Author: Dave Kindred

Lady Potters 41

Galesburg 38

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

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

The truth is, I have no idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She thought just shoot it?

“Yeah,” she explained.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lady Potters 63

Metamora 35

Something’s happening here, and it’s good, and it’s fun, and these basketball born-agains, the Potters who had lost five in a row, now have won three in a row and have created the streak in the best way, by playing better each time out and doing things that cause the coach, Bob Becker, to get right up next to schoolboy giddy and almost say things tonight that he really wants to say but knows he has to wait, and the words come tumbling out . . .

“I went and saw Notre Dame and Peoria Central last night . . .”

Two of the top five teams in Class 3A, teams likely in the same regional with Morton when the state tournaments begin next month, teams capable of winning a state championship that Morton has won four times in the last seven seasons.

“And I’m believing more and more . . . ”

Wait for it.

“Nothing’s going to be easy . . . ”

Wait.

“I’m not making any guarantees . . . ”

Wait.

“But I’m more confident now that our team is going to be more prepared and ready now because of how they’re thinking about each other. Look, they’re having fun. There’s smiles. They’re playing loose and free.”

This one was over early in the third quarter. Up by six at halftime, the Potters went on an 15-5 run that opened with a Tatym Lamprecht 3 from the left side and ended with a Graci Junis put-back of a rebound she stole from the hands of lesser jumpers. Again, as in a rout of Mahomet-Seymour earlier in the week, the Potters’ defense was as efficient as the offense, Becker suddenly a devotee of the 2-3 zone defense. (“I credit my dad,” the Hall of Fame coach said. “He asked if I’d tried it.”)

Best of all, once the issue was not in doubt, the Potters got better. They went on a 19-2 run in four minutes of the fourth quarter – a Lamprecht 3 followed by her breakaway layup off an Izzy Hutchinson steal . . . an Addy Engel drive in the paint followed by a mid-range jumper . . . an Izzy breakaway of her own . . . a Junis mid-range jumper . . . a Hutchinson drive, an Ellie VanMeenen drive, and a layup by Kerrigan Vandel – suddenly, it was 59-30.

But wait.

All this was good.

But you should have seen this.

“I wanted to run out there and high-five her,” Bob Becker said of a moment only four minutes into the game when he saw . . .

Metamora has this one really good player, strong and aggressive; in football, she’d be a cornerback seeking contact. So here comes a rebound her way and as she goes up for the ball, so does Graci Junis.

Graci, a volleyball star, never a cornerback.

But this time, four minutes into the game, the Metamora girl has the rebound until Graci wants it, and here’s what Graci does. She rips it out of the cornerback’s hands, and she does it with a snarl, or at least enough of it’s-my-damned-ball that Bob Becker, his sport coat flapping, runs three steps onto the court in celebration of what he has just seen, which he described as . . .

“That #23, who is a beast physically, and Graci, who has not always been a beast . . .”

I say, “And Graci ripped it out of her hands.”

“YES!!!”

He went on. “An aggressive Graci Junis? Instead of a wet noodle? I LOVE IT!”

The Potters loved the whole thing.

Junis: “The dynamic of the team has totally changed. We were so into our heads, thinking, thinking. Not tonight. Fun.”

Lamprecht: “Everyone’s really confident now and trusting each other. This is the best I’ve seen all season.”

Engel: “Coach has been talking about having an unwavering belief in ourselves, and I think we finally have that.”

Hutchinson: “This will continue on.”

The Potters, now 13-9 for the season and 5-4 in the Mid-Illini, play at Galesburg (19-5) Saturday afternoon. Metamora is 14-8, 5-4.

Morton’s scoring tonight: Lamprecht 18 (with four 3’s), Engel 16, Hutchinson 9, Junis 8, VanMeenen 6, Abbey Pollard 4, Vandel 2.

Lady Potters 47

Mahomet-Seymour 23

This one was a song sung in sweet harmony. The Potters’ 2-3 zone kept Mahomet-Seymour on the outside failing to get into the paint. With the ball, the Potters were, for once, five people moving freely, creating space, delivering passes only where the ball’s next stop is the bottom of the net. It was enough to make a guy think of a song the darling Maria sang in West Side Story . . .

I feel pretty
Oh, so pretty
I feel pretty, and witty, and bright
And I feel pity
For any girl who isn’t me tonight

Here I beg forgiveness from hoops junkies for lapsing into kitschy Broadway sentiment, but really, if you, like the Potters, had endured only misery in 2023, you, too, might have been as happy as Graci Junis, a Potter who did good work off the bench tonight and, to the surprise of many, perhaps including Graci, threw in a 3-pointer from the low left corner late in the third quarter.

You may well ask how happy Graci was when I reminded her, “And you made a 3.”

She said, “YES! I DID!” And her face rearranged itself into the prettiest, wittiest, and brightest face for miles around.

“How’d that happen?” I said.

“I DON’T KNOW!”

About time for unknowable good things to happen for the Potters. This miserable patch had reached five straight losses, six in seven games, the program’s longest such stretch during a decade in which it won four state championships. Only the most optimistic of observers drove east on I-74 tonight expecting the Potters, at 11-9 for the season, to have an easy time of it against a 17-5 team ranked in Class 3A’s top 20.

But an easy time it was, 12-3 after a quarter, 22-7 at the half, and Graci’s 3 made it 34-10 after three. This was a Mahomet-Seymour team averaging nearly 50 points a game. It scored one field goal in each of the first three quarters, and those were 3-pointers because it could find no way inside against Morton’s hustling, aggressive defenders. It didn’t score in the paint for the first 27 minutes.

Meanwhile, as in games early this season but not so much lately, Morton’s offense moved so smoothly that 12 of its 17 field goals came inside, the result of full-out attacks at the rim and the occasional steal and breakaway layup.

“I was happy for the kids,” Bob Becker, the Potters’ coach, said. “I was proud. Lesser kids, lesser teams, considering the trials and tribulations we’ve been going through – maybe without the persistence and the perseverance, the never-give-up, some lesser people might have gone, ‘Oh, man . . . ’”

“We’re all just tired of losing,” Tatym Lamprecht said.

“We played more together,” Julia Laufenberg said.

“More of a team having fun, everyone enjoying it, and a lot of players got their confidence back,” Izzy Hutchinson said.

“We were diving on the floor, we were hustling to get rebounds, we were having fun,” Ellie VanMeenen said.

I asked, when did the fun begin?

“After the first quarter I saw the score,” she said, and the score was Guests 12, Home 3, and she recalled memories of misery not yet wiped out, “Like, ‘Wow, that used to be us.’”

Three nights earlier, the Potters’ bus ride home from a Canton misery took them down ghostly Route 24. Tonight they came home on I-74, a wonder of 20th century engineering. Near Farmer City, they passed that skyscraper with the DeKalb corn sign lit up. They crossed the mighty Kickapoo Creek where, a long time ago, my Dad dropped his hammer into the creek, fell in after it, and lived to say, “Both of us swam like a rock.” I laughed when he told that story and I laughed tonight.

The Potters’ next game: Friday night, Metamora, at the Potterdome.

Morton’s scoring tonight: Addy Engel 16 (with two 3’s), Hutchinson 11 (and eight rebounds), Lamprecht 10 (two 3’s and eight steals), Julia Laufenberg 3, Junis that smiling 3, VanMeenen 2, and Annelise Heppe 2.

Canton 47

Lady Potters 38

A long time ago, I took a football coaching class at Illinois Wesleyan. For a term paper I designed the offense of my dreams. It would be all passes. I believed that only knuckle-dragging Neanderthals bought into three yards and a cloud of dust. We would fill the sky with pigskin. My quarterback would be a combination of Bart Starr and Johnny Unitas. (Kids, look ‘em up.)

Later, I even liked those college basketball teams that did nothing but shoot 3’s. See the rim, fling the thing. Get a rebound, do it again. Defense? Who needs defense? Just give me the ball back, we’ll shoot it again. Run five subs in at once, let ‘em run helter-skelter for 90 seconds, bring in five new ones. Yeah, we might lose 143-113, but if enough of our running prayers fall in, we might win 160-98.

These are the thoughts, of course, of a man given to delusions of offense after seeing the Potters score one point in tonight’s second quarter as they fell behind at halftime, 21-9, and never got it into single-digits until the last three seconds.

They’re also the thoughts of a man who just drove back from Canton in the dark of night on that gawdawful Route 24 past swamps, stinkin’ chemical plants, and ghostly concrete towers that are probably home to creepy crawlies extinct in civilized parts of the world.

Yeah, I’m no good tonight. Back in Morton, I stopped at McDonald’s. It was 9:03 p.m. At 9:07 I said, “Deluxe crispy chicken sandwich, Diet Coke.” A voice said, “$7.27 at the second window.” At 9:11, I was the fifth car in line. At 9:17, I had not moved an inch. At 9:18, I put it in reverse, backed up a foot, pulled around the line of cars, and left for I-74 and home. Let the second window figure out what happened to the $7.27 guy.

Yeah, not in a good mood.

Still ticked about that flagrant-foul call on Izzy Hutchinson. It was not a big play in the game. But the Potters still had a hint of hope. They were 14 down when Izzy’s pestiferous defense caused a jump ball near midcourt with three minutes to play. Wrestling for possession, the Canton girl spun loose from Izzy’s grip and fell down, at which point an incompetent in a striped shirt blew a whistle.

“I let go of her,” Izzy said, meaning the Canton spinning girl, “because I thought I might get a foul.”

When she looked at the referee, she saw he had his arms crossed in an X above his head, the signal for a flagrant foul.

Now, I have seen flagrant fouls. They’re flagrant, as in intentionally delivered in a way that might cause injury. This was not that. This was a tug of war for possession that ended with the weaker girl losing her balance.

The call had nothing to do with who won or lost. It just moved Canton to 16 up with 3:09 left.

But still. When you’ve lost five or your last six games, as the Potters have, it’s never a morale boost to be on the wrong end of a referee’s two-point mistake in the last three minutes of a game you might still have a chance to win. In those last three minutes, running loose, the Potters outscored Canton 14-7.

“I feel for our kids, they’re reeling,” the Morton coach, Bob Becker, said. “We’re trying, we’re searching. We’re having to find answers. Right now it’s obviously a struggle.”

Morton is now 11-9 for the season, 4-4 in the Mid-Illini. Canton is 11-9 and 3-4.

Morton’s scoring tonight: Hutchinson 17 (“Izzy played her heart out,” Becker said.) Tatym Lamprecht 11, Addy Engel 4, Ellie VanMeenen 3, Abbey Pollard 3

Washington 48

Lady Potters 25

Always, the worst part of the Potters playing at Washington has been that pep band’s all-brass-and-drums murder of music at halftime. They call it music. I’m a musical illiterate. My grade school music teacher heard my audition for a part in an operetta. She winced. She said, “David, you will RECITE your part.” So there is that, and anything I say about music is not to be taken seriously.

Besides, there was that cute Washington mother who came to sit near me when that pep band started. She wanted to take pictures as her son, Jackson, hammered away on a big ol’ drum. She was proud, and she asked if I heard that song the band did.

I said, “Song?”

I had heard an F-14’s jet engine at full thunder.

Song?

“Sweet Caroline,” the drummer’s mom said.

“Great,” I said, not the first lie I ever told a cute blonde.

Anyway, the way it went tonight, the way that pep band played its music was a relief from the way the Lady Potters played their basketball that first half.

It was 27-7 at halftime. At least eight times, by my count, the Potters did not finish on opportunities not only in the paint but point-blank at the rim.

“MOVE THE BALL!” the coach, Bob Becker, said more than a few times, seldom to any great effect. For somehow the Potters contrived to extend their miserable no-offense-of-any-kind streak. They came to Washington off the last two quarters against Dunlap in which they scored 3 and 6. They began tonight with quarters of 2 and 5. In their last four quarters, then, they had been outscored, 59-16.

Clearly, they would lose tonight for the fifth time in six games. Their season record would fall to 11-8 and 4-3 in the Mid-Illini Conference. It’s no shame to lose to a team that is now 16-2, undefeated in seven M-I games, and ranked #4 among the state’s Class 3A teams – all true of Washington. But to be down 20 at halftime with no suggestions of a comeback – that’s enough to cause Bob Becker to do, y’know, something.

So he benched three of his season-long starters. They did not play one second in the 16 minutes of the second half. Early in the fourth quarter, against a very good Washington team, Becker’s five players were reserves seldom heard from all season (two had played in the jayvee game).

Yet those Deep Benchers had scored 10 points in the third quarter, which amounted to an offensive explosion.

“The second half,” Becker said, “I thought was a bright spot.”

A bright spot?

“We competed the second half and lost it by three,” he said. (Washington 21-18 in that half.) “And the kids were coachable and fun to coach.” He praised the “competitive effort of the kids who played the second half. I loved there was no give-up, no quit.”

In all that, of course, there was a message to the starters consigned to the bench in the second half.

“The only thing I can control sometimes is that bench, that’s it,” Becker said.

The Potters have 10 regular-season games to play before regionals start in early February.

“I’m committed to finding a way and building this last month,” the coach said. “Every game from here on, we have to be the scrappiest, most hard-nosed team, and we have to do it 32 minutes every night.”

Morton’s scoring tonight: Anja Ruxlow 6, Emilia Miller 6, Abbey Pollard 5, Izzy Hutchinson 3, Magda Lopko 3, Julia Laufenberg 2.

Dunlap 59

Lady Potters 38

The good news: When Tatym Lamprecht threw in her fourth 3-pointer and Ellie VanMeenen followed with a banked-in 3 from the top of the key and Addy Engel added a free throw, the Potters led at halttime, 29-27.

After that, nothing but bad news.

Third quarter, the Potters scored three points.

Fourth quarter, six points.

Outscored in the second half, 32-9.

By Dunlap. Dunlap is a good team in these parts, 14-3 overall, maybe the second-best team in the Mid-Illini Conference. But c’mon. It’s Dunlap. Dunlap is not a great team. Dunlap does not take your heart out and stomp that sucker flat.

But Dunlap scored the first 13 points of the third quarter and then, after a Lamprecht free throw, it scored six more. It outscored Morton in the third, 22-3.

Somewhere in there, Morton called timeout. For the longest time in that timeout – and time moves slowly in such dismal situations – the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, must have set a record for silence. He crouched in front of his team and said nothing. Finally, he spoke softly. And whatever he said, it did not end the night’s mysteries.

“I asked them in the locker room afterwards, ‘What happened in the second half?’” he said.

Lamprecht got one shot in the second half, a futile fling on a drive into traffic. The Potters’ only field goal, other than two late layups, was a 12-footer by Graci Junis in the third quarter; by then, the Potters’ offense was a stuttering mess of weak passes and uncertain movement.

As in three or four games lately, the Potters played as well as possible for a while – that first half – followed by an extended time in which they played as poorly as possible. They have now lost four of their last five games and are 11-7 overall.

“Dunlap came out with more intensity in the third quarter,” Becker said. In those poor stretches, the coach said, “The opponent is playing harder, tougher, scrappier, mentally and physically, than we are. We gotta do some soul-searching.”

Morton’s scoring tonight: Lamprecht 17, Engel 10, Izzy Hutchinson 4, VanMeenen 3, Junis 2, Ruby Brubaker 2.

Peoria High 56

Lady Potters 38

From a distance, this one promised to be trouble. Up close, it was.

Peoria High came to the Potterdome tonight on an eight-game winning streak that made its season record 14-2 and moved it to #7 in the state’s latest Class 3A poll. Meechie Edwards, the Lions’ coach, was in full-throated roar, as always, and his team found its own authoritative voice with a 12-0 run in three minutes of the fourth quarter that ended any thoughts the Potters had of an upset.

Down by 12 entering the fourth, and despite making only 5 of 12 free throws to that point, Morton trailed only 35-28 with 6:11 to play. Then Peoria sprinted away on a 15-footer, another from there, a layup, a 3-pointer, and a layup-and-one for the killing dozen points. Truth is, the Lions hardly needed those points; their defense, quick and relentlessly aggressive, already had harassed/trapped/frightened Morton into so many turnovers (19 at that point) that I quit counting.

It was almost fun for a half. Only a 3-pointer at the buzzer gave Peoria a 20-17 halftime lead. I can’t say it was ever truly fun because even in a three-point game the Lions were always dominant. They showed it in the third quarter. That suffocating, ball-hawking defense forced the Potters into nine turnovers in the quarter. Four 3’s helped them win the quarter, 14-5. After that, the issue was never really in doubt.

Now, here’s a sentence often typed in the last 12 seasons: One team was clearly better than the other. Of course, in days past, that “one team” was always Morton. But not tonight. Not when Peoria made 10 3’s (to Morton’s 3), dominated the paint, never let the Potters breathe on offense, and won going away.

“They’re definitely a better team right now,” the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, said. “They’re difficult to guard. They’re skilled at a lot of spots. It’s not just one or two kids.”

The Potters are now 11-6, losers in three of their last four games, and their schedule offers little respite. Friday in the Potterdome they play Dunlap, with whom they share second place in the Mid-Illini Conference at 4-1 (13-3 overall). A week from tonight they go to league-leading Washington, another of Class 3A’s top-10 teams.

All this with an offense going nowhere. In the Potters last three losses, they have had quarters in which they scored 7, 5, 6, 6, and 5 points while losing by 5, 10, and tonight’s 18.

“So we gotta find a way,” Becker said. “It may not be exciting, but maybe we gotta play games in the 30’s.”

Morton’s scoring tonight: Tatym Lamprecht 16 (with all the team’s 3’s), Izzy Hutchinson 8, Addy Engel 8, and two apiece from Julia Laufenberg, Ellie VanMeenen, and Graci Junis.

Geneseo 44
Lady Potters 34

I walk in the house about 10 o’clock tonight and there’s Casey, my cat, who is curious.

“How’d it go?” she says.

“Can you believe it, Casey, it’s 57 degrees outside. The snow has all melted. Suddenly, we’re Florida.”

Casey says, “Meow.”

Meaning I should fetch her a can of salmon.

She says, “Not salmon again.”

Casey is finicky. I was forever a dog person until Casey showed up. For Christmas my sister dear, Sandy, gave me a T-shirt with a legend: “This human belongs to Casey.” So I do what Casey wants me to do.

I drop the salmon and get tuna. She purrs. She says, “You said you were going to a basketball game.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.

“Now who’s finicky?” she says.

So I tell her what happened in the Bloomington High School gym in the fifth-place game of the State Farm Holiday Classic.

“Geneseo showed up, and Morton didn’t,” I say.

“No game then?”

“Nope.”

“So, where have you been the last three hours?”

I say, “Casey, Casey. Do you know what curiosity did to the cat?”

“Don’t bring that weak stuff in here,” she says. “I know ‘curiosity killed the cat.’ I also know the quote goes on to say, ‘But satisfaction brought it back.’ So, satisfy me with a report on the silly game you humans play in the winter.”

(Who knew that Casey can operate the Google machine and trace the origin of ancient lines?)

I tell Casey I talked to the Potters’ coach afterwards. I tell her that Bob Becker said, ‘I haven’t been this disappointed in a long time.’ It wasn’t like losing a perfect season and a state championship on the last shot to Chicago Simeon. That was “heartbreaking.” This was different. ‘Tonight was very poor.’ He said, ‘I gotta get better, I gotta be a better coach and a better leader, and we gotta get better.’’’

I asked Casey, “You ever heard of Joe Paterno?”

“A cat person?” she says.

“A football coach. He lost a big game once. Somebody told him he shouldn’t take it so hard. He said, ‘If a carpenter builds a house and it falls down, he’s supposed to be OK with that?’ That’s what Becker was saying.”

“Becker’s team fell down?”

“Casey, do a dog thing. Open the fridge, fetch me a beer.”

Here’s Morton’s scoring tonight:

Tatym Lamprecht 15, Addy Engel 7, Graci Junis 4, Izzy Hutchinson 3, Ruby Brubaker 3, Magda Lopko 2.

Lady Potters 43

Rochester 36

Odd, what’s happening with these Potters. This afternoon they were up by 20 against a team that scared the tournament’s #1 seed yesterday before losing by 13. They had played “very well for three quarters,” coach Bob Becker said. He believed his team was on the verge of winning by 20 or 25, except–

–there was that fourth quarter thing again.

You may remember Morton’s fourth quarter in its State Farm Holiday Classic’s second-round game against Normal. The Potters had five points in the fourth that night, to lose by five.

Against Rochester, four points, none in the last five minutes.

This time, instead of putting their foot on somebody’s throat, Morton was–

–listen to Becker.

“The finish was terrible, a poor, weak finish. They out-hustled us, out-scrapped us, and we became complacent and wimpy with the ball.”

It was 13-8 after a quarter, 27-11 at the half, and 39-23 after three. Morton’s aggressive 2-3 zone defense stifled any offense the Rochester folks thought might work. Against a passive Rochester zone, Morton’s ball-handling was efficient enough to produce 20 points in the paint.

Both Ellie VanMeenen and Tatym Lamprecht had 9 points through the first three quarters, each with a 3-pointer.

But from a 39-19 lead at 2:08 of the third, the Potters were outscored the rest of the way, 17-4. Most of that damage – the “poor, weak finish” – came in the fourth quarter after Rochester junked its zone and put so much pressure on the Potters’ ball-handlers that in the game’s last five minutes Morton managed only one shot – one, as in 1, one more than none, that 1 a gawdawful, falling-away fling of a thing.

Then came the first wimpy turnover. Followed by another. Though his team was up by 14 with 1:40 to play, Becker, never in favor of wimpy ball-handlers, called a timeout. Followed by another turnover. And another, causing Becker to call another frustrated-coach timeout, this one with 29 seconds to play.

Followed by the Potters’ fifth turnover in the game’s last two minutes.

Then, after a Rochester 3-pointer with four seconds to play, it was over.

One was glad.

Another oddity, this one about history: Morton had played Rochester twice before, both times in state championship games, winning in 2015 and again in 2017. The scores were 47-37 and 44-37. This time 43-36.

Anyway, the victory sent Morton into the winner’s bracket fifth-place game later in the evening.

Morton’s scoring this afternoon: VanMeenen 11, Lamprecht 9, Addy Engel 7, Ruby Brubaker 6, Izzy Hutchinson 5, Abbey Pollard 3, Magda Lopko 2.

Normal Community 40

Lady Potters 35

By noon tomorrow, they’ll have forgotten this one. Maybe. Hope so. Kind souls might even call this one a moral victory. The Potters, a Class 3A team with a 10-3 record, went to the wire against an undefeated team, 13-0, ranked in the top 5 of the state’s Class 4A. That team, Normal Community, “probably expected to slap us around,” the Morton coach, Bob Becker, said. “But our kids didn’t let that happen.”

NCHS led, 37-30, a minute into the fourth quarter of a State Farm Holiday Classic second-round game. For the next 5 ½ minutes, Morton stayed alive. First, Tatym Lamprecht somehow worked a prayer of a running 6-footer into the net. She followed with another slash to the rim before Izzy Hutchinson’s free throw brought the Potters within two, 37-35, with 2:28 to play.

Alas, from there on, the Potters did nothing good. They did not get another shot. For a full precious minute, they could not solve Normal Community’s keep-away offense. When they made a steal with 1:00 left, they missed both ends of a two-shot free throw possibility. Then they did not commit desperation fouls that might give them the ball should NCHS miss its free throws – until there were 4.2 seconds to play, and Normal made both free throws.

Here’s the good news. Morton won the first quarter, 12-11. As bizarre as it sounds, it is nevertheless true that Morton won second half, 12-10. (Yes, really. Morton won the third quarter, 7-5. Each team got 5 points in the fourth.) Normal Community’s 19-11 second quarter was the difference, a difference built on superior play at both ends, particularly on offense where the winners created a dozen in-the-paint scoring chances to Morton’s two or three.

If you liked hacking, clawing defense, you liked this game.

If you liked all-out effort from the get-go, you liked this game.
However.

If you like, oh, even a touch of smooth-flowing offensives, if you like at least a hint of in-rhythm outside shooting, if you came to this game hoping to appreciate careful ball-handling, you did not much like this game. For instance, Normal Community scored as many as seven straight points once all night; Morton scored six straight only twice. And none of that happened in the last half when good defenses met mediocre offenses and produced 16 minutes of when-will-somebody-make-something-happen.

At 12:30 Thursday afternoon, Morton plays Rochester in a winner’s consolation bracket game.

Morton’s scoring tonight: Lamprecht 11, Ellie VanMeenen 6, Julia Laufenberg 6, Addy Engel 6, Izzy Hutchinson 4, Ruby Brubaker 2.

Lady Potters 72

Springfield 44

Good heavens, did you see that? The Potters had six people on the floor in that fourth quarter, maybe seven, sometimes eight. Nothing else explains what they did. There’d be one of ‘em flying down the lane, three more grabbing at the ricocheting rebound, after which four threw themselves ass over teakettle to wrestle the rolling-loose ball away from the Springfield girls, who were bewitched, bewildered, and beleaguered into a 28-point loss when with five minutes to play they still had a chance to win.

Here we need video with surround sound.

Words are good, yes, words are very good, but I need audio-visual help to make best use of the hieroglyphics I scrawled into my notebook in the last five minutes of this opening game in the State Farm Holiday Classic, played at Bloomington High School.

Like this note, scribbled when it was 51-41, Morton, 4:42 to play . . .
“Iz ft, miss 2d, re, pass, Gr 4’.”

Meaning Izzy Hutchinson made a free throw, missed the second, somehow materialized down the right side of the lane to steal away the rebound, took two dribbles into the paint (maybe three?) and passed (handed?) the ball to Graci Junis, who scored on a little 4-footer. A little 4-footer? Big in the moment, it was Morton’s first bucket in the quarter, and it set off a 20-3 run that included stuff like this . . .

“Iz lu, T pass, off ob play, who threw it in?”

Meaning the score became 62-44 when Tatym Lamprecht, at the top of the circle, took a baseline in-bounds pass (from someone, maybe the ghost of Brandi Bisping?) and moved the ball to Hutchinson breaking down the left sidre of the lane for a layup.

All that was part of Morton’s game-closing 21-3 run in which Springfield scored only once in th4e last 5 minutes and caused Bob Becker, the Morton coach, to do what every basketball coach likes to do: praise his team’s defense for being so good it jump-starts the offense.

“All of our great teams started with great intensity at the defensive end,” said the coach whose teams have won four state championships. “Tonight we had lots of hustle plays, kids on the floor, scrappy, played hard. That’s gotta be part of who we are. Scrappy, hustle, relentless effort all over the place.”

Of all the Potters-great-teams’ 28-point victories over the years, this one is unique.

They won the first quarter, 20-4. And they won the last 5 minutes, 21-3.

So, in 13 minutes, Morton outscored Springfield, 41-7.

In the other 19 minutes, Springfield won 37-31.

Becker, said of the early-late dominance: “We showed what we’re capable of.” As for the other part, he allowed himself a big winner’s wry smile: “And we showed what we’re capable of.” Capable of poor second-quarter defense. “Complacency? Maybe a little lazy,” the coach said. But he really liked that fourth quarter. “Layups and free throws – that’s what good teams do, extending the lead. Usually, I would’ve subbed more at the end. But that group did a great job and they earned the chance to play.”

No Potter did it better at the end than Lamprecht, who scored 12 of her 24 points in the fourth quarter and, given the ball out front, ran the Potters offense while daring Springfield to make a defensive mistake: attacking, she scored on three driving layups and six free throws.

What I like most about Lamprecht’s play is that she’s a senior, in her second season after transferring from East Peoria, and while she has always been a star, she spent most of last season hiding from stardom. Now she has grown into a team leader, a captain, a high-fiver, a star happy to be where she is.

She has an explanation.

“I love this team,” she said

Next up for the fith-seeded Potters Iis #4 seed Normal Community, at 5:30 Wednesday at Bloomington High.

Morton’s scoring tonight: Lamprecht 24, Hutchinson 17, 6 each from Junis, Addy Engel, Ellie VanMeenen and Magda Lopko, Julia Laufenberg 5, Abbey Pollard 2.

Lady Potters 67

East Peoria 38

Three minutes and 24 seconds in, the Potters were up 13-0.

I didn’t stop watching.

But this was a no-doubter. The Potters put defensive pressure on East Peoria and East Peoria had no clue. The only drama was the usual Morton-East Peoria question. When would the running-clock start? (Spoiler alert: it happened two minutes into the fourth quarter.)

I watched enough to see the Potters pick East Peoria pockets from end to end. I saw Addy Engel get every rebound she wanted. A deep-bench reserve, Kerrigan Vandel, a junior transfer from East Peoria, scored 8 points, including a 3-pointer on her first shot; she also was valuable defensively. I saw Tatym Lamprecht lead the Potters’ scoring with 15 the hard way (no 3’s, but two open-court steals for breakaway layups and one put-back wrenched away from the bigger people).

My favorite Tatym moment came when she was fouled late in the third quarter, just after those two breakaways.

She was flying in for yet another when an East Peoria defender threw the basketball version of a cross-body block that sent Lamprecht sprawling across the endline. To quote the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, “Tatym got HAMMERED!” In case the reporter standing two feet away didn’t hear him, Becker said, “HAMMERED!,” with yet another exclamation point. “And that’s a FACT,” he said.

When no referee thought the HAMMERING was a foul, Becker walked onto the court in the direction of a zebra on the far side. He also said some words that might have traveled well enough to catch the referee’s attention. She soon came from the far side to the baseline and around toward the Morton bench. There she called a technical foul on Becker.

What had he said to earn the T? “I guess I said enough,” Becker said. Most likey he reminded the referee that officials had been reminded this season that a foul in the first minute of a game is a foul in the last minute of a game. I bet she didn’t like being reminded. “And you gotta protect the kids,” he said, suggesting a cross-body block at speed can be dangerous.

Anyway, I saw all that.

I had more fun hearing stuff.

From the fourth row in the bleachers, can you hear the shoes squeaking against the basketball court?

Did you know the ball makes a duller sound when bounced on some spots?

You’ve heard broadcasters say a shooter “rattled” that one in, but have you ever heard the actual rattle of a rim?

It was one thing in years past when Becker wore dress shoes and HAMMERED his hard leather soles against the floor. But tonight, from the fourth row, even as the coach simply walked to and fro, I heard Becker’s sneakered feet slapping the hardwood.

We’ve all seen players go down hard, sometimes so hard it takes your breath away and you wonder not when but if they’re going to get up – but, good grief, when Lamprecht went down tonight, I swear I heard bones cracking.

My hearing went south somewhere during the Pleistocene Age. I was at a basketball game with a crowd so loud my ears began ringing and never quit. People tired of my saying, “Huh?” suggested hearing aids. I quoted my dear mother who at age 95 denied a hearing problem. She called it a speaking problem. “If people would just SPEAK UP,” she said, “I hear fine.”

I got hearing aids at 1 o’clock today. At 8:24 tonight, I heard Bob Becker say, “Tatym got HAMMERED.” I would have heard him without ‘em.

Morton is now 9-3 for the season. The Potters play at Peoria Manual Thursday, unless the blizzard blows us all away. East Peoria is 0-11.

Morton’s scoring: Lamprecht 15, Engel 12, Ellie VanMeenen 11, Izzy Hutchinson 9, Vandel 8, Ruby Brubaker 4, Anja Ruxlow 3, Julia Laufenberg 3, Magda Lopko 2.

Sycamore 48
Lady Potters 43

But if we count just the last three quarters this afternoon, it was . . .
Lady Potters 43
Sycamore 25

Alas, alack, and sad to say, the rules insist that we must count the first quarter, which was . . .
Sycamore 23
Lady Potters 0

I will spell out that last one. Sycamore twenty-three, Lady Potters zero nada nil nothin’ zilch and rotten bananas.

Never in my hundred years writing about the Lady Potters has there been such a thing. It has worked the other way with the Lady Potters pitching a shutout for a quarter, once for a half. But this? The Potters on the other end of a beat-down? Good grief. Where have you gone, Brandi Bisping, a lonely PotterNation turns its eyes to you.

It wasn’t as if the Potters were thrown in against the Boston Celtics; Sycamore had two really good players, a 6-foot-4 post and a D-1 commit point guard, and yet the Spartans had won only two of eight games.

But when the Potters make eight turnovers in the first quarter – my count – and when they get “no decent shots” – my note – and when they watch that big post player get five quick, easy buckets – lots of watching by the Potters smallish bigs – a partisan observer could be forgiven for wondering if a 110-mile school bus trip in fog and rain had caused the Potters to sleepwalk for a quarter.

I mentioned Brandi Bisping, an all-timer in Potter lore, three times the beating heart of state championship teams. No one would sleepwalk through a Brandi Bisping minute. Her idea of basketball was get ‘em down, stand on their throats, and then, when they call timeout to check their extremities, you smile at the poor suffering darlings, maybe even curtsy, blow ‘em a kiss. And walk on.

Instead of that, these Potters too often are passive. They allow the enemy to set the terms of engagement. Now 6-3 for the season, the Potters have lost all three of their road games. In those losses, they have gone quiet for long stretches of play. We thought it was bad when Rock Island made a 19-6 run. It was worse when Metamora went 18-1. Those nights, next to a first-quarter 23-0 shutout, were sundaes with a cherry on top.

Oh, we might say the Potters made a great comeback from looming catastrophe. Call it a gallant run. Say they never quit. All that would be true. (We’ll get to details in a minute). But we should hear the coaching truth from Bob Becker. Even after first praising his team for a “valiant comeback,” the Potters coach made it clear he was not selling only soft soap tonight.

“A ‘nice comeback’? No,” he said. “A nice comeback would be coming back to win.”

In this comeback, whatever the adjective – I call it astonishing – the Potters became the aggressors at both ends, frightening the Sycamores with a full-court press, scratching and clawing their way to a 22-2 run in 9 minutes and 17 seconds. Sycamore’s lead, once 23-zilch, was now 25-22.

In that run, four Potters scored: Izzy Hutchinson had 11, with a 3 from the low left corner, a put-back, and four free throws earned on just-try-to-stop-me drives to the hoop; Tatym Lamprecht had six, Addy Engel 3, Ellie VanMeenen 2.

Twice more, Sycamore seemed to have the game in hand with double figure leads. Twice more, Morton refused to go away, staying in its aggressors’ press, attacking in the paint at every opportunity. Take away the cursed first quarter, it was a beautiful basketball game played by both sides.

With 2:04 to play, the Potters were still alive. From 11 down midway through the fourth quarter, they had cut it to 8. The clutch baskets came from Lamprecht, a 3 from the right corner, and from VanMeenen, scoring against the big girl on a rebound.

But at 1:25, a Sycamore 3 made it 48-37.

Game over?

Not yet. At 1:12, Lamprecht two free throws. At :55, Julia Laufenberg a put-back. When Sycamore missed two free throws at :13.2, Lamprecht scored on a runner in the paint. It was 48-43. There were four seconds to play. I saw the clock. Before the clock operator caught the Morton timeout call, the clock showed :01.5. A long in-bounds pass ended it.

Morton’s scoring:

Lamprecht 14, Hutchinson 11, VanMeenen 9, Engel 7, Laufenberg 2.

Lady Potters 50, Canton 37

So Addy Engel, bumping into folks, stumbling in heavy traffic, gets rid of the ball. If you’re kind, you say Addy Engel put up a little shot from the low right box. But you can’t really call it a shot. The best you can say, in coachese, is she “attacked the basket.” Just ride a little bump’em cars, hurl the rock up there, hope to draw a foul and two.

But when there was no whistle, here is what Addy Engel did not do next.

She did not go oh-gosh-darn, nor did she sulk even a ltitle bit.

Here is what she did do.

Over Canton’s bigger people, the 5-foot-10 junior forward Addy Engel ripped the clunker-shot rebound from their hands and on a second try put it softly off the glass for two.

It was no big deal, the Potters already up by five, but it was no little deal, either, because up by seven with seven minutes to play is better than up by five.

Besides, here came a repeat.

This time the 5-8 junior guard Izzy Hutchinson came flying in – “attacked” is an inadequate verb when Hutchinson comes flying in sideways, crossways, and every way but upside-down to try one of her improbable “layups,” an inadequate noun – and, of course, this improbability clanged off the rim, and again no whistle, no foul.

And Izzy Hutchinson, not even jumping because she had barely straightened out from the flight in, lost among the bigs under the hoop, somehow came up with the ball and – I cannot swear to this, but I will swear to it anyway – she had her back to the basket when she flipped the ball skyward, it fell onto the rim, and sat there, sat there, sat there, and perhaps the earth’s rotation had something to do with what happened next.

The ball rotated east, toward Carlock, ever so slowly, a leather pebble at a time.

And crawled into the net.

Up by nine if better than up by seven.

And one minute later, here came 5-10 sophomore forward Julia Laufenberg. She took a pass on right wing. She had taken such a pass in the fourth quarter of the psychol-thriller comeback against East St. Louis. As she had done that time, she did this time, too. A 3-pointer, smooth, easy, beautiful.

Up by a dozen is better than up by nine.

\And when 5-7 senior Tatym Lamprecht followed a minute later with a 3 of her own, the Potters had declared this one theirs.

They’re now on a six-game winning streak after a season-opening loss at Rock Island, where they let a 10-point lead disappear in the fourth quarter.

The issue tonight was never in doubt. Canton came in with a 6-3 record that included a three-point victory over the Rock Island team that beat Morton by three. But when the Potters led after a quarter, 12-5, I made two notes that suggested the outcome: “M lots of steals, lots of missed layups.”

“Missed” was too harsh a judgment on those layups and those moments of attack that didn’t work.

“I felt bad for the kids,” Bob Becker, the Potters coach, said. “It can be a frustration. Sometimes you can do everything perfectly and the ball just doesn’t go in the basket. They were getting good shots, they just weren’t going in. It’s a crazy game.”

Then came that fourth quarter when even missed shots led to put-backs that were catalysts for 15-5 run that moved Morton ahed 47-32.

Game over, and Becker liked most of what he saw: “I like our team. I think they’ ve got a little resiliency, a little grit about them, and I think they’re believing they can be pretty good.”

Morton’s scoring:

Engel 19, Lamprecht 12, Ellie VanMeenen 9, Hutchinson 6, Laufenberg 3, Magda Lopko 1.

(And this winner’s statistic: Morton was 16 of 23 on free throws, Canton 4 of 5.)