Author: Dave Kindred

This morning the Lady Potters ate breakfast.

Then they ate some more.

“I got two plates, one in each hand, and they both were full,” said Olivia Remmert, a freshman new to the Potters’ let’s-win-State-again thing.

At 7:45 a.m. the team gathered at the farm home of Todd and Linda Bisping, parents of the Potters’ all-time leading scorer (Brooke, class of ‘09) and all-time leading rebounder (Brandi, today named an Associated Press first-team all-stater).

“Mrs. Bisping is such a good cook,” Remmert said, and what she said next caused me to gain five pounds even before she finished her cataloguing of good-cookery: “Biscuits with gravy, sausage, eggs, fruit, chocolate-chip pancakes, chocolate-chip scones . . .”

Properly stuffed, the Potters then did . . ..

A short practice in the Potterdome . . . a “Parade of Champions” behind the school’s roof-rattling drum corps past hundreds of cheering students in the hallways . . . (A note here: the school’s 500 tickets are sold out, but tickets will be available at the arena. The school will provide four 60-seat buses for students) . . . and then the team embarked for Illinois State University’s Redbird Arena where they worked out briefly and attended to media obligations – such as answering a videographer’s question, “What’s the most embarrassing thing that happened to you this season?”

Jacey Wharram’s answer, with a blush: “I wore my shorts backwards one game and didn’t know it until halftime.”

At 11 o’clock tomorrow, the Potters, 32-2 for the season, play Chicago Simeon, 23-6, in a semifinal of the Class 3A tournament. Win that one, and win again Saturday afternoon, the Potters will have won the 3A championship three straight times. Only one other school in 40 years of Illinois girls basketball has done that. (Lombard Montini, 2010-11-12. More history: Morton is the only small-town public school ever to win the 3A title once, let alone twice.)

If we know Simeon at all, it’s because the Chicagoans were gawdawful in losing to Morton in the Potters’ 2014 Thanksgiving tournament, 72-40. They are better now, of course, though what I’ve seen on video and what I saw in their workout today gives me reason to believe the Potters should be favored tomorrow. A victory will send Morton the championship game against the Chicago Marshall-Rochester winner. That’s likely to be Marshall. It’s Chicago’s best 3A team, an eight-time state champion undefeated in 32 games this season. Morton’s coach, Bob Becker, has said, “They’re the real deal.”

At Redbird today, the Potters worked out just enough to stay loose. Everyone was having fun, even working around the third annual Redbird “Horse” 3-point shooting duel that pitted Becker against assistant coach Brooke Bisping. Each had won once. Becker won this time, the dagger delivered from 35 feet.

As to the Potters’ mood with a three-peat there for the taking, I asked some players for one word . . .

Jacey Wharram: “Pumped.”

Olivia Remmert: “Determined.”

Josi Becker: “Excited.”

Tenley Dowell: “Awesome.”

Kassidy Shurman: “Ecstatic.”

Caylie Jones: “Exhilarated.”
Brandi Bisping: “Ready.”

It’s going to happen. They’re going to make a run. I could look up how many times they’ve done it. Just know they’re 32 and 2 because they’ve done it a bunch. Tonight, one more time, somebody thought they had a chance against the Morton High School Lady Potters. The somebodies this time were a point up early. But in four or five blinks of the eye, the somebodies were 16 down. To look at the Potters you’d think, nice teenage girls, all smiles, girls having fun. But to play ‘em you’d think, sure, they’re nice. They’re nice, like, they’d steal your lunch money and, sure, maybe they’d give it to orphans, but, anyway, why don’t they just go play UConn?

So Stillman Valley didn’t really have a chance.

Morton 48, the somebodies 31.

Their straight super-sectional victory and fourth in five seasons moves the Potters to the final four at Redbird Arena this weekend. They play a Friday morning semifinal against Chicago Simeon, a 44-23 winner over Morgan Park. They need two more victories for their third straight state Class 3A championship – a three-peat done only once in 40 years of Illinois girls basketball history, that by Lombard Montini in 2010-11-12.

“One step closer,” Brandi Bisping, the Potters’ senior all-stater, said.

For the sake of an analogy to come, I will introduce Stillman Valley’s namesake, the U.S. Army general, Isaiah Stillman. During the Black Hawk war that moved across northern Illinois in the early 19th century, Gen. Stillman led 275 soldiers into a battle with Sauk and Fox warriors. For reasons unknown, the general decided his troops were outnumbered by thousands of Indians when, in fact, there were 50. The general fled the battlefield and history books now speak of “Stillman’s Run.”

Yes, like the poor general, the Stillman High girls thought everything was going well – until it wasn’t.

They led, 17-16, with 3:57 to play in the second quarter. Their star, a 6-foot-3 center, had scored 10 points and dominated the boards. They might have thought, Morton? Big deal. Back-to-back state champions? We’ve got ‘em down. We can play with ‘em. Just keep doing what we’re doing.

Doing what you’re doing is easy against some folks. But not so easy against a team talented enough, smart enough, and relentless enough to disrupt you at both ends of the floor every minute of the game. Once ahead by that single point, Stillman Valley did not score for approximately all night.

In big games, 7 minutes and 57 seconds can feel like all night – and that’s how long Stillman Valley got nothing done.

Meanwhile, the Potters had gone on a 17-0 run. Once down 17-16, suddenly they were up, 33-17. They knew what they’d done. Listen to them sing:

“Crazy awesome,” Bisping said.

“Our defense shut them down,” Josi Becker said.

“Even when we were behind, I was thinking, ‘We got this,’” Jacey Wharram said. “When we got ahead, it was, ‘We’re not going to be behind anymore.’”

“A sigh of relief,” Tenley Dowell said.

The game-turning run deserves close attention because it speaks of so much the Potters do well. Long-time assistant coach Bill Davis put it one fat paragraph, like this:

“We bring pressure defensively that sets up our offense,” he said. “Out of our 2-3 zone, our 1-3-1, our press, we force them into dangerous passes. We know where those passes are going and we take them. We get stops and when you’re turning defensive stops into all those extra layups, you’re on a run.”

Tonight’s game-turning run began with a Bisping put-back of her own missed shot. That made it 18-17 at 3:03 of the second quarter.

Caylie Jones, a junior coming off the bench, “a star in her role,” to quote head coach Bob Becker, followed with a 12-foot jumper. Bisping moved an offensive rebound to Dowell, who scored from 14 feet. A Lindsey Dullard takeaway of a Stillman Valley dribble led to a Jones layup. Then Jones, cutting from the top of the key, intercepted a Stillman Valley pass for a possession that led, seconds later, to an in-bounds play that worked perfectly – a Josi Becker bounce pass to Jones for another layup.

It was 26-17 at the half, and by then it was clear that Morton had not only taken the lead, it also had beaten Stillman Valley the way it has beaten so many teams this season – by relentless pressure that wears them down physically and mentally. Perhaps only Peoria High and Rock Island, ranked No. 1 in Class 4A, matched Morton’s speed and endurance this season. Only Rock Island, a 20-point winner, can say it handled everything Morton brought.

The Potters’ run continued the first two minutes of the third quarter, beginning with Jones making a jumper from the free throw line. Then came my favorite play of the night. From the top of the key, Jones side-armed a long bounce pass, maybe 20 feet, to the back-cutting Dowell, who took it on the run for a layup.

Starting to explain the pass, Jones first said, “I had to make up for the last game because of the double-dribble.” In the sectional championship game, Jones dribbled out front. Stopped, picked up the dribble. Then turned the other way, resuming the dribble en route to a layup. The referees saw nothing, one even stopping to ask a fan, “Did I miss a double-dribble?”

Jones saw Dowell making the back-cut to the rim.

“I knew I had to put a lot of spin under it,” she said of the pass.

Dowell said, “There was just a really small gap there, and the pass had to be really low, but Caylie’s pass was perfect.”

A minute later, Dowell scored again, this time a 3-pointer.

It was all done in 5 minutes and 22 seconds.

Morton won that third quarter, 9-2, and made 11 free throws in the fourth quarter to notify Stillman Valley that it had its chance and its chance was over.

Dowell led Morton’s scoring with 17. Becker had 10, Jones and Bisping 8 each, Dullard 3, and Wharram 2.

One thing more. All this came the day after a locker room mystery. When the Potters showed up for a workout Sunday, they saw notes on a chalkboard.

“33-3 was good.”

(Good enough to win it all two seasons ago.)

“33-3 again was good.”

(A second championship.)

“34 and 2 is the new goal.”

(By winning out.)

“Ain’t nothin’ to it, just do it.”

I can’t reveal the writer’s identity, but his initials are Bill Davis.

There came a time when Brandi Bisping found a path around and through traffic for a layup. So sensational was her work that it caused hundreds of Morton High School students, raucous all night, rocking alongside parents, grandparents, and other more sedate if no less thrilled Lady Potters fans – it caused those students to send up a Bisping-appreciation chant, “YOU CAN’T STOP HER . . . YOU CAN’T STOP HER.”

She was not the only unstoppable. The Potters have five people the coach identifies as offensive “weapons.” Any of them can put up 20 points a night. They have what they call “lock-down” defense whether they’re in man-to-man or zone or scaring the bejabbers out of you with a full-court trapping press. Because they can go eight deep with fresh legs, they are relentless, they are in perpetual motion, they never allow you to breathe freely. Besides that, their toughest nut has a quote for you. “There’s not a tougher team in Illinois,” Bisping said.

All that is true, proven by results, and it is a wonder because, truth to tell, I never thought the Potters could win a state championship. That’s a Chicago thing. No small-town public school in 37 seasons of Illinois girls basketball had ever done it – until the girls from Morton’s pumpkin patches did it two seasons ago – and then did it AGAIN last season – and now talk boldly about finishing off a THREE-PEAT the first weekend in March.

How boldly do they talk?

Listen up.

“For all those reasons,” Bisping said, an allusion to my catalogue of stuff that good basketball teams do, “that’s why we’re going all the way.”

“Win it all again?” I said.

“We didn’t come all this way to lose,” she said.

Tonight the Potters won their third straight sectional championship by dominating Normal’s U High, 58-42. Now 31-2 for the season, they are three victories away from the three-peat – a feat done only once in Illinois girls history. The Potters play Monday in the Manlius super-sectional against Stillman Valley. The winner moves to the final four at Illinois State University’s Redbird Arena.

Here’s how good Morton was tonight: U High came in with a 28-4 record and it never led once. It never had a chance, not even when it trailed only 18-15 late in the first half. For it was there, in the half’s last minute and 10 seconds, that Morton not only achieved separation on the scoreboard but achieved separation in thought. I will explain.

It was 18-15 when Josi Becker did her thing. The coach, Bob Becker, says he can’t brag on Josi Becker because he’s her father. So I’m here to tell you what Josi did. She did amazing. How she got there, I have no clue. But somehow she came dribbling from deep in the right corner. She’s a point guard, 5-foot-3. As she moved from right to left, she disappeared into a forest of the big people clogging the lane.

Then, this was the amazing, she reappeared on the left side of the lane. From there she scored on a smooth left-handed layup.

Now it’s 20-15 with 1:10 left in the half.

The lock-down defense stopped U High, and Bisping wrapped her bear-claw hands on an offensive rebound. Falling down, she moved a pass to Becker at the top of the key. From there, a 3-pointer.

Now it’s 23-15 with 29 seconds left.

At the other end, Bisping took a rebound with seven seconds remaining. It seemed she would have time to try a mid-court shot. She did have time. But no mid-court shot.

On the run with the ball, she did not slow down. She sprinted past three U High defenders directly to the basket and scored on a layup at the buzzer.

Now it’s 25-15.

The separation on the scoreboard was one thing. Ten points is a lot better than three. The more important separation was in Morton’s sudden brilliance. It was the kind of foot-on-their-neck dominance that affirms one team’s confidence and lets the other know the party’s over, turn out the lights. After that 7-0 burst in 70 seconds, Morton never allowed U High to come closer than eight points. By the third quarter’s end, Morton had built its lead to 20 points, 43-23.

We were speaking of toughness. Here’s tough. Brandi Bisping again. Midway in that game-turning third quarter, Bisping did her thing. She drove to the basket as if the hounds of hell were at her heels. A U High girl thought to stop the all-stater. That called for a hip-check blocking foul that sent Bisping ker-rashing to the floor. Only when she stepped to the free throw line did anyone notice the blood.

Because she ripped some skin from her left wrist, the game was stopped momentarily to allow a trainer to wrap tape around the wound. As Bisping went to the line, a U High player told a referee, “She’s got blood on her shorts.” By rule, Bisping had to leave the game until the blood was rubbed away.

“When they said that about the blood, I was thinking, ‘You must really want me out of here,’” Bisping said later.

Well, yeah, they would want that. Morton led, 30-19, and Bisping had scored 13 herself. The curious episode of Bisping’s injury came early in a 15-4 run that settled the issue. Lindsey Dullard had started it with a driving layup off an in-bounds play. Kassidy Shurman made a free throw in Bisping’s place. Then Caylie Jones dropped in a layup. Tenley Dowell followed with a 3 and a fast-break layup. That’s when Bisping found her way to a layup and a 40-23 lead that set off the YOU CAN’T STOP HER chant, followed by another directed to U High students across the way, “WHY SO QUIET? WHY SO QUIET?”

For all that, my favorite play came next. To say it was another 3 by Dowell is to leave out the wonder of it. It began, as nearly all of Morton’s offense begins, with the ball in Becker’s hands. The Potters wanted the quarter’s last shot. From a spot near the arc on the right side, Becker moved the ball to Bisping inside. From there to Dullard at the top of the key. Over to Dowell behind the arc on the left side. All of those passes done more quickly than I can type the words. And Dowell’s 3-pointer falls in with the clock showing :01.6.”

Just beautiful.

Bisping led Morton’s scoring with 17. She also had 9 rebounds. Becker had 16 points, Dowell 12. Shurman, Dullard, and Caylie Jones had 4 apiece. Maddy Becker had 1.

“We’re playing our best basketball right now,” Bob Becker said, and no one could argue that, certainly not the losing coach, Laura Sellers, whose team has now lost six straight to Morton, three this year and three last year. It was, I guess, an insensitive question to ask a coach whose team finished 28-5 – “A great U High team,” Becker said – but lost three times to Morton.

I asked Sellers, “Can Morton win it all again?”

The poor coach said, almost in a whisper, “Sure.”

The next morning, the score was up there. Every day for a while, those numbers were on the scoreboard. Practice didn’t start until those numbers were lit up. No one remembers exactly how long the numbers were up there except they were up there a longggggg time. Every day, every practice, maybe for two weeks, the scoreboard’s bright red lights showed a “40” and a “37.” Or, as junior forward Caylie Jones called it, “That score.”

Thirty-five days ago, the Morton High School Lady Potters lost to Galesburg in Galesburg’s gym by that score. Even that night, the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, reckoned his team would see the Silver Streaks again – probably in the sectional tournament, probably late in February when games come with more meaning. So, 35 days ago, Becker started lighting up the Potterdome scoreboard with a reminder of what had happened.

By tonight, those red lights had burned themselves so deeply into the Potters’ brains that Jones said her team played with “a sense of revenge.” Or, as senior all-stater Brandi Bisping said in anticipation of joy to come, “Them again.”

This time the Potters’ number was 54.

Them had 24.

This time when the Potters scored their 37th point, Them had 12.

As one measure of Morton’s superiority, the Potters had enough points at halftime, 26, to win without ever scoring again. There is also this: Galesburg came in as a regional champion with a 24-7 season’s record that included that 40-37 victory 35 days ago and yet never had a chance tonight, beaten every way a team can be beaten. The Potters’ lead was only 19-10 midway through the second quarter when I scribbled a note: “4:35 – M just the better team.”

Morton was the better team for many reasons. It has good athletes with size. Yes. It has eight, nine, maybe 10 players who could start for any other team they’ve played this season. Yes. But it is 30-2 for the season – and now two victories away from another trip to Redbird Arena — because all its people know how to play basketball. They know how to take care of the ball, they know how to shoot. Yes. They learned that in the third grade. More important, they know how to move on offense and defense, and they know to anticipate movement, their opponents’ and their own. Peoria High coach Meechie Edwards said the definitive words after his team fell apart under Morton’s relentless pressure at both ends: “They’re a smart team.” The Potters do almost nothing dumb and they do almost everything with a purpose – as illustrated in a wonderful little scene early in the third quarter.

Morton’s Tenley Dowell had two free throws to put the Potters up 28-16. Bisping was on the lane. Becker shouted her name. When she turned to see what he wanted, she saw the coach deep in a defensive crouch, arms spread wide.

“Telling me to ‘get low,’” Bisping said later.

She saw the coach getting low, so she turned fully away from her spot on the lane, faced Becker, and, smiling all the way, dropped into her own defensive crouch. Done with a purpose: Yes, Coach. I’ll get low.

“Might as well have fun,” she said.

On his coaching whiteboard, Becker had scrawled four pre-game messages for his team:

Make every play like your last
D it up
Dominate the glass
Toughness

Might as well have all that fun, and the Potters did. Last month, they lost to Galesburg by those 40-37 numbers. But that was January, and this is Win-or-Go-Home. Back then, Brandi Bisping was recovering from mono. “Struggling,” she said. She had 12 points, but only 4 in the last 15 minutes when Morton could not come back from 26-16 down at halftime. Tonight, no struggle – she scored Morton’s first two baskets, both 3-pointers, and had 10 points by quarter’s end, the Potters ahead for good at 13-7.

I loved it when Bisping made her second 3-pointer. She was also fouled on the shot. Or seemed to have been fouled. Anyway, she went falling backwards and a referee called a foul on Galesburg. Even as Bisping went to the line to finish a rare 4-point play, Galesburg coach Evan Massey was in a referee’s ear. Lip-readers at the far end of the gym saw him telling the referee that Bisping “flops.” Ear-witnesses near Massey heard him use the flop word and characterized the coach’s tone as “whiny.”

Galesburg still had a prayer when Morton’s lead was 17-10 midway in the second quarter – except it was becoming obvious that the Streaks could not score against a Morton defense that Becker called “awesome, just awesome.” So awesome, in fact, that when Galesburg was forced by defensive pressure into a traveling violation, Becker came leaping off the bench, pumping a fist in giddy celebration. “Defense is fun for these kids,” Becker said.

Meanwhile, the Potters scored every which way. Caylie Jones made a 12-footer and a layup. Josi Becker a 3. Jones another move inside. Dowell’s two free throws during the Becker-Bisping act. Bisping a 3 from the top of the arc followed by a 17-footer, two free throws, and a put-back of her own blocked shot.

Suddenly, on an 18-2 run in 9 minutes and 40 seconds, the Potters had come to that lovely score: Morton 37, Them 12.

My favorite piece of the Potters’ defensive work came at the start of the fourth quarter. After playing man-to-man to that point, Becker’s team surprised Galesburg with a full-court trapping defense that featured its longest players up-front: Bisping, Dowell, and Lindsey Dullard, the team’s so-called “Condor Line.” When the three girls jumped at a Galesburg ball-handler, it was, like, Whaaa, where’d they come from???? Soon enough, Galesburg’s offense became desperate cross-court passes leading nowhere.

“They didn’t know how to play without running their sets,” Dowell said.

I asked Massey about his team’s offensive troubles. For one thing, the Streaks were 0-for-13 on 3’s. (After making zero 3’s in that loss at Galesburg, the Potters made 5 3’s this time.)

“We never got comfortable,” Massey said, which is a losing coach’s way of acknowledging the success of Becker’s third whiteboard point: D it up.

Bisping led Morton’s scoring with 23. (She also had 13 rebounds and became the Potters’ all-time rebound leader with 1,060, 11 more than Cindy Bumgarner.) Jones had 10 points, Dowell 8, Dullard 5, Josi Becker 4, Kassidy Shurman 2, and Bridget Wood 2.

The Potters next play Thursday night for the sectional championship against the winner of Tuesday night’s U High-Richwoods game. They have beaten U High twice this season and Richwoods once.

Because they’d seen those 40 and 37 numbers more often than they wished to see them, some Potters had asked their coach when he’d turn them off.

“When we win,” he had said.

So, I asked tonight, when will he put up the 54 and 24?

“Was that the score?” Becker said, and he smiled, and he said, “Maybe I’ll go in there tonight.”

Sometimes, at some basketball games, you forget to breathe. Except it’s not really about breathing. It’s about exhaling. Without meaning to, you’re holding your breath. And until you remember to exhale, you can’t breathe again. So there you are, waiting to exhale because lest you miss whatever wonder comes next. Some games just leave you breathless – such as tonight’s, the Morton High School Lady Potters beating Peoria High, 66-46, for a regional championship.

Imagine this. You’re in the fourth row of the bleachers and the Potters’ point guard, Josi Becker, has the ball. She’s sprinting against a defender who wants the ball. Only Becker isn’t giving it up, not now, not ever. The little engine that could, Becker is a 5-foot-3 dynamo with a high-rev motor. If she sprinted a mile tonight, she sprinted five, all with the ball in her hands, flying through and around a full-game, fully-clawed, total-body-contact, end-to-end press that scared the bejeebers out of breathless people in the fourth row. But not Becker. I don’t care if she had a single assist and I don’t care that she scored 17 points. Nothing mattered except getting the ball up-court. “We knew it would be an up-tempo, physical game,” she says. Tired? “I’m probably going to sleep in tomorrow morning.”

Imagine this. Peoria’s senior star, Jailynn Lawson, has not scored. Her team is down, 43-27. She has not scored because she can find no way to beat the Morton defense, particularly the in-her-face defense played by Morton’s senior star, Brandi Bisping. So here’s Lawson on a drive. Here’s Bisping on the low block, right side. I’m holding my breath because I know what’s coming. Lawson will not slow down. Bisping will not move aside. And Lawson flips up a no-chance prayer while ker-rashing into Bisping, who ker-rashes to the court. And the call, properly, is a charge. I exhale. I see Bisping flat on her back. I see her pump both fists in a defender’s celebration of victory. “The 66-46 was not representative of how the game felt,” she says. Meaning no quarters were asked or given. A quick smile. Then: “Some of us just don’t like each other.”

Imagine the Potters’ sophomore, Tenley Dowell. Imagine her rising high for her first shot of the game, a 3-pointer from the right arc. By the first quarter’s end, she scores three more times, twice hurtling inside for layups delivered with a veteran’s crafty elegance. A third layup comes with 45 seconds left in the first quarter. She picks the pocket of a Peoria rebounder. The theft caps a 12-2 run giving the Potters a lead they never lost. “We were just flowing together,” Dowell says. “Everyone was executing so well.”

I could go on imagining. I will. Imagine the Morton coach, Bob Becker, ripping his suit coat off. His team leads, 28-18 at 2:23 of the second quarter. But he sees what’s happening. He sees Peoria’s press as a threat, not least because the men in zebra shirts see only one of every 10 hacking fouls committed by the desperate Peorians. So Becker rips off his coat, a coaching move usually good for a technical foul – only he gets one arm hung up and is so slow at throwing down the coat that the zebra men don’t notice. “The kids had grit, toughness, whatever you want to call it – and they kept their composure way better than I did,” Becker says.

Imagine what it all means. Unless I am mistaken, and I have been many times, I believe the Potters now have played their most difficult game leading to the final four at Redbird Arena. It’s not so much that Peoria High is an outstanding team, though it did win 20 games this year and, on January 21, lost to Morton by only a point, 54-53. The greater difficulty is that Peoria has two very good players – Jailynn Lawson, a Bradley University commit, and Mackenzie Jenkins, strong inside – and its frantic pace of play can force an opponent out of its comfort zone.

The Potters refused to be shaken. They led only 22-18 halfway through the second quarter. They then went on a 16-3 run of the kind that has carried the team to back-to-back state championships. With great ball-handling they moved through the Peoria press for six layups, the last scored by Dowell cutting back-door for a bounce pass from Bisping. The Potters also were 4-for-4 at the free throw line. At halftime, Morton 38-21.

It was 48-29 – Game Over — before Peoria’s Lawson scored her first points. Until then she was 0-for-7 against Bisping (and wound up 4-for-16, scoring 9 points, two fewer than she scored in an injury-shortened appearance when the teams met a month ago).

Dowell led Morton’s scoring with 20 (17 in the first half). Becker’s 17 included 14 in the second half. Lindsey Dullard had 11, Bisping 10, Caylie Jones 4, Jacey Wharram 2, and Bridget Wood 2. (Bisping also had 7 rebounds, moving her career total to 1,047, two behind record holder Cindy Bumgarner.)

The Potters made seven 3-pointers, their season’s average, and now have 222 3’s for the season, a program record.

At 29-2 they are five victories away from another state championship. Monday night they play Galesburg in the Limestone sectional. It’s a rematch of the team’s game a month ago won by Galesburg 39-37. That night the Potters were shut out on 3’s, the only time that’s happened all season. I don’t expect it to happen again, nor, apparently, does tonight’s losing coach, Meechie Edwards, generous in his praise of the Potters.

He saw the Potters as a “smart team” that will run its sets repeatedly until it gets the shot it wants. He says Bob Becker “is too smart” to be fooled by the Peorians’ second-half decision to give Lawson the ball at point guard. ”They went to their zone,” he said. Asked to compare this season’s Potters to those of, say, a year ago, Edwards said, “I see them back down to State again.”

Morton High School’s Lady Potters 62, Peoria Manual 31.

What the Potters did tonight is what good teams are supposed to do to bad teams. They made them look worse.

For the 15th time in a row, the Potters have won a state tournament game, this one their regional opener. “Everybody got their feet wet,” Bob Becker, the Potters’ coach, said. To win the Class 3A state championship for a third straight season – only the second three-peat in Illinois history – Becker’s team now has to win six more games, one in the regional, two in the sectional, one in the super-sectional, and two at Redbird Arena.

I’ll give you more about the game in a minute. First I want to talk about a picture. I’m not a photographer. But when there’s a picture that demands to be taken, my magic iPhone gets the job done. So I asked Brooke Bisping, the Morton assistant coach, to stay a minute after the game. Then I asked her sister, the senior star, Brandi, “Do me a favor?” To complete the portrait, I put the sisters on either side of Cindy Bumgarner. We should call the picture, “Potters History.” Do the math. In their 12 seasons, the Bispings and Bumgarner have scored 5,747 points and taken 2,857 rebounds (with Brandi still chipping in).

You know the Bispings. But Bumgarner?

Maybe all you need to know about Bumgarner is what Jane Miller Sands said tonight. Jane was a Peoria Journal Star sportswriter for approximately forever until she ran off to marry a Texan four years ago. In her sportswriting days, Jane saw lots of games at the Potterdome. So tonight, serendipity at work, a coincidence of travel plans brought Jane and Bumgarner together at the Potters regional tournament opener. And here’s what Jane said on first spotting the hero she had written so much about: “Cindy! My goodness! Cindy!”

Jane’s enthusiasm was born of more than a chance meeting after all these years. It also was also a measure of what she thought of Bumgarner, the player. Perhaps the best of all Potters, Bumgarner was a 6-foot-2 perimeter player who could work inside. In four seasons, she averaged a double-double. As a senior in 1984, she scored 24.4 points a game, still the program record. Later an All-American at Indiana University, Bumgarner is now an assistant vice chancellor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Anyone who goes to a Potters’ game sees Cindy’s father, John, and mother, Karin, always at midcourt opposite the Potters’ bench. I’ve seen them there for seven seasons now. They were joined tonight by Cindy, who had come to the heartland for a reunion of her Indiana team. I was happy to meet her – so happy, in fact, that I put her to work. “After the game,” I said, “I’ll be back for a comment from you.”

I figured I’d need help because, truth to tell, one’s imagination has limits. The Potters are 28-2 this season and they’re 94-8 over the last three seasons. How many ways can a sportswriter avoid long dissertations on yet another victory achieved by the superior team playing well? Many a night I have disgressed, delayed, and put off game accounts. I have riffed on pep bands that murder music. I have questioned the eyesight of men in zebra shirts. I have suggested that the entire city of Dunlap up and moves to a new location every winter, the better to keep me lost in the dark wilds of Route 91.

I knew I’d need help tonight. I watched Peoria Manual warm up. They had some big players. By big I mean big. One big came decorated with tattoos. I noticed they moved their bigness without grace, elegance, or quickness. Those kind of bigs are not bigs the Potters much worry much about. The Potters are not big and they move with grace, elegance, and quickness. But I didn’t want to define in painful detail the many ways in which Peoria Manual might be better off playing Parchesi. So I asked Cindy to be ready to save me.

This was another game in which it was only a matter of time. That’s because Morton has a lot of basketball players and Manual doesn’t. A 17-2 run gave the Potters a 25-10 lead late in the first half. A 14-1 run gave them a 50-22 lead early in the fourth quarter. Those two runs – 31-3 in about a quarter’s worth of game clock – were demonstration of Morton’s dominance built on relentless effort at both ends by a team that goes eight players deep. Not only did the Potters’ pressing, trapping defense discombobulate Manual all night long, Morton scored from sets, on the run, and seven times on 3-pointers.

Tenley Dowell led the Potters’ scoring with 16. Bisping had 12. (Her 8 rebounds moved her career total to 1,040, now 7 behind Bumgarner’s record). Courtney Jones scored 9, Josi Becker 8, Jacey Wharram 4, Caylie Jones 4, Lindsey Dullard 4, Kassidy Shurman 3, and Maddy Becker 2.

So, Cindy Bumgarner, one of the all-time best Potters, how’d today’s Potters look to you?

“They played hard all night, they didn’t lose a step when new players came in, they moved the ball well,” she said. “They were a TEAM.”

He wanted his two seniors, Brandi Bisping and Jacey Wharram, to get one more standing ovation on a Senior Night electric with ovations. So the coach, Bob Becker, sent both into the game with 3 minutes and 1 second to play. “You’ll come out in 30 seconds,” he said. Becker gave them one instruction. He said, “Do something sensational.”

So when they came out, Bisping and Wharram, already sensational for four years, remembered hearing a suggestion from someone on the bench. Someone suggested a way they could make their final exit a piece of grand theater, forever memorable, a story that will live in Lady Potter lore.

Here comes Bisping toward the bench in that high-stepping lope of hers. Then she’s slowing down . . . and she’s turning sideways . . . and she’s tilting her body . . . and she throws herself down to the court where . . .

CARTWHEEL!!

Bisping and Wharram are seniors in high school and for that moment they are little kids again doing happy, laughing CARTHWEELS on the floor, after which they hug each other and bounce over to Becker for more hugs.

On this smiling night, the Morton High School Lady Potters defeated Washington High, 56-22. Already the Mid-Illini Conference champions, the Potters finished the league season undefeated, 14-0. They are 27-2 overall going into next week’s regional when they begin a quest for their third straight Class 3A state championship – a three-peat done only once in Illinois history, by Lombard Montini in 2010-11-12.

This victory was yet one more built on unrelenting pressure at both ends of the court. Good heavens, poor Washington. The visitors might have thought they had a chance. They trailed only 9-6 late in the first quarter. But anyone who has seen the Potters play – especially seen them lately — knows one thing to be true. It. Won’t. Be. Close. Much. Longer.

With 24 seconds left in the quarter, freshman Lindsey Dullard dropped in a layup. Washington’s in-bound pass was stolen by Courtney Jones, who moved the ball to Tenley Dowell for a short jumper on which she was fouled. In eight seconds, the lead had gone to 14-6.

Done? Nope. On a three-shot possession 45 seconds into the second quarter, Bisping wound up making two free throws. While Washington flailed on offense – twice hitting the bottom of the backboard with shots, twice throwing up air-balls on 3’s – Morton continued its run.

Kassidy Shurman a 3. Bisping a powered-up layup on another three-shot possession. Bisping another layup and two free throws.

Remember when it was 9-6? Suddenly, it was 25-6. It happened on a 16-0 run in 4:34. I used to play a game with buddies on press row. We called it, “Got enough to win?” Meaning, can the good team beat the mediocre team without scoring another point? At 25-6 and with 2 ½ quarters to play, Morton already had enough points to win.

It was 27-8 at halftime, 42-17 after three, and a 13-0 run in the first three minutes of the fourth quarter made it 55-17.

All of it was remarkable, which is no surprise, for the Potters are now playing at a high level. But if I had to choose two seconds as the most extraordinary two seconds of the night, maybe even my favorite two seconds of the entire season, those two seconds came at 7:06 and 7:05 of the third quarter.

Those two seconds starred Brandi Bisping. Of course.

At 7:06 she made a 17-foot jumper. No. Wait. To Bisping’s confusion and to the surprise of anyone with eyes, a referee ruled that Bisping was fouled before the shot. Instead of two points, instead of the and-one free throw, the Potters put the ball in play from the baseline. It came in to Bisping. And here’s what Bisping did at the 7:05 mark.

From halfway up the right side of the arc, she threw in a 3.

Of course.

More than once, I’ve called Bisping a warrior. Now that we’ve seen her for the last time in the Potterdome, I’ll do it again. She is unafraid. When the challenge is greatest, she is at her best. She does not bring high energy to her work – she brings nuclear energy. Forget the scoring, forget the rebounding, forget the strength she brings to the bruising work in the paints; lots of people have physical talent. Bisping does the harder thing: by the examples of her fearlessness and enthusiasm, she raises a good team to greatness.

(Besides all that, she’s an interviewer’s delight, as on an occasion when she seemed near exhaustion after single-handedly beating U High. I asked if she could possibly have gotten one more rebound. Eye contact unwavering, she said, “If I wanted it.” I believed her 1000 percent.)

Speaking of Bisping at a post-game celebration for the seniors, Becker also moved between admiration and hyperbole. He upped the ante with this: “A strong argument could be made that Brandi is the very best Potter ever to put on the uniform.” She is the second Potter ever to score more than 1,000 points and get more than 1,000 rebounds. (Bumgarner the other.)

If Bisping is the rare talent that comes along once a decade, Becker counts Wharram as the prototypical Lady Potter, “a great teammate, a positive force always,” to quote the coach. Becker said he first saw Wharram as a “cherubic point third-grade point guard bringing the ball up the court.” She grew into a 5-foot-11 post player, a good defender and strong rebounder who admits she once thought she’d never make the varsity. Yet, by dint of hard work, Becker said, “Jacey made herself a starter on a 27-2 team and an all-star in her role.”

Wharram called the night “bittersweet,” for her time in the Potterdome was over, and Bisping called it “unforgettable,” all the games, the practices, camps, bus rides, all that work all those years, “all my teammates helping make me the person I am.”

Bisping led Morton’s scoring tonight with 14 (and had 9 rebounds, giving her 1,032 for her career, now 17 behind Bumgarner, the record-holder). Dowell and Josi Becker had 10 points apiece, Dullard 7, Wharram 6, Caylie Jones 5, Shurman 3, Olivia Remmert 1.

(A note on Dullard: the 6-foot-1 freshman blocked 6 shots. Only two Potters ever have blocked more than 6 in a game – Sarah Livingston, who 9 times blocked at least 7, and Kali Birkey, who had 7 once.)

What a sweet night it was, Senior Night, with parents escorting Bisping and Wharram to center court for a standing ovation by one of the largest crowds ever for a Lady Potters game, maybe a thousand people there, students, family, parents, grandparents, fans. I swear, Morton’s pep band must have had 100 musicians on stage, everyone armed with brass. Loved ’em.

Becker narrated the seniors’ pre-game ceremonial walk to midcourt. Of Wharram he said, “Jacey has matured into a leader and a consistent positive voice for our team. . . . Words of wisdom from Jacey: ‘You don’t have to play on varsity as a freshman. To be a good player, just work hard and you’ll get there!’”

Of Bisping the coach said, “She has amassed 1,597 points and 1,023 rebounds to help lead her teams to a record of 118-13 . . . Among Brandi’s favorite basketball memories is winning back-to-back state championships and making Coach buy her South African lobster tail for $60. Brandi’s words of wisdom: ‘A vision without action is just a dream.’”

Say what? Lobster tail? Stay tuned. I’ll get to the bottom of that story.

Morton High School’s Lady Potters tonight defeated Canton High, 69-44, and I’ll have something to say about that right after having something to say about a thing I’d never seen before.

These five guys came in to Canton’s Alice Ingersoll Gymnasium. They were all dressed in black. One dude wore a gorilla mask. Each of the teenage boys, for of course they were teenage boys, carried a large poster board. Whatever was written on the boards, they didn’t let us see. We saw only the blank side. Clearly, the five guys had mischief in mind, for don’t teenage boys always have mischief in mind?

In a surprise to anyone suspecting the boys had a plan to distract the Lady Potters, the introduction of the visitors’ starting lineup went off without a hitch. The boys sat silent.

But in Canton’s turn, the boys moved to seats across from the Lady Giants’ bench. There they stood with their boards,, still turned blank-side out – until the public address system announcer called out Canton’s fifth starter, “At another guard, sophomore CASSIDY FAWCETT!”

As Cassidy Fawcett ran onto the court, through a gauntlet of her teammates, the five guys turned their boards so they could be read.

And Fawcett saw . . .

“P R O M ?”

So, at halftime, I went to the five guys.

“I’m an old sportswriter,” I said, “but I’d never seen that. Whose idea?”

“Mine,” said Caleb Collier, who is an 18-year-old Canton senior and was not, in case his parents read this, the one in the gorilla mask.

“Good idea,” I said.

“Unique,” he said.

As to Cassidy Fawcett’s response, there was a game to be played first.

Not much of a game. Six weeks ago, Morton crushed Canton, 64-28. The Lady Giants were more competitive this time, but still – the Lady Potters are so much the class of the Mid-Illini Conference, now 13-0 with one league game to play (and 26-2 overall), that with Canton even more competitive the Lady Giants still got crushed, by 25 this time. The Canton coach, Layne Langhoff, shook his head. “Morton is just so disruptive,” he said.

Look, for instance, at the way Morton disrupts folks in the first three minutes of each quarter. The Morton coach, Bob Becker, wants his team to dominate in those minutes. Tonight, in those four three-minute segments, Morton outscored Canton, 8-2, 8-5, 9-5, and 9-4. That’s 34-16.

And look at the way they scored the 34 – from inside, from outside, on the run, out of sets. Look at just one of those segments, the three minutes beginning the third quarter, a time when a good team can bend a mediocre team to its will for the rest of the night. From a 34-19 halftime lead, the Potters moved to 43-24 this way . . .

First Lindsey Dullard scored on a put-back at 7:25. . . . Trapped in the deep left corner with nowhere to pass, Tenley Dowell decided to shoot – a 17-footer at 6:42 . . . Working off a steal in the Potters’ full-court press, Brandi Bisping dropped in a layup at 6:34 . . . at which time there came this roar from the Canton bench, Langhoff shouting, “TimeOUT!”

The stop was to no avail. Morton rolling . . . Josi Becker scored on a fast-break layup. . . . Then Dullard used a crafty shot-fake for a foul and a free throw. . . . In the three-minute, segment Morton had outscored Canton, 9-5. . . .And a lead that late in the second quarter had been only eight points – at 27-19 – now had grown to 19 at 43-24 with 5:20 to play in the third quarter. Game Over.

I liked a lot about that third quarter. I really liked the Potters’ starting lineup: Becker and Kassidy Shurman with the ball, Dowell and Dullard on the wings, Bisping in the paint.

Coincidence or a natural rise in confidence after a season’s experience, the 6-foot-1 freshman Dullard has played her best varsity basketball in the last two weeks after also suiting up – for the first time all year – to play a quarter in the junior varsity games. The ball-fake that drew a foul, a little thing that wins games, was one sign of Dullard’s growing comfort and assurance on the court. She scored 17 points, her career high. Four came on offensive rebounds. Six came on 3-pointers. Of her pair of 3’s, Dullard said, “I got my groove back, I think.”

Becker led Morton’s scoring with 19, Dowell had 12, and Bisping 10. Courtney Jones had 4, Bridget Wood 3, Jacey Wharram 2, and Caylie Jones 2.

Bisping had 10 rebounds, giving her 1,023 for her career, closing in on the record 1,049 of Cindy Bumgarner. Wharram also had 10 rebounds tonight.

As for the prom . . .

Cassidy Fawcett didn’t know what the boys were up to. “But I saw the signs when I came out in the introductions, and I knew it was Caleb asking,” she said.

So? A date?

“Yes,” she said.

And when Cassidy Fawcett left the gym tonight, she left carrying the five signs.

Josi Becker was laughing. First, though, she was sprinting past her team’s bench. Sprinting back on defense, she gave the ball-handler neither time nor room to breathe let alone make a rational decision. Becker hounded the poor girl to such distraction that the girl went this way and the ball went that way. And Becker’s father, the coach, said, “YESSS!” It was about then that Josi Becker looked at the coach, her father, and laughed.

“What,” I asked later, “were you laughing about?”

She was mystified.

“I don’t know,” she said.

I put a time on the moment. “Right at the end of the first quarter . . . ”

“I really don’t remember,” she said, and that’s a perfect answer when a guy’s asking you to remember one of a thousand seconds in a kaleidoscopic, shape-shifting game that asks its players to come up instantly with thousands of answers to questions of geometry and physics.

Ah, yes. Yes, I hear you. I hear you saying quit it. It’s not that complicated/ Get the ball, throw it in the hole.

The best players do make it look easy. Sometimes, as in the Morton High School Lady Potters victory tonight – 60-45 over Limestone High, giving the Potters the Mid-Illini Conference championship – in such easy victories, with one team better than the other in every way, the game does seem simple.

It’s not. Look, if you will, at one possession by the Potters. One of its 50 possessions in the game. One possession against a Limestone zone defense that has been good enough to make the Rockets the second-best team in the Mid-Illini (8-3 coming in tonight).

It’s one possession that lasts maybe 30 seconds. It is a thing of basketball beauty, the game played the way it’s played by basketball’s best team, the Golden State Warriors. The ball keeps moving. No one holds it longer than a beat. No one bounces it twice. (Except Steph Curry, who can do whatever the hell he wants.) Soon enough, as the ball keeps moving, it finds the hole – as the Potters did when . . .

Brandi Bisping in-bounds it from under her own hoop. Gives it to Josi Becker, who moves it up the left-side arc to Kassidy Shurman. Back to Becker and into the paint to Jacey Wharram. Who kicks it out to Shurman, who thinks a 3 but is hurried. She hurls it cross-court to Tenley Dowell. Two or three steps in, then back to Shurman. That’s the seventh pass of the possession. It’s not the last. Shurman tries Wharram inside again. No go. Out to Becker, back to Bisping, to Shurman. Now to Dowell, whose missed 3 is rebounded by Bisping and given back to Dowell. Now the ball finds the hole, a driving Dowell layup off the glass.

Simple?

All five Potters had touches. They made 13 passes in maybe 30 seconds.

Beautiful.

Dowell’s layup gave Morton a 20-point lead at 41-21 with 2:54 to play in the third quarter. The Potters were up by as many as 24 early in the fourth quarter before the reserves coasted in.

As efficient as the Potters were offensively, they were better on defense. “We were really good defensively for long parts of the game,” Bob Becker said. And if his team’s defense pleased this coach who loves defense – who loves it, certainly, when his daughter takes time to laugh on the defensive end – we should know this by now: that defense was really, really good tonight.

Again, as always, and I repeat myself because the truth doesn’t change, the Potters contested every pass and every movement toward the basket. Against Morton’s full-court pressure, the poor, poor Limestone girls had to have considered it a victory to get the ball into their end of the court. And then the discombobulation truly began in what I have decided to call “turnover-by-attrition.” That is, against Morton’s defense, sooner or later, unable to make a good play, you are going to make a bad play. I kept track in the first half alone: Limestone was called for three charges, twice traveled, and once went over-and-back.

Becker’s white board reminded his players: “In 1st 3:00 Set the Tone.” Three minutes in, the Potters led, 7-2, on a Dowell floater, a Josi Becker 3, and another driving bucket by Dowell. At quarter’s end, 15-4. Josi laughed. Game Over.

Dowell led Morton’s scoring with 15. Three more Potters had 10 apiece: Becker, Lindsey Dullard, and Caylie Jones. Shurman and Bisping each had 6, Maddy Becker 3. Again good from outside, the Potters made 7 3’s, giving them 193 for the season, a 7.1 per game average.

Bisping had 10 rebounds and now has 1,013 for her career. The Potters’ all-time leading rebounder is Cindy Bumgarner, who had 1,049.

Speaking of Bob Becker, as we were, let me say one thing more . . .

Two days ago, the Illinois High School Association named its girls’ basketball Coach of the Year for the 2015-16 season. Had anyone asked me to guess the winner of that award, I’d have said, “I have no idea. But I know a guy whose team went 33-3 and won the state championship at the Class 3A level. In fact, his teams went 33-3 back-to-back and won back-to-back state championships. Pretty good. Name’s Bob Becker.”

The IHSA girls Coach of the Year was Tom Dooley.

You don’t know Tom Dooley and neither do I, but he has to be good. At Moweaqua, he coached the Class 1A state champions two years ago. Last season his Central A&M High School team reached the championship game again, only to lose. In those two seasons his teams went 33-1 and 32-2. Moweaqua is a dot on the map just south of Decatur, the kind of map-dot that I grew up in, a map-dot that will remember those Tom Dooley teams forever.

This year not so much, 13-12 so far. Becker’s team is 25-2.

The Kindreds came to Virginia in the 1770s from Northumberlandshire, England, on the country’s northeast border with Scotland. My mother’s side, the Holzaepfels, worked in Germany’s coal mines before emigrating in 1880 to Logan County, Illinois, where they again dug coal out of the earth. Maybe this has nothing to do with a girls basketball game. But in the Potterdome tonight, I kept thinking about where we come from. All of us, Americans. All of us once, foreigners.

It was Pink Night. The game – won by the Morton High School Lady Potters over Pekin, 68-50 – was an occasion for raising money for the Illinois Cancer Care Foundation. Like many in the crowd, I wore a T-shirt with the words, “Hooping for a Cure. Mama Schultz, 1961-2014.” On the wall at the visitor’s end, these signs:

OverCome
ThroUgh
CouRage
&StrEngth

They called Mary Schultz “Mama” not only because she had two daughters playing for the Lady Potters. For years every Potter was her daughter. Mrs. Schultz was one of the parents who make high school athletics worth doing. She did whatever her daughters’ teams needed done. Kept the official scorebook, arranged dinners, decorated the Potterdome for Pink Nights before her own cancer. Gone three years now, there she was tonight. We saw her on the gym’s video screen, again doing what she had done so many times before, singing the Star Spangled Banner. And it was lovely.

Such a cliché to speak of “pure Americana.” But words become clichés because time certifies the power of their truth. To see a small-town high school gymnasium alive with cheerleaders and dancers, basketball players, mothers, fathers, grandparents . . . to know they kicked in a couple thousand dollars for a raffle and a 50-50 drawing and a bake sale (with the players pointing out which cookies they’d personally decorated) . . . everyone hooping for a cure, the crowd a sea of sun-shiny pink . . . to hear Mama Schultz’s lovely voice, reminding us what the night was about . . . only in America.

For five minutes tonight, a good Pekin team competed. It came in with a 17-6 record, 7-3 in the Mid-Illini Conference. It led, 14-12 at 3:01 of the first quarter. But then, as is their habit, the Potters went on an extended run of dominance. It gave them a 27-14 lead. They had outscored Pekin, 15-0, in 3 minutes and 28 seconds.

They did it the way they always do it to lesser teams. They created relentless pressure at both ends. They contested every pass and sent help to block any Pekin movement toward the basket. Offensivfely, they were perpetual motion, creating space both inside and out. Few teams at any level can maintain their poise against a superior opponent that dares you to make even the most fundamental of basketball plays. However small that number of teams might be, it is miniscule at the girls high school level. In winning back-to-back state championships and building a 24-2 record this season – that’s 90-8 in three seasons so far – the Potters have done it with an unique blend of athleticism and pressure. They first wear you out physically, then psychologically.

One example: Pekin’s all-conference star, Sidney Diekhoff , scored 6 points of her team’s first 10 points in the game’s first four minutes, helping it to that 14-12 lead. But she didn’t score again for 17 minutes. By then Pekin trailed 49-31. Defended man-to-man by four different Potters, Diekhoff wound up with 11 points.

Let’s do play-by-play of the Potters’ game-turning 15-0 run:

Brandi Bisping, a layup. Lindsey Dullard, a free throw. Caylie Jones, a nifty reverse layup. Josi Becker, a breakaway with a steal. Dullard a 3-pointer after stuffing a shooter. Tenley Dowell a 3. Bisping another power-move layup.

Morton’s lead grew to 16 points, 41-25, before Pekin made a move that brought them within 10 at the end of three quarters, 53-43. Thoughts of closing the gap went away quickly. Morton scored the fourth quarter’s first 10 points in 4 ½ minutes.

Those points came this way: a right corner 3 by Kassidy Shurman, another Caylie Jones layup (off a bullet of a pass from Josi Becker at the top of the key), a 3 by Bisping (back at nearly full speed after the mono), and a Jacey Wharram layup off a Becker bounce pass in the paint. Morton 63-43. Game Over.

Almost incidentally, the victory assured Morton of a share of the Mid-Illini championship. It is 11-0 in league play and everyone else has at least three defeats.

Bisping led Morton’s scoring with 22. Dowell had 13, Dullard 9, Shurman 8, Caylie Jones and Josi Becker 4 each, Maddy Becker 3, Wharram and Megan Gold 2 each, and Courtney Jones 1.

Again good from outside, the Potters made 10 3’s – by five different players – and now have 186 3’s in 26 games. That’s 7.1 a game, 22 points a game from behind the arc. Their first four field goals tonight were 3’s.

I went to the Potterdome tonight for all the usual reasons, and one more. At a New York airport today, some Muslims were handcuffed and detained because the White House had ordered a ban of Americans returning to America if they were Muslims. I went to the Potterdome for a small, wonderful dose of real America.

I learned that Brandi Bisping’s ancestors, on both her father’s and mother’s sides, arrived from Germany in 1880. Kassidy Shurman’s family tree reaches into Sweden, Germany, and Lithuania. Centuries ago, Jacey Wharram’s people left a town in England named Wharram Percy.

After the game, I said to the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, “Here’s the oddest question you’ll be asked anytime soon. Where’d the Beckers originate?”

“Whoa,” he said. “Let’s ask Mom and Dad.”

The coach’s father, Robert Cantley Becker Jr., said, “The story always was that they ‘escaped the hangman’ in England. And they wound up fighting in the Revolutionary War.”

Hooray for immigrants.

I have driven to Dunlap High School seven times in seven basketball seasons. Tonight, for the first time, I found the school without a single navigational turnover, not even a curlicue U-turn. Piece of cake, ‘twas. You go west on I-74 to War Memorial, north on State Route 91 to a left turn at the Alta sign to a right turn at a four-way stop. Don’t pull into the Dunlap middle school (been there, done that). Keep motoring until you see a gas station on the left, make two quick rights, and, sha-zam!, there it is, Dunlap High. Tonight, I was Christopher Columbus landing in the New World.

And then someone in the gymnasium said, “Did you come the new way? So much quicker.”

A new way?

Oh, God.

Once the basketball began, it was the same ol’ same ol’. In my seven seasons, I have seen the Morton High School Lady Potters defeat Dunlap 14 straight times. Tonight’s score: 66-24. A 42-point victory is always a good thing, and this one was especially good considering that the Potters’ lead was only 18-14 until the last 39 seconds of the first half. So Morton won the game’s last 17 minutes, 48-10. That happens when a really good team rips the heart out of a mediocre team and stomps that sucker flat.

The Morton coach, Bob Becker, had been concerned that his back-to-back state champions, currently ranked No. 2 in Class 3A, had allowed lesser teams to stick around. After two hard-earned victories in the Galesburg tournament last weekend, Becker wanted to “polish the machine,” raise its rev rate, smooth away the wrinkles of unforced turnovers, get teams down and “put them away.”

All that, the Potters did tonight. They did it most sensationally late in the first half and early in second. In 3 minutes and 4 seconds, they outscored Dunlap, 17-0. (Fun with math: At 17-0 every 184 seconds, Morton wins, 177-0.)

The 17-0 run started when Dunlap made the mistake of fouling Brandi Bisping on a 3-point try. She made all three free throws with 38.9 seconds left in the first half. Morton up 21-14. At the buzzer, stopping at the arc on a fast break, Tenley Dowell threw in a nothing-but-net 3. Morton up 24-14.

Then came 11 straight points to open the third quarter, this way:

Two free throws by Bisping. A Josi Becker steal and fast break layup. A Bisping steal, fast break layup, and one. Kassidy Shurman turns a Bisping rebound and court-length pass into a layup. Dowell a steal and a runaway layup.

All done in 2 minutes and 25 seconds.

And all done convincingly at both ends. Morton’s trapping defense left the poor Dunlap ballhandlers discombobulated. Its run ‘n gun offense scored at the rim and from the 3-point line (7 more 3’s, the team’s season average). As always, the Potters were relentless in attacking with and without the ball. Going eight players deep – some teams are happy to be two deep – the Potters ran the Dunlap people into dispiriting exhaustion. One of the Eagles, staggering on a drive to the basket, got rid of the ball so awkwardly that it entered the net from below. (Nothing but net, the hard way.)

Becker liked what he saw. “As Coach (assistant Bill Davis) told the team, ‘We played like the No. 2 team in the state tonight,’” Becker said. “If we can bottle that up, we can be really, really good.”

Morton is now 23-2 for the season, 10-0 in the Mid-Illini Conference. Dunlap is 12-11, 5-5.

For the first time in a while, the Potters had four players in double figures. Bisping led with 19, Josi Becker had 14, and Shurman and Dowell 10 apiece. Jacey Wharram and Courtney Jones had 4 each, Bridget Wood 3, and Caylie Jones 2.

As for that “new way” to find Dunlap, a kindly couple offered to guide me from the high school to the more direct, shorter, quicker route back to Morton.

“Follow us,” the gentleman said.

Then, knowing the trials and tribulations of my travels in the flatlands above Grand Prairie Mall, he added what he must have considered essential information.

“We’re in the Ford truck,” he said. “You do know a Ford from a Chevy, right?”

Oh, God.

So this is what it sounded like from Peoria High fans. “Give that girl an OSCAR!” The girl was flat out on the floor, face down, unmoving. The girl had been bludgeoned across the bridge of her nose with an elbow thrown by a Peoria High player. Face down in the paint, with a gaggle of Peoria High fans screaming that she was faking it, Brandi Bisping didn’t move even as play swirled around and over her. I heard my voice. It said, “Stop the damned game.”

Play stopped only when the ball went out of bounds. Only then did Bisping sit up. She thought, “If I try to stand up, I’ll pass out.” She sat until someone helped her up. She walked off. She had the slow, wobbling, fixed-gaze gait of a busted-up fighter. In a frenetic, ferocious game played at maximum speed with mercy neither given nor asked by either side, Bisping already had been cut and bleeding, had been cracked across the forehead, and had been knocked to the floor a dozen other times.

Now, with 9.6 seconds to play, the Morton High School Lady Potters were near victory in a Martin Luther King Winter Classic game at Galesburg’s John Thiel Gymnasium.

Bisping walked to the Morton bench and sat there through a timeout called by coach Bob Becker.

She didn’t sit long.

To run an in-bounds play with 6.1 seconds to play, Becker wanted Bisping handling the throw-in.

When she came running to take the ball from a referee, those Peoria High fans again turned to sarcasm.

“Praise God, you made it,” is what Bisping heard them say.

She raised both arms to them and she looked at them, none having bled this day, none hammered in the head twice, none about to enjoy a victory well-earned.

Brandi Bisping heard herself shout to them, “Yes, praise God.”

Some days, y’know, it’s just a pleasure to be on the same planet with these Lady Potters, let alone in the same building.

With Bisping scoring her team’s last two points on free throws for a six-point lead with 39.4 seconds to play, the Potters defeated Peoria High, 54-53. The margin was that thin only because Peoria threw in an uncontested 3-pointer at the buzzer.

The game turned in a 70-second stretch of the third quarter. Peoria High led at halftime, 30-26, on the scoring of sensational guard Jailynn Lawson and post player Mackenzie Jenkins. But Lawson left in the second quarter with a sprained ankle. And Jenkins lost her way against Morton’s defense – especially against Bisping’s unyielding presence.

It was Jenkins, angry and frustrated, who threw the elbow, while clearing a rebound, that flattened Bisping. Bisping’s game-long strong answer: her 12 rebounds. She characterized the game as “physical.” Peoria coach Meechie Edwards called it “hard-fought.” Bob Becker said, “There was blood in the coach’s box.” From three rows up in the bleachers, I saw a title fight.

With Lawson gone and Jenkins getting worn out, the Potters went on that 70-second, 10-0 run midway through the third quarter. They were down, 32-29, when Kassidy Shurman tied it with a 3-pointer from the left corner. Tenley Dowell followed with a back-cut layup off a Bisping pass, with a free throw added. Then Josi Becker – a dynamo at point guard, bringing the ball upcourt at max speed against max pressure all day – dropped in a fast-break layup. She added a 17-footer to give Morton a 39-32 lead with 2:55 to play in the third.

Suddenly, the Potters were in charge. In the game’s last 11 minutes, Peoria once moved within two points but never closer. At 43-41, Dowell made a 3-pointer. At 46-43, the sophomore pulled off another of her imaginative driving layups, somehow kissing the ball off the glass after letting it first slip from her hands in mid-air. And added one. It was 49-43.

By then the Potters had established their refusal to lose. They were again victims of their own errors, losing the ball on unforced errors more often than any coach likes. Too often they seemed to pass where someone used to be or where they thought someone would be. “We need to polish the machine,” Becker said. “But I’d rather win a game and learn from it than lose a game and learn from it.”

The indispensable Josi Becker led Morton’s scoring with 14. Dowell had 12. Shurman had 8, Bisping 7, Jacey Wharram 5, Courtney Jones 4, Lindsey Dullard and Caylie Jones 2 each.

Oh, one thing more.

I waited outside the Morton locker room to talk to Bisping.

“She’ll be out in a little bit,” one player told me.

I figured she was exhausted.

“She’s still in there,” another said.

Maybe she was woozy.

Then another played said, “She’s ordering Jimmy John’s.”

Never heard that one before of a star late to meet the press. But, hey, this is not the NBA. This is better. Turns out it was Brandi Bisping’s duty, as a senior, as a captain, as leader, to gather orders from her teammates and put in a call to Jimmy John’s for lunch between today’s games at 10:30 and 5:30.

Last seen this morning, Bisping was headed for the team bus carrying a cardboard box likely full of Jimmy John’s ham, swiss, roast beef, provolone, tuna, turkey, and genoa salami decorated with lettuce, tomato, mayo, sauce, and, to quote the Galesburg menu, “a real tasty Italian vinaigrette.”

As for the afternoon game, won by Morton over Peoria Notre Dame, 69-52, Becker said, “We did some really good things and we made some really bone-headed plays.” He was concerned some but not all that much with the Potters’ allowing Notre Dame to move from 15 points down in the first half to within 10 late in the fourth quarter. “These are the kind of teams we’ll be playing in the regional and sectional,” he said. “And we can’t let good teams stick around. We’ve got to put them away.”

Morton is now 22-2 for the year. In their back-to-back state championship seasons, the Potters were 21-3 at this point a year ago and 22-2 the year before.

Dowell led Morton against Notre Dame with 20 points. Bisping had 17 (and 8 more rebounds). Dullard had 8, Courtney Jones 6. Shurman, Josie Becker, and Caylie Jones had 5 each. Maddy Becker had 3.

So Morton finished the MLK with a 4-1 record. No one yet knows who won the tournament. There’s a game Monday. In seven years, Morton has won the thing six times and is now 33-2 all-time.

I mentioned the time between games. The team rested at a lake house at Oak Run. Here’s a note on another way to kill time.

We walked to the Galesburg fieldhouse for a game there. The fieldhouse is a quarter mile from Thiel. One player’s grandmother walked further. She couldn’t find a door open. Up stairs, down stairs, all around. Finally she saw referees inside. They let her in. “I’ll never say another bad word about referees,” she said, and they said, “We’ve heard that before.”

I offered her a breath-saving ride back to Thiel. I led the way to my Jeep. There I tossed some papers out of the back seat and waited. Then I waited more. Then I got out of my Jeep to look for her and her partner, another grandmother. I spotted them in a car. Not my car. It was red, and my car is red, but the women had climbed into someone else’s red car. “I wondered, it was really messy with soda cans,” the first lost grandmother said later. “I did think a sportswriter would be neater.”

We finally assembled in my car for the drive back to the gym. The grandmother said, “This little adventure will be our secret, right?”

Of course. I would never reveal a source’s name. But her initials are Becky Jones.

After tonight’s 80-33 victory, junior guard Kassidy Shurman said the Morton High School Lady Potters’ offense was good. “We moved the ball better, had better spacing, knew where people were.” She also said the Potters played better defense because they communicated better, they were “hedging and helping better,” they were “trapping better.” What she didn’t say was that the best thing they did was get on the bus and motor 15 minutes west on I-74. By taking Exit 96, crossing the railboard tracks and turning right, they wound up at East Peoria High School. Ah, feeling better already.

The Potters had lost their most recent game, a close one to Galesburg in which they performed uncharacteristically, not only failing to make important defensive stops but failing at their greatest strength on offense. That night the state’s No. 1-ranked Class 3A team — averaging 7 3-pointers a game – made none, nada, nothing. How bad a shooting night was it? So bad they were able to get off only 3 3-point tries. Instead of their customary 23 points a game from behind the arc, they got zip, zilch, zero.

If anyone believed that off-night would have lingering ill effects, the Potters offered an emphatic answer: NOT ON YOUR LIFE.

Tonight, the Potters shot it 31 times from out there.

They made 13 of them, a sensational 43 percent.

The Morton coach, Bob Becker, was a smiling man. “They put on something of a shooting clinic,” he said.

Fewer than four minutes into the game, the Potters exceeded their Galesburg production. At 4:11 of the first quarter, Josi Becker made a 3 from the deep right corner. At 2:48, from the same spot, Shurman made a 3. By then the Potters were up, 14-1. Game Over.

I say “Game Over.” You may say, “Already?” I say, “Yup.” You may say, “But . . . wait . . .three quarters to play.” I say, “So?” You may say, “Can’t be over that quick.” I say, “It was 90-33 two weeks ago. Game Over.”

Yup. Morton is now 20 and 2 on the season. East Peoria is 4 and many. In two weeks’ time, the good team has slipped past the other team by the combined score of 170-66.

Thirteen players dressed for the Potters tonight; 12 of them scored. The 13 3’s were divvied up among six players; Shurman had four, Josi Becker three, Brandi Bisping and Maddy Becker two each, and Bridget Wood and Olivia Remmert one each.

Bisping led the scoring with 16. Shurman had 12, Josi Becker 11, Maddy Becker 10, Wood 9, Tenley Dowell 8, Caylie Jones 4, Remmert 3, Jacey Wharram 2, Claire Kraft 2, Lindsey Dullard 2, Courtney Jones 1.

About 12 hours after this one ended, the Potters were to get on another bus and go northwest on I-74 to Galesburg for two more games in the Martin Luther King Winter Classic – at 10:30 in the morning against Peoria High and at 5:30 p.m. against Peoria Notre Dame.

So the cell phone rings today when I’m about five minutes from Galesburg High School, where the Morton Lady Potters would play the host Silver Streaks. Across the last six seasons, the Potters had beaten Galesburg seven straight times. But not today. They lost, 40-37. And I shoulda known.

There was the day’s fog and rain portending gloom. And there was the boy on the iPhone saying, “Hi, Grandpa.”

Uh-oh, is what I think when I hear those words. An old friend once told me not to be depressed when grandchildren move away. She said, “They’ll find you when they need money.”

So the boy has a story. He’s telling it to me in detail. Being a grandfather who has heard many stories, I don’t pay total attention to this one. I leave my car and walk toward the Galesburg school and its magnificent John Thiel Gymnasium. As I walk, waiting for the $$$ to appear in the boy’s story, my selective-hearing chooses to hear every fourth or seventh word, such as “my car,” “helping a buddy,” “a beer,” “cops,” “towed,” “impounded.”

I cut to the chase. “How much do you need?”

The boys says the tow was this much, the paperwork was that much, the $75 impound fee was ridiculous.

“How much?”

“$700.”

“Say again?”

“And I got sick in the jail overnight . . .”

At which point, my hearing shuts down all the way. I tell the boy I’ll call him after the game. I climb to the safety of the seventh row in the bleachers behind the Lady Potters bench. From there I expect to be comforted by another Potters’ victory solidifying their hold on the No. 1 ranking among the state’s 200 Class 3A teams and giving them an upper hand in Galesburg’s Martin Luther King tournament.

But, yes, I shoulda known. The Potters had played with urgency and competitive zeal two days earlier in a romp over Lincoln-Way Central, a good 4A team. Today was a new, lesser day. Today they were tight, tentative, and, no doubt, tired playing their fourth game in 67 hours.

Down 26-16 at halftime to a quick, resourceful Galesburg team that had a 17-5 record, the Potters came back late. Five times in the last quarter, they had the ball with a chance to tie or go ahead with one of the 3-pointers they’ve thrown in all season. Five times they had a chance – and they failed each time. Three times they turned it over and twice they missed shots they’ve made a thousand times. By one statistician’s count, the Potters committed 19 turnovers.

Then there is the matter of The Missing 3. The Potters lived by the 3-point shot in winning 19 of 20 games. Their coach, Bob Becker, called them a perimeter-shooting team. They were averaging 7 3’s a game. But this day they made none. They tried only three. In that second-half comeback, when heroic work is necessary to win games, the Potters didn’t even try a 3. Their longest field goal all day was a four-footer.

Meanwhile, Galesburg was 4-for-12 on 3’s in the first half. The Streaks’ dominance from outside was so obvious, and so important, that it caused me to make a note at halftime. At the top of my third-quarter play-by-play, I scribbled a prediction: “1st team to make a 3 wins.”

Galesburg’s 3 came with 52 seconds left in the third quarter and gave the Streaks a 33-24 lead.

Then Morton made its only “run,” if outscoring someone 7-0 in six minutes can be called a run. Brandi Bisping made two free throws, Josi Becker threw in a half-handed layup, and Tenley Dowell scored a layup-and-one to make it 33-31 at 5:13 of the fourth quarter.

Galesburg was staggering under Morton’s full-court defensive pressure. But an offensive rebound bucket made it 35-31 at 4:25.

Try as it might, Morton could not make the defensive stop it needed in those last minutes, nor could it make the offensive play necessary to climb to a tie.

Becker liked his team’s comeback in the second half, but said, “In the first half, they outplayed us at both ends. They dictated everything to us. . . .In a game like this one, we had way too many turnovers. . . . Galesburg’s a sectional-quality team, so we may see them again. We’ll learn from this and go on.”

Galesburg coach Evan Massey said, “We’ve beaten some good teams, but Morton is a really good team. People think of Morton as an offensive team because they all can really score, but it’s their defense that’s tough. What we did well tonight was get into our sets quicker.”

And, I thought, Galesburg handled Morton’s late-game pressure well with superb passing.

Massey laughed. “We survived,” he said.

For the third straight game, Morton had only one scorer in double figures. Bisping led with 12, Dowell and Caylie Jones had 6 each, Becker and Courtney Jones 4 each, Lindsey Dullard 3, Jacey Wharram 2.

As promised, before heading back down I-74 in the fog, I called the grandson to check on Western Union arrangements to move money from Illinois to Virginia.

“$700, right?” I said.

“It was,” he said.

“Was?”

“Now it’s been another day at the impound.”

Potters lose. A pre-game slice of sausage pizza costs me $2.50, a bottle of water $1.50, a grandson $775. A hard day at the office, folks.

Bob Becker’s coaching numbers are scary good. Two victories Saturday – 54-40 over Lincoln-Way Central and 48-40 over U High – gave him 400 in his 18th season as the Morton High School Lady Potters coach. Victories are coming at an accelerating pace. The first 100 took six seasons, the last 100 took only three seasons. All that is good, even wonderful. But I am here to tell you that numbers are lifeless things, ink on paper, pixels on your screen. You can learn more about Becker’s work by noticing a player’s smile that lit up the Potterdome today.

The smile belonged to Tenley Dowell. She’s a sophomore. She’s 5-foot-11 and she’s very good with the ball. She can score from outside and she can score from inside and she can score on the break with either hand. Against Lincoln-Way today, she broke out in smiles and not because of anything she did on offense but what she did defensively.

I had to look twice. In the heat of play at full speed, who smiles? Contesting a pass, who has time to smile? But there she was, Tenley Dowell aglow. She was a girl having the time of her basketball life, trapping a ball-handler, arms everywhere, closing off every option, ruining that poor girl’s day.

So I asked, why the smiles?

“It’s fun, trapping, stealing the ball,” she said.

But sometimes, I said, you didn’t steal it, you just made it possible for someone else to steal the bad pass you forced.

“YEAH,” Dowell said.

Two things by which we might measure Bob Becker’s career . . .

1. He won his 100th game in his sixth season, 200th in his 10th season, and 300th in his 14th. His Potters have won the last two Class 3A state championships. After back-to-back 33-3 seasons, they’re 19-1 this season. They’ve won 85 of their last 92 games.

2. And Tenley Dowell, a really good offensive player in a game that glorifies scorers, is having so much fun on defense that she sometimes breaks into a smile. That, my friends, is coaching.

Small wonder, then, that Lincoln-Way Central’s coach, Dave Campanile, saw all that and more in his team’s defeat: “The biggest thing was Morton’s pressure on the ball. We turned it over too much. And then they got hot, they got out on the break, they scored in transition. They were having a good time. They were passionate on both sides of the ball.”

Unlike the night before when Morton played as if entitled to victory against a mediocre Metamora team, the Potters this morning played with the urgency born of real competition. Lincoln-Way Central is a 4A team that came in with an 11-6 record. Properly concerned, Becker had written three pre-game messages on his whiteboard, telling his Lady Potters:

“Make them uncomfortable”
“Relentless”
“Windex”

At jangling a poor girl’s nerves with unforgiving pressure at both ends, the Lady Potters are superb; there would be no problem in discomfiting the Lincoln-Way Central people. But to suggest the Potters wipe clean the glass, the coach seemed to have asked too much of his rebounders, struggling of late.

Early in the second quarter, Lincoln-Way Central led, 18-14. About then, as in many Potters games, their relentless pressure – attacking on both offense and defense – produced a 19-2 run that, after halftime, became a 34-8 domination. “Make them uncomfortable”? The Potters made them crazy. In that time I made this note “Tenley laffing on def.”

We should give that extraordinary 34-8 run a little play-by-play on the scoring . . .

First came two free throws by Brandi Bisping, then a layup by her. Dowell followed with a steal and layup. Josi Becker a 3, then two 3’s by Bisping 43 seconds apart. A Becker steal produced a Dowell layup, and Dowell closed the half at the buzzer by stealing an in-bounds pass and dropping it in.

That’s the 19-2 part of the run. The next 15 points: Caylie Jones a driving hook off the glass, then a drive through traffic for a layup-and-one. Kassidy Shurman a 3 from the deep left corner. Jacey Wharram a layup off a Becker pass. Then a 3 by Becker and a layup by her sister, Maddy.

That made it 48-26, Morton, at the end of three. Game Over.

In Bisping’s third game back after missing five games with mononucleosis, she made her first 3-pointers since Dec. 20 and led Morton’s scoring with 15 (13 in that second quarter). Caylie Jones had 9, Josi Becker 8, Dowell 7, Shurman 6, Lindsey Dullard 3, and 2 each from Bridget Wood, Maddy Becker, and Wharram.

Speaking of “Windex,” as we were, I thought the Potters did OK. Their statistician insisted, however, that they left the glass near-spotless. The Potters’ chart had them with 20 rebounds, led by Courtney Jones’s 6, to Lincoln-Way Central’s 10.

Oddly, unlike the Lincoln-Way Central game, the Morton-U High contest was close deep into the fourth quarter – and yet I never thought the Potters could lose. Though weary after playing at Metamora the night before and Lincoln-Way Central this morning, the Potters led U High, 33-23, late in the third quarter. The rest of the way, U High could get no nearer than four points – and lost to Morton for the second time in three weeks, the first defeat coming 42-39 in double-overtime at the State Farm Holiday Classic.

Josi Becker led Morton’s scoring against U High with 10. Shurman and Caylie Jones had 8 each, Bisping and Dowell 6 each, Courtney Jones 5, Maddy Becker 3, and Dullard 2.

The two games Saturday, by the way, were the openers of Galesburg’s Martin Luther King tournament which the Potters have won six years in a row, losing only one of 30 games. Monday, they go to Galesburg to play the hosts.

One thing more on Becker’s 400….

An assistant coach, Megan Hasler, asked if I would contribute a thought on the historic occasion. I had no thoughts. But I did have some numbers. I sent her “Bob Becker by the Numbers.” Here it is….

1. That time in Pekin when he said, “We kicked the living crud out of them.”
2. Pairs of pants split while coaching enthusiastically.
3. Games he was T’d up for removing his suit jacket enthusiastically.
7. Victories in a row over Galesburg.
43. Championships in Mid-Illini, Thanksgiving, MLK, regional, sectional, supersectional, state.
57. A narrow victory over East Peoria.
112, give or take a hundred: Times during a game when he shouts, “REBOUND!”
199. Victories I’ve seen.
201. Victories he managed before I arrived.
400. Midnights when Evelyn said, “No, we are not watching one more coaching video.”