The Flyerettes not only walked again, they all but flew. Quick afoot, good with the ball in hand, relentless on the boards and defensively, the Flyerettes led Morton for the game’s first 10 minutes and came from 11 points down late in the fourth quarter to throw one last fright into the defending state champions.

It was Morton, 53-42, when Makenna Baughman scored on a full-speed-ahead fast break layup that was the result of a Raquel Frakes steal and outlet to Peyton Dearing who moved the ball to Baughman two steps from the hoop. The clock showed 3:19 to play. All seemed safe and secure for the Potters – until the Flyerettes scored six straight points – on a put-back and two fast-break layups in a 72-second burst — and trailed by only five with 1:21left.

Time for a Potter to be a hero.

Lindsey Dullard time.

Already 6-for-6 on free throws in the second half, she made it 8 in a row with two more at 1:13. Morton’s lead was 55-48, good enough to hang on.

Dullard was the difference all night. The all-stater was at her best when it meant the most. She scored 11 of Morton’s 28 second-half points. She was also a constant force rebounding, on defense, and in handling the ball late in the game against the aggressive, pestiferous East St. Louis defenders.

Of East St. Louis, Morton’s coach, Bob Becker, said, “They’re very athletic and fairly disciplined. They put us in situations that we’ll learn from. We got a victory, but we learned we have to do a better job fighting on the boards. We have to understand that things we can get away with practice, we can’t get away with in games against teams like East St. Louis.”

The sophomore Katie Krupa saw the game “as so much fun, just like last year’s games,” and Dullard said, “I knew that we all had to be confident in everything we did and play the way that we all know how to play. We had to be the more aggressive team. This game told us that we can battle and compete with the more athletic teams.”

Dullard’s 19 points led Morton. Krupa had 16, Baughman 8, Courtney Jones 5, Dearing 4, and Frakes 3.

A note of interest to history majors in the audience: This was a long-delayed meeting of history-making teams. In 1980 East St. Louis’s Lincoln High School won the Class AA girls state championship. For 35 years it remained the only downstate public school outside of Peoria (Richwoods, Manual) to win the AA title. Then, in 2015, Morton’s Lady Potters became ONLY SMALL-TOWN public school state champion in that class, by then rejiggered to be Class 3A.

***

Potterettes 60, Batavia 30.

As much of a nail-biter as its evening game was, Morton’s morning game was a relaxing hour and 15 minutes in an easy chair.

Nine minutes in, Morton led 24-4.

Dullard led the scoring with 15, Dearing had 12 (on four 3-pointers). Krupa had 9, Jones 7. Maddy Becker, Maggie Hobson, Paige Griffin, Frakes, and Baughman all had 3 apiece.Cailyn Cowley had 2.

The Potters wind up the tournament Saturday with an 11:45 a.m. game against Champaign Central and a 5 o’clock game,likely for the tournament championship, against Peoria Richwoods, twice an easy winner on Friday.

Morton’s Lady Potters 35, Glenbard South 21

It’s so hard to be humble. Bob Becker wants it for his basketball team. He calls it “humble swagger.” It’s a Midwest thing. As long as you’re good at what you do, just do it, no need to brag it up. The coach has preached the humble manner for 20 years. He even lives it (except maybe for the bow tie, which we’ll get to in a minute.) But when a team wins a state championship and wins it the next year and the next and then, after a year away, wins it all for a fourth time in five seasons – as the Morton High School Lady Potters did today – maybe it’s time to grant the Potters a one-day exemption from humility. They could say anything they want, like . . .

“We are pretty gosh-dang good.”

“Tootin’ our own horn, we’re darn near perfect.”

“If there was a higher league, we’d go play up there and give the earthlings a chance to win the big trophy.”

But no. No, no, not a chance that any Potter is going to say anything like any of that. Ego inflation is not in these Potters, not even in the first minutes after defeating Glenbard South, 35-21, at Redbird Arena today to add the 2019 state Class 3A championship to the 2015, ’16, and ’17 titles.

“It’s surreal,” Katie Krupa said, “so surreal, and I haven’t really processed it yet. It was what we wanted from the first day on.” She’s a freshman, a 6-foot post player, a star rising in the Potters’ firmament. She called the Potters’ achievement surreal, and she meant it wasn’t just that they won, it was how they did it. “I’m so proud of this team, my teammates, how hard we’ve worked all season,” Krupa said. “It’s the Potter way.”

OK, I’ve long since bought into the Potter preachments. But, seriously, folks. Think of it. Morton is now tied with Lombard Montini for the most 3A championships in Illinois history. And in the last five seasons, the Potters have gone 33-3, 33-3, 34-2, 31-2, and 33-3. Do the math: 164 and 13, a .927 winning percentage. Now, tell me. How many state championships do you have in your trophy case? What do you do that you succeed in doing 92.7 percent of the time? I haven’t put the garage door up that often before getting into reverse. I can’t find my shoes that often. To talk about surreal is to talk about these Potters, who today proved they are so good that they can beat you any way you want to be beaten.

Yes, as the country song goes, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way – and the Potters have won running against running teams, won physically against physical teams, and won shooting against shooting teams. Today, they won walking. This was basketball played by somnambulists. (I’ll wait while you look it up.) Save for its historic significance in the pumpkin patches of Central Illinois, this game could have cured your insomnia.

That’s because 1) Glenbard South depends on aggressive man-to-man defense that funnels opponents toward its tall, shot-blocking post, and 2) its offense is designed to help the defense by killing time at the other end. The result is Zylocaine-ish. Morton’s 35 points today were the most Glenbard South had given up in its last 11 games.

And those 35 points were absolutely the fewest Morton could have scored today. The Potters led after a quarter, 17-3, and there was no reason to think anything would change. At halftime, it was 24-5. “The first quarter, we were masterful,” Becker said. In scoring the game’s first 15 points, the Potters were dominant at both ends. Their press forced a 10-second call. They made three steals in the first five minutes. They scored on fast breaks, on a put-back, and on a 3.

At quarter’s end, an Illinois High School Association official walked behind the Morton bench. He was carrying the state championship trophy. It would have saved time had he simply tapped Becker on the shoulder and said, “Here, take care of this for an hour, then it’s yours.”

From there on, I needed a snooze alarm on my notebook.

For nearly four minutes of the second quarter, neither team scored. Glenbard South did put up three 3-point shots, all airballs. However proud Glenbard South was of its defense, its defense was the second-best defense on the court today. By game’s end, Morton had made 13 steals (to the losers’ 4), had committed only 7 fouls (to 14), had allowed the losers only 10 shots inside the 3-point arc (against 3-for-18 from outside).

As dreadful as the second quarter was, the third surpassed it in zzzzz’s. Morton didn’t score for 7 minutes and 57.3 seconds. At :02.7, Krupa made two free throws for a 26-14 lead. Becker attributed the desultory performance to Glenbard South’s defense. I thought that any team with a 24-5 halftime lead had reason to lose interest in the proceedings, though that’s never a good idea with a state championship there for the taking. In any case, Morton snapped out of it long enough to go up, 31-17, on a free throw and power move by Krupa around a Tenley Dowell drive. There were 3 minutes, 27 seconds to play. It only seemed like three days, what with the losers then giving fouls to get to a bonus situation that might profit them. It didn’t.

Krupa and Dowell each had 10 points, Lindsey Dullard 5, Courtney Jones 4, Raquel Frakes 4, Peyton Dearing 2.

Wait. In addition to the trophy presentation, the game did have a thrilling moment.

It came when Bob Becker first walked onto the court.

That bow tie. A red bow tie.

He had talked to a fellow coach about Glenbard South. That coach ended the scouting report with a piece of advice.

“Wear something good for the championship picture,” he said.

Becker had been to a store in Champaign. He bought a shirt. He thought of buying a red sports coat. After all these years of blacks, browns, and beiges, Becker considered a red sports coat.

“I couldn’t go there,” he said.

Humble swagger does not wear a red jacket.

“But the salesman was really good,” Becker said.

Thus, the bow tie.

A bit swaggerish, perhaps, but it was a small bow tie.

Morton’s Lady Potters 65, LaGrange Park Nazareth Academy 51

It got quiet there for a while. Everybody in town, give or take a few slackers, had come to Redbird Arena. Certainly, every high school kid, give or take a few advanced chemistry nerds, was at Redbird. Everyone came wearing red, the Red Sea of Morton. They came with posters and signs and big-head portraits of their heroines. They filled a third of the 10,000-seat arena and came to be raucous, rock ‘n rollin’ fans. They came to see the Potters win, and win again tomorrow, to win a fourth state championship in five seasons.

And then the game started. And it got quiet. Real quiet. Dead Sea quiet.

Someone left a layup short – a layup, uncontested, it bounced off the underside of the rim. Then a 3-pointer from 20 feet flew 19 feet. The Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, got up in someone’s grill over a defensive assignment. Another missed layup. A traveling call. It was so quiet that in the sixth row of the bleachers you could hear the coach shout, “Change that mind-set NOW.” Becker was running subs in and out, once sending in three together, searching for an answer to whatever was happening. ”A little tentative,” Becker would say afterwards. “A little bit frazzled.”

Nazareth Academy led after that quiet quarter, 11-4. Morton had 4 points, Morton averaging 65 a game, Morton with two baskets to begin the season’s biggest game. Not that Nazareth, even if it matched Morton’s 31-3 season record, was that good. The Potters were better in every basketball way. Still, here’s a note I made about the Potters: “As bad as they can play. Scared. Hurried. Needs life.”

Then along came Tenley Dowell.

This would become her finest moment. When her team needed her most, she was there. As good as she has been for three seasons, she now can say she was at her best when it meant the most. Without her today, Morton loses. With her – a game-high 23 points, game-high eight rebounds, 7-of-9 shooting, 7-of-8 free throws – with Tenley Dowell breathing life into every one of her teammates – no, no, forcing life into them – they won going away.

At the end of that first quarter, here’s what Dowell thought: “We have to score some points.” So, on Morton’s first possession of the second quarter, Dowell did what defines her. She attacked the rim. She’s a 6-foot senior All-Stater who moves with long strides and great body control. Through traffic, she finishes with either zhand. Given a glimpse of an opening, she’s gone. Fouled on that drive, she made a free throw. One point. Not much. But enough to suggest life. Then came some points. Two by Lindsey Dullard, two by Katie Krupa, two by Courtney Jones – and it was tied, 11-all, and the Red Sea came to life, roaring.

And with 3:54 left in the half, Dowell had the ball on the right side. She had the ball for a second, maybe less. Catch and shoot. From the right side arc, she put up a 3-point shot. “We have to score some points,” she thought, and on the season’s biggest stage – a semifinal in the state tournament at Redbird Arena – she caught it and shot it and let her wrist fall loose, a shooter’s pose, as the ball fell through the net, a shooter’s reward.

It was Dowell’s only 3-point attempt of the game. It was the climactic moment of a 10-0 run, with Dowell beginning the run and ending it. It put Morton in front, 14-11, with Dowell having scored 8 of the points. Once in front, the Potters stayed there.

“We got better and better as the game went on,” Becker said, for that’s what championship teams do, imposing their will on lesser teams as the vise of time closes. Becker’s teams are famous for turning games their way in the third quarter, and if today they used a solid second quarter to take a 23-18 halftime lead, they decided the issue in the third. Up 26-25 at 5:37, the Potters outscored Nazareth 12-2 in the next four minutes.

That run began with two Krupa power moves underneath and a free throw. Dullard scored three points on an alley-oop layup-and-one, after which she dropped off a pass to Krupa for two more. Then Dullard deflected a Nazareth pass near midcourt and got the ball to Krupa, whose missed layup was put back in by the trailing – you guessed it – Tenley Dowell.

Morton led, 38-27, and was up, 42-30, at the buzzer when Nazareth’s star, Annie Stritzel, thought she might as well throw one at the hoop from 65 feet, the heave falling 20 feet short – an act of futility symbolic of her day against the Potters’ scrambling, helping, filling-the-gaps defense. Stritzel came in off a 36-point super-sectional game. For the seasons, she averaged 25 a game. Of her 21 today, 10 came in the last four minutes when the Potters had a double-figure lead and her scoring no longer mattered.

And now, for the fourth time in five seasons, the Potters will play for the Class 3A state championship. Their opponent today will be Glenbard South, a 32-27 winner over Springfield Sacred Heart-Griffin. For those Red Sea fans wondering how good Glenbard South is, I will say only this: I watched 30 seconds before deciding that Morton could beat an all-star team out of that game. That said, I still want Tenley Dowell in the lineup today. Just in case, y’know.

Dowell’s 23 led Morton’s scoring. Dullard and Krupa had 17 apiece. Courtney Jones had 4, Peyton Dearing 2, Raquel Frakes 2.

Morton’s Lady Potters 70, Kankakee’s Bishop McNamara 43

I could start with Bob Becker’s shoes. “You are changing them, right?” is what his daughter, Maddy, said. They were dark blue sneakers with white edges. They were, to be honest, a step up from the world-weary dress shoes he most often wears. Still. Sneakers? For a super-sectional game? With a state championship still at stake? “They’re comfortable,” the coach said, “and I like ‘em.” So there is that.

Or I could start with the Bishop McNamara guys in the first row of bleachers right behind the Potters’ bench. I don’t know that they’re students. I do know they wore Bishop Mac gear and were raucous in support of the Bishops – until it was clear these Bishops didn’t have a prayer. The Potters were tall and lean; the Bishops, not so much. Their heroines down by about 30, the McNamara guys began shouting to the Potters, “I’m taking you to the prom.”

“Yes, I heard them,” Bridget Wood said. So I could start with the senior about to make her third trip to Redbird Arena in four seasons. I could tell you she made my favorite play tonight. She had the ball on the right side. “I saw an opening,” she said. She ran to daylight. On the way, she took a zig-zag route though maybe three beleaguered, exhausted Bishops. Asked to describe her path to a layup, Wood laughed. She waved her hands this way. She tilted her head that way. She shrugged her shoulders. She said, in essence, “Who knows, but it was fun.”

I could start with a riff on the Potters’ chances of winning a fourth state championship in five years. Those chances are very good. I’ve seen the teams that won the state in 2015, ’16, and ’17. This team, now 31-3, may be better than those. This team can beat you any way you want to be beaten. On offense, it can score in transition and out of sets, from down low or from out high. On defense, it can suffocate you with a full-court, zone trapping press they call “mayhem,” it can go man-to-man against your best people, and it can throw in a triangle-and-two if Becker decides to confuse you into submission.

“They’re playing at a very high level now, at both ends,” the coach said. “There’s just a belief in each other, a trust, a connectedness. All 14 players are in it as one. I just love it.”

But I really should start with Lindsey Dullard because, if you didn’t see Dullard’s first quarter tonight, you missed the best quarter of any girl’s sweetest basketball dreams. It wasn’t just that she scored 16 points, 11 of them in the last three minutes of the quarter. She scored them sensationally in a big game. She went 4-for-4 on 3-pointers from all points of the basketball compass – one from the left arc, one on top, one from the deep right corner, and one from the top right. (I’m not counting one she missed from 40 feet at the buzzer.)

Such work demands a tick-tock replay: At 6:26, a 3. Ten seconds later, two free throws. Three minutes later, a 3. Forty seconds later, a 3. Two minutes later, a 3. Fifteen seconds later, two free throws.

“Dullie was amazing,” her senior All-State running mate Tenley Dowell said. “She was taking all the shots – and she should’ve been – she was making everything.”

Dullard said, “Oh, my gosh. So excited. We came out really hard, and my teammates got me the ball. All I had to do was put it in.”

Off a 26-10 first quarter, the Potters were up at halftime, 39-19. They began a 17-0 run late in the second quarter that carried halfway through the third for a 52-19 lead. It was this lop-sided: One minute into the third quarter, when Dowell threw in a 3, the Potters had enough points, 45, to win without scoring again. And this was against a team with 24 victories, a team that by reaching the super-sectional was one of the last eight standing.

And now, for the fourth time in five seasons, the Potters have earned their way to Redbird Arena for the Final Four of the state’s Class 3A tournament. Two victories Friday and Saturday would give the Potters their fourth state championship in those five years.

Can the Potters win it all again?

“I definitely think we can,” Dullard said.

“I think we’ve got it,” Dowell said.

And Bridget Wood said, “I don’t want it to end.”

Dullard led all scorers with 24. Dowell had 18 and Courtney Jones 10. Katie Krupa had 6, Wood 5, Addi Cox 2, Claire Kraft 2, Megan Gold 2, Peyton Dearing 1.

Morton’s Lady Potters 46, Richwoods 39

I said, “Be still, my heart,” and my heart said, “But how?” Fate had this one in her hands. Anything could happen. Three minutes to play. It might have been three hours. Young people could grow old, old people could grow young. Tides could turn, the moon could fall from the sky. “Be still, my heart,” I said, and my heart said, “I get it, I get it. Shut up, already.”

The Potters were down by eight until, suddenly, they are up by three with a minute and change to go. That minute and change might as well have been time without end. Hurry, Fate. Hurry, tell us what will be. Richwoods is a mighty force, undeniable in the last hour or day or month, however long it was that Richwoods owned this one. A minute and 29 seconds to play and the Potters are up by three, which is nothing in this moment, for Fate is fickle, we know. She can erase three points with a flick of a finger.

A minute, 29 to play.

Timeout, Richwoods.

At the Morton bench, the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, is crouched before his five starters. This night he is coaching like a man with his hair on fire. Early on, upset with a referee’s judgment, he did a Houdini-escaping-a-strait-jacket trick to get out of his suit jacket and throw the thing down emphatically. Later on, he had been so rambunctious that his tie hung sideways and his shirttail hung out the back. Now, he is crouched before his team, with 1:29 to play, up by three points. And, at the top of his voice to players a foot from him, in all-capital letters with an exclamation point, he tells Fate what she damn well can do tonight.

“THIS IS OUR FRICKIN’ GAME!” he tells his players.

My heart felt better.

Richwoods didn’t score again. The defending state Class 3A champions, ranked No. 1 going into this game, winners 30 times in 32 games – the Peorians managed only one shot in the minute, 29. It wasn’t so much that they failed. It was more that the Potters’ Lindsey Dullard succeeded grandly. She made two extraordinary plays. In fewer than six seconds, at :23.2 and :17.7, the 6-foot-1 junior got offensive rebounds on free throws to keep the ball in Morton’s hands. Then she made a free throw at :16.1 to give Morton a four-point lead.

My heart felt really good then.

This was a classic. Nearly 2,000 people were in the Illinois Valley Central High School gymnasium. We had waited in a long, cold line to get into the building. Then we waited in a long, hot corridor to get into the gym. I’ve walked into 43 Super Bowls easier than I got into this sectional championship game. The wait was worth it.

We saw two of the state’s very best teams, whatever class you want to choose. Both teams had marquee players headed for Division-1 universities. Both played scrambling, unforgiving defense. Neither asked for quarter physically, neither gave quarter. More than once, a Morton player stepped over a Richwoods girl at her feet, and, more than once, a Richwoods player stepped over a Potter at her feet.

The difference came on offense. Morton was good from outside (six 3’s), Richwoods was good inside (only two of its 17 buckets came from more than point-blank range). But the Potters were also good in close. Their freshman star, Katie Krupa, led all scorers with 21 points, seven on free throws, the other 14 on power moves to the rim, scoring with either hand. Her opposite number, Richwoods’ all-state senior Cam Taylor, scored 17 points (a good night, considering that Becker chose to double-team her every move and begged/dared Richwoods to try to score from outside; it couldn’t.)

Morton led at quarter, 9-4, and at halftime, 22-17. Richwoods’ only sustained move came in the first five minutes of the second half. A 13-2 run in which Taylor scored six points gave Richwoods a 30-24 lead. It was during that run, with 4:17 left in the quarter, that Becker’s suit jacket came off his body and went flying over his assistant coaches’ heads. It was another full two minutes, though, before Morton scored, and Richwoods extended its lead to 34-26 with seven seconds left in the quarter.

Seven seconds.

Not much time.

But enough time.

Enough time for Courtney Jones to get the ball to Dullard near mid-court.

Enough time for Dullard to put up a shot.

A shot that was in the air when the buzzer sounded.

And in the net a heartbeat later.

It had been 13 minutes of game time since Dullard had last scored. She had been tentative shooting. She had fumbled away possessions. She had made passes that Richwoods intercepted. Then she banked it in from 40 feet. Instead of being eight down, Morton was five down.

“That shot got me going on the inside,” Dullard said.

Still, Richwoods led, 36-29, with under seven minutes to play.

Then Tenley Dowell made a 3 and Dullard followed 30 seconds later with another 3 and it had become a be-still-my-heart kind of game.

After a Richwoods free throw, Dullard found Krupa inside to tie it at 37-all. Twenty-seven seconds later – you may notice a trend here – Dullard made a 3-pointer from the left arc. Morton led, 40-37, with 3:50 to play. At 3:32, Richwoods made it 40-39 – and never scored again – largely because of Dullard’s two offensive rebounds that denied Richwoods two critical possessions in the last minute.

Those were big-time rebounds. As she stood in the middle slot on the left of the lane, Dullard saw that the Richwoods player to her left didn’t intend to box her out. So Dullard circled around that girl and into the lane. And – thank you, Fate – the missed free throw bounced high and to the right. Its flight gave the husting Dullard time to cross the lane and beat everyone to the ball. And fewer than six seconds later, she did it again.

“Oh, I wanted that ball,” she said. “I wanted it so bad.”

Krupa was thrilled, too. “Everything we had to do all season, the running, the conditioning, the practices – it’s so worth it,” she said. Krupa’s 21 points came on the heels of a 26-point performance in the sectional semifinal. Her coach, Becker, said, “The sky’s the limit for Katie Krupa.”

There seems to be no limit on these Potters right now. They’re 30-3 for the season, the team’s fifth straight season with at least 30 victories. In those five years, the Potters are 161-13. Last year, you remember, Richwoods won this game and went on to win the state championship. There’s no reason to expect anything less from these Potters. They play Monday in the super-sectional at Coal Valley. My heart will be ready.

Krupa led all scorers with 21 Dullard had 12, Dowell 9, and Jones 4.

Morton’s Lady Potters 71, Canton 59

I sat three rows behind the Morton bench, which meant I sat in the Peoria Richwoods’ fans’ section in the Illinois Valley Central High School gym. It also meant I sat alongside Richwoods players who, after their cakewalk in the night’s first semfinal, had stayed to watch Morton. So I can report that the loudest cheer I heard all night came at the buzzer ending the first quarter of the Morton game.

That’s because it came directly into my good ear from the Richwoods players. It came when a Canton player threw one in from 35 feet. I made a note of that moment when the 3-point prayer cut Morton’s lead to 37-25. The note: “Rwoods plyrs up + loving it.”

A friend from the Washington Post, with me on a busman’s holiday, asked, “Are they cheering because they don’t want to play Morton?”

Maybe. They lost to the Potters by a point just after Christmas after beating them in double overtime Thanksgiving week. So maybe they’d rather not play a team that good that is now playing well enough to win its fourth state championship in five seasons. Or maybe people on the west side of the Illinois River just don’t like people on the east side.

In the end, who knows why anybody does anything? All I know is that the game we’ve been waiting for has finally arrived. Morton-Richwoods III. It’s the climax of a thrilling trilogy; it’s also a rematch of last year’s sectional championship game. People east of the river may want to forget that one. Richwoods won, 49-29, and it wasn’t nearly that close. The Knights went on to win the state championship and, this year, set their sights on winning it again.

Before she became a Potter, Katie Krupa saw that game a year ago. Most of it, anyway. She said, “I didn’t want to watch it,” meaning the part where Richwoods intimidated Morton en route to a 30-point lead.

Krupa was an eighth-grader then, a spectator waiting her turn on-court. Now she’s a freshman who scored 26 points tonight and said of that loss to Richwoods, “That won’t happen again. It’ll be fun this time.”

It will be fun only if the Potters play better than they did tonight. They were up by 27 points with a quarter and a minute to play against a team they’d beaten twice this season by 30 and 42. But as Morton coach Bob Becker went deep into his reserves, giving his starters rest, Canton began throwing everything into the air and watching it fall through the hoop. Suddenly, Morton’s lead was down to a dozen points, 64-52.

With 1:56 to play, Becker turned to his bench and said, “Starters, check in.”

By then even the starters didn’t help much. Canton got it to 64-56 with 1:04 to play. A couple more 3-pointers and there might be no Richwoods-Morton III.

“I don’t think there was ever a doubt,” Becker said, though he did admit that sending in his starters for the last two minutes was one way to make sure there was never a doubt. Canton made seven fourth-quarter field goals to Morton’s two. The Potters’ last seven points came on free throws by starters: Two by Krupa, two by Tenley Dowell, and three by Lindsey Dullard.

If Thursday night’s sectional championship game portends the eventual state champion as it did a year ago, it will be because Morton plays for 32 minutes the way it did for three minutes tonight. The Potters led 39-27 when they began a 17-2 run for a 56-29 lead that caused one Richwoods player to rise and turn to leave while saying, “This game’s over.”

The run began with a Krupa power-move layup followed by her put-back of a rebound. Dullard stole an in-bounds pass for a layup. Then Krupa scored a layup-and-one off a nifty Dullard pass. Dullard and Addi Cox scored from in close and Dowell capped the run with a steal and layup set up by Morton’s trapping press.

The :Potters were 27 points up with 2:48 to play in the third quarter, and another 40-point victory over Canton seemed inevitable. Instead, in the next nine minutes, Canton made its own run, a 27-8 move, the kind of thing that no other team had been able to do to Morton all season.

The desultory ending didn’t worry Bob Becker.

“We’ll regroup and be ready to go Thursday,” he said.

There will be no secrets that night, not between veteran teams meeting for the fifth time in two seasons.

“They do what they do,” Becker said, “and we do what we do. It will be a great game.”

What Richwoods does best is bring power. What Morton does best is bring finesse. The team that best does what the other best does will win. I think that team will be Morton.

Krupa’s 26 led the Potters tonight. Dullard had 17, Dowell 13. Addi Cox had 4, Raquel Frakes 3, Courtney Jones 3, Peyton Dearing 3, Megan Gold 2.

Maddy Becker went down with a knee injury a minute into tonight’s game and sat out the rest. She is to be examined Wednesday morning.