Author: Dave Kindred

Morton’s Lady Potters 57, East Peoria 15

With just over a minute left in the first half, here came Graci Junis to wake me up.

Not that I was dozing off or anything, but the score was 24-7 on its way to whatever Morton wanted it to be.

Junis is a 5-foot-8 sophomore, a star on the school’s regional-champion volleyball team this season. I know nothing about volleyball. I didn’t need to know much to like what I saw of Junis in the Potters’ sectional volleyball loss to Washington. I saw a good jumper who was quick and aggressive at the net. Those strengths suggested she’d be an important basketball player this season. She was, after all, a starter in the Covid-abbreviated 2020-21 season.

“I just lost it somehow after volleyball,” she said tonight, mystified that she’d become a reserve playing mostly on the jayvee team. She said coach Bob Becker and his assistant, Dakota Neisen, “sat me down and said, ‘You got it in you, Graci,’ and talked about ‘competitive fire.'”

So here’s a happy note I made late in the second quarter tonight . . .

“Graci RE 1:25 !!! flying in from left and up with it”

And two possessions later . . .

“Graci again RE at buzzer”

The Potters, coming off a hard loss to Peoria High last weekend, could not have expected to prove much tonight. They’re now 17-3 for the season and lead the Mid-Illini Conference at 8-1. East Peoria is 1-17, 0-8.

Bob Becker came out of his team’s locker room smiling. “Happy to be back in the Potterdome,” he said.

His team had not played at home since Dec. 11. Eleven straight road games, three of them losses.

The coach then said, “The first half, we really got on the offensive glass — Graci came flying! It was fun to see her playing like that. She just had to find her competitive fire. We talked to her about it, and tonight she cut loose.”

Morton scored the game’s first 13 points and led after a quarter, 21-5. It was 31-7 at the half, 49-13 after three, and then came the merciful running clock.

The breather precedes what promises to be a testing Saturday in Galesburg. As part of Galesburg High’s annual Winter Classic, the Potters play Lincoln at 1:30 and Galesburg at 6.

Katie Krupa led Morton’s scoring tonight with 14. Tatym Lamprecht (two 3’s) and Ellie VanMeenen (three 3’s) had 12 points each. Izzy Hutchinson scored 5, Paige Chapin and Junis 4 each, Maggie Hobson and Emilia Miller 3 each. (Paige Griffin, the starting point guard all season, suffered two fractures in her right wrist at Peoria High and will not play again. Addy Engel, also a starter, remains out with a back injury; her return is uncertain.)

Peoria High 41, Morton’s Lady Potters 32

Meechie Edwards, the Peoria High coach, is my favorite sideline coach, mostly because I can hear him loud and clear, like, FROM A MILE AWAY!

But not tonight. We were in the presence of a new, mild-mannered Meechie.

“Our team motto this year is ‘Have fun.’ he said. “We’re living in a tough world. So even I’m toning it down.”

Also, he said, laughing, “My back’s sore.”

Also, as he did not say, it’s more fun to be on the laughing side of the scoreboard — especially against Morton. Not only are the Potters winners of four of the last six 3A state championships, they had defeated Peoria High five straight times, most recently two years ago by 22 points in a sectional tournament game.

But I hurry to say that every Potters victory over Peoria has been hard-won. Meechie’s teams have come at Morton hyper-aggresssively at both ends, asking no quarter, giving none.

The difference tonight, Peoria’s offense was as good as its defense. That’s because sophomore guard Aaliyah Guyton is fabulous with the ball. Need a step-back 3? Call Guyton. Her 20 points included 4 3’s, each put up more quickly and more smoothly than the last. Need a floater in the paint, using the board? She did that tonight, too. An old-timer in the Morton crowd (me) remembered another mercurial guard, one from a decade ago, Springfield High’s Zahna Medley. She’d break a defenders’ ankles with a cross-over dribble this time, next time she’d drop in a rainbow from 25 feet. (Medley went on to be Texas Christian University’s all-time leading scorer.)

Like many Potters games this season, this one was decided in the third quarter. And decided for them in a decidedly disappointing way.

Peoria led at halftime, 21-15, with Guyton scoring 15.

Then Peoria won the third quarter, 11-2.

Yes, Peoria 11, Morton 2.

Two points. As in one more than one. As in a Katie Krupa layup halfway through the quarter. By quarter’s end, Peoria led, 32-17.

Morton coach Bob Becker explained it this way: “In the third quarter. we freaked out. We lost our poise and composure.”

No coach whose team comes into a game 15-2 and ranked No. 2 in state 3A likes to hear such things said, and most certainly doesn’t want to hear them said by himself.

Becker went on, biting off more distasteful words. “We lost it between the ears.”

Did he say all that in the locker room to his players?

“Yes.”

The only consolation, small indeed, was Morton’s resilience in the fourth quarter. It went on a 13-4 run — featuring its only two 3-pointers of the night, both by freshman Ellie VanMeenen — to close the Peoria lead to 36-30 with 1:52 to play.

“We didn’t give up,” Becker said. “We got it to six.”

By then, Peoria had gone to a ball-control offense, basically toying with the Potters, playing keep-away, asking Guyton to extend her magic to a dribbling act that more than once saw her leave all five Potters wondering where she would be seen next. Morton scored once more as Peoria closed out with four free throws.

Peoria, ranked No. 5 in 3A, is now 14-3. “A great game,” Meechie Edwards said. “It does feel really good, after what they’ve done to us the last three, four years.”

Krupa and VanMeenen each had 10 points for the Potters. Izzy Hutchinson and Maggie Hobson each had 5. Tatym Lamprecht had 2.

Morton’s Lady Potters 48, Dunlap 30

Declan Rush was at a basketball game tonight for the first time in his life, and the question is, what in the world took so long? He is, after all, nine and a half months old.

Yes, the Potters played tonight at Dunlap. They won easy. And I’ll get to that. But right now, I’m gonna write about the baby.

Those darling little Nike shoes!

That “Morton” shirt!

There I was, flipping pages of a notebook, when Brooke Rush, the Potters’ all-time leading scorer as Brooke Bisping, asked, “Want to hold him?”

Oh my goodness, Brooke, I want to KEEP him!

After the game, Declan set foot on a basketball court for the first time. He set both feet on the court. And both hands. All the teenage Potters gathered to watch Declan crawl the baseline. Brooke had been the team’s assistant coach until motherhood and Covid intervened. Done working the baseline, Declan made a turn into the paint, maybe looking for a pass from mommy.

That baby is impossibly cute, exactly what we’d expect from a child with Brooke the mother and Tommy Rush the father, and, yes, I have now committed cuteness overload, and I will get to the basketball game and say the Potters were OK but nowhere near Declan in the cuteness department.

They were OK for 14 minutes, good enough to go on a 28-2 run that suggested they finally had achieved the consistent excellence that coach Bob Becker preaches — except, no, they hadn’t done that at all. Though playing with its leading scorer on the bench with an ankle injury, Dunlap used a full-court press to create a run of its own. Making three steals before Morton could get the ball across the mid-court line, Dunlap outscored the careless-with-the-ball Potters, 12-0, in five minutes.

What should have been a 40-point lead for the Potters — they once led, 36-9 — dwindled to a 13-point lead with two minutes to play.

“At times we played at a high level,” Becker said, “but other times we lacked focus and execution and intensity. It was disheartening.”

In that 28-2 run, six Potters scored. They scored on mid-range jumpers, on put-backs, on transition fast breaks, and on four 3-pointers. Inside that long run, by the way, Dunlap was shut out in the second quarter, 16-0, which was — maybe Declan even thought this — less a tribute to the Potters’ defense than evidence of Dunlap’s mediocrity with the ball in hand.

The victory raised Morton’s record to 16-2 (7-1 in the Mid-Illini Conference). Dunlap is now 9-11 and 4-4.

For the 16th time, Katie Krupa led Morton’s scoring. She had 21 points, every rebound she wanted, and enough blocked shots to discourage anyone wandering into the paint. Maggie Hobson, back from Covid, had 7 points, Tatym Lamprecht 6, Izzy Hutchinson 5, Ellie VanMeenen 4, Paige Griffin 3, Graci Junis 2.

Morton’s Lady Potters 55, East Peoria 22

I stayed home with the kitten, too cold for old folks and babies.

Assigned a spy to East Peoria High School’s gym.

Spy’s first report: “M 17-0 at mask timeout.”

“29-8 at 4:44 of 2d. Ellie VanMeenen 10 pts, Tatym Lamprecht 9, Katie Krupa 8.”

“Lots of great steals and passing.”

“Katie razzle dazzle behind the back pass to Tatym for 2. Even EP students oohed.”

(A veteran courtsider chipped in, “Bob Cousyesque.”)

“37-9 half.”

“49-11 mask break 3rd, full subs.”

“55-22 final. By quarters 21-8, 37- 9, 51-16, 55-22. Fun night.”

Morton now 15-2 for the season, 6-1 in the Mid-Illini. East Peoria is 1-13, 0-6.

Lamprecht led Morton’s scoring with 17. Krupa 16, VanMeenen 10, Graci Junis 4, Izzy Hutchinson 4, Abbey Pollard 2, Maria Lopko 2. (Two starters out. Maggie Hobson, Covid-19. Addy Engel, back injury.)

Morton’s Lady Potters 60, Limestone 42

About 2 o’clock today, a dental assistant named Caitlynn told me, “If the tooth is sensitive to this, let me know.”

She thought to remove a temporary cap by using an instrument one shade smaller than the Vise Grips your auto mechanic uses to remove a catalytic converter.

As she came into my mouth with that evil tool . . . (Oh, I overstate. It was probably a finely-milled, titanium, state-of-the-art tool that just looks evil to the untrained eye) . . . As she squeezed on the cap, I said,”Urgmshet,” perhaps not that clearly, and she took that to mean we ought to numb it up. “Before,” she said, “you go flying through the ceiling.”

Yea, verily, let’s numb it up real numb.

I thought of that moment during the first quarter tonight. Bob Becker returned to work as the Lady Potters’ coach. He’d missed the State Farm Holiday Classic with Covid-19. Against a Limestone team that came in with a 5-10 record (0-4 in the Mid-Illini), the Potters led after a quarter by the inglorious score of 8-7.

You want pain? Give Bob Becker 8 points in the first quarter against a mediocrity.

I wrote down what I heard him say from the sidelines during play in those early minutes. He said them in all-caps with any number of exclamation points.

“REBOUND!”

‘SCORE THE BALL!”

“DRIVE IT AND SCORE!!”

“TOO MUCH DRIBBLING!!!”

“FINISH IT!!!!”

Whether these coaching imprecations had any effect, who knows? Circumstantial evidence suggests a powerful effect. The Potters scored 20 points in the second quarter, 20 more in the third, and led by 29 points with 6:03 left in the game.

And yet . . . and yet, even as Becker said, “It was fun to be back,” he also said of his Potters, “I don’t know if they enjoyed me being back.” For Becker didn’t become a Hall of Fame coach with four state championships on his resume by being well pleased with inconsistent play against a mediocre team.

“We have to play with a little edge,” he said, which is CoachSpeak for, yeah, it’s nice to be up 29 but it’s nicer to win by 39 than by tonight’s 18.

An 11-0 run early in the second quarter decided this one. Morton led, 11-9, when Emilia Miller made a 15-footer at 6:40. Paige Griffin followed with a 3 from the deep right corner, Katie Krupa converted an Izzy Hutchinson fast-break pass into a layup — the first two of her seven straight points to put the Potters up 22-9.

Limestone hung around, down only 32-22, midway in the third quarter. Another run, this one 10-0, sealed the deal. It began with a Hutchinson 3 from the right corner and ended with a Hutchinson layup three minutes later. “Izzy played wonderfully,” Becker said of the sophomore who started tonight in the absence of senior Maggie Hobson, out with Covid. (Another starter, Addy Engel, left the game in the first minute with a recurrence of pain from a chronic back injury.)

The Potters got that 29-point lead on a rare play — a 4-point play by junior guard Tatym Lamprecht. She was fouled as she made a 3-pointer from the top of the key and added the free throw.

The victory raised the Potters season record to 14-2. They’re 5-1 in the Mid-Illini, and now, with Washington beating Metamora tonight, have a 1/2 game lead in the conference.

Krupa led Morton’s scoring with 22. Lamprecht had 12, Hutchinson 9, and Griffin 6, Miller had 4, Anja Ruxlow 3, Ellie VanMeenen 2, and Maria Lopko 2. (Note: Morton had 8 3’s, divvied up among five players, Lamprecht making 3 herself.)

And I’m happy to add that the rest of the dental visit went without worry. I now have a permanent cap on the tooth that had gone bad. It is safe again to eat Milk Duds, though dentist Dr. Katie, as she freed me from the chair, said, “Wait 30 minutes.”

Morton’s Lady Potters 51, Mother McAuley 26

Dakota Neisen, filling in for Bob Becker at the genius job, looked at the scorebook at halftime. The coach wanted to know how many points Mother McAuley’s #32 had scored. “All of them,” he said, meaning that Isabella Finnegan had made five 3-pointers and outscored the Potters all by herself, 19-17.

So Neisen asked his players, “Who wants her?”

Like, maybe they should start guarding that #32 person.

Katie Krupa raised a hand. “I got her,” she said.

And Isabella Finnegan’s most excellent adventure was over. With Krupa attached at her hip, Finnegan was rendered into spectatorhood. Midway through the third quarter, she scored on a nice slashing drive to the hoop. That was it. Effectively removed from the action — did no genius exist on the McAuley bench? did no one notice she was no longer touching the ball? did no one think to set a screen for her?– the poor girl once was seen standing alone near the midcourt line while her playmates went 4-on-4 against the Potters. Perhaps she took that chance to reminisce about the good ol’ days of the first half. One felt for her. Might not someone at least bring her popcorn?

Meanwhile, the Potters did some good ol’ days stuff themselves. Until Finnegan made a free throw with 2:25 to play– her only other point in the second half — the Potters went on a 29-2 run for a 46-21 lead that guaranteed them the third-place trophy in the State Farm Holiday Classic.

That run calls for a note or two. First, fill-in or not, Neisen did the coach’s job of motivating the Potters in the early minutes of the third quarter. He did that by doing what coaches have long done. Do a silly thing out there, you come sit by me. Three starters committed turnovers in the first two minutes. Neisen’s analysis, delivered out loud: “I’m gonna rotate in whoever is ready to play.” And those starters soon warmed the cushioned seats beside him. Then the game-deciding run started, in the third quarter, like this . . . . .

Krupa a layup-and-one . . . Maggie Hobson a free throw . . . Ellie VanMeenen a 3 from the right corner . . . Tatym Lamprecht a driving layup . . .
Krupa a nice mid-range jumper . . . and Hobson a 3 with 9 seconds left in the third.

It was Morton 31-19, and it was over, and the only mystery came with 5 minutes to play.

That’s when Izzy Hutchinson did whatever she did.

The sophomore had the ball and disappeared from my sight and next thing I knew the ball was rising toward the ceiling and falling through the net.

Here’s my veteran sportswriter note on that event: “Izzy LU (Huh?)”

“I was at the free throw line,” Hutchinson said, “and I went between two girls and one of them hit me on the hip and kinda twisted me around and I kinda went . . .” (Here she did a body language thing that resists translation, other than maybe she thought to throw a hook shot backwards over her right shoulder . . . or something) . . . “and I thought I’d throw it high up on the backboard and hope it went in . . .” (always a good thought) . . “but it didn’t hit the backboard, it hit that little piece of the rim” . . . . (the flat bracket attaching the rim to the board) . . . “and it went in.” . . . (Here, a smile of teenage delight).

That made it 39-21, and my only other play-by-play note worth mention came by way of Maria Lopko, who, you may remember, is a little deep-bench senior entrusted with the orange turkey that is symbol of the team’s commitment to defense. After Krupa and after Hobson and after Paige Griffin and after Addy Engel, the job of defending #32 fell to Maria Lopko.

“Whoa,” Lopko said later. “I go in the last two minutes and I’m in man-deny on her?”

She stayed near enough the star to put a hand on the star to keep track of the star and this hands-on stuff irritated the star so much that the star whacked away the deep-bencher’s pestiferous hand.

“My only job,” Lopko said, “was to not let her catch the ball. I guess she was frustrated.”

Krupa liked the Potters’ work this day. “Reassuring,” she called it, the romp coming not even a full day after Wednesday night’s semifinal loss to Geneseo. “I’m very proud of this team.” As for winning the third-place trophy — a nice thing, a good thing, maybe even an omen thing to the superstitious — Krupa said, “You know about the State Farm ‘curse,’ right?”

No girls team has ever won the State Farm tournament and gone on to win the state championship, not even the Potters, though they’ve won State Farm twice and the state championship four times. So, looking for a positive note to losing, there is that. Don’t win State Farm, win State.

Krupa smiled and exited stage left, eager to get on with whatever’s coming next.

Krupa led the Potters scoring with 12. Lamprecht had 11, Engel 7, Hutchinson 6, Hobson 4, VanMeenen 3, Griffin 3, Gaby Heer 3, and Abbey Pollard 2.
****
Geneseo came from 12 down in the second half to defeat Washington, 52-49, in overtime in the championship game tonight.

Katie Krupa was named to the all-tournament team.

Geneseo 68, Morton’s Lady Potters 51

It was closer than that.

Stunned early by Geneseo’s 24-point first quarter and twice down by as many as 13, the Potters moved within a point late in the third quarter of the State Farm Holiday Classic semifinal game.

“I told my girls Morton’s a state-caliber team and they’re going to come back on us,” the Geneseo coach, Scott Hardison, said. “I told them that if they got close, I’d take a timeout. And then we can come right back at them.”

Came the Morton run. In the first five minutes of the third quarter, they outscored Geneseo 14-6. The move started with an Addy Engel layup off a Krupa pass somehow delivered through three sets of Geneseo arms, for Krupa played heroically tonight, never taking a step except to bring along three Geneseo defenders hacking at her. Despite being outnumbered every time down, Krupa followed with two three-point plays inside. Then came Tatym Lamprecht with a 3 from the left side, followed by a Maggie Hobson 3 from the deep right corner.

Suddenly, Geneseo’s lead was 35-34 with 3:09 left in the quarter. Anything could happen now.

Timeout, Geneseo.

An easy bucket moved the lead to three points.

Then, with a chance to tie, Hobson put up a 3 from the right side, a pretty thing, the only trouble being it was in and out and here came Geneseo flying downcourt, as it did all night, as its coach said it would. They were flying downcourt with the Potters trying to keep up. And eight seconds after Hobson’s miss — eight seconds! one breath, maybe two! — one of Geneseo’s shooters knocked down a 3 of her own, and I’d tell you her name except it doesn’t matter when everybody’s a shooter, and on this night Geneseo’s nine 3’s were made by four different people who went 5-for-6 in the stunning first quarter.

In the third quarter’s last three minutes, Geneseo finished an 11-2 run to put the Potters 10 points down going into the fourth. They never got closer than five the rest of the way as Geneseo’s relentless runners closed the deal with a 10-3 run that included eight free throws.

Wait. Read that last paragraph again. Sound familiar? It should because that’s the way Morton has beaten people for years. Get ’em down with 3’s, go to the line late, get a W.

In fact, everything Geneseo did tonight was a mirror image of Morton’s success in the last decade.

Make 3’s and free throws. Play aggressively with the ball and against the ball.

Now undefeated in 15 games, #4 seeded Geneseo handed top-seeded Morton its second loss in 14 games.

Which brings me to a backstory I love.

Two years ago, Morton defeated Geneseo in this State Farm event, 79-48. Afterwards, I asked Scott Hardison what he thought of the Potters.

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

On December 27, 2019, he was in his eighth season at Geneseo. He’d had 20-victory seasons, but not success of the Potters’ state-trophies kind. He had lost to Morton in this tournament once before, also by 31 points. So that summer of ’19, he made a phone call.

He called Bob Becker, the Potters’ coach. Said he’d drive down to Peoria. They ate at Tyroni’s Pizza in Bartonville. There Hardison asked, in essence, how is it done, how do you build a program that succeeds at the highest levels?

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

Curious, the way life works out. On this December night, Becker was stuck at home again recovering from Covid-19. And I found Hardison high in the Normal Community bleachers afterward, there to scout his team’s opponent in tomorrow night’s championship game. He wore a mask against the virus. But the mask could not hide his smile.

“We’re trying to build what Morton has,” Hardison said, “not only success but sustained success.”

Lamprecht led Morton’s scoring with 18 (13 in the second half). Krupa had 16 (10 in the second half, meaning she and Lamprecht scored 23 of the team’s 31 second-half points). Hobson had 6, Paige Griffin 5, Ellie VanMeenen 4, Engel 2.

The Potters play Chicago Mother McAuley for third place Thursday at noon at Illinois Wesleyan’s Shirk Center.

Morton Lady Potters 48, Rock Island 35

I once knew a newspaper photographer named Ford Reid. He believed basketball was dull. He proposed changes, among them sliding floors, like in a funhouse. “That would slow people down,” he said. If a team got ahead by 20 points, its basket would move side to side and up and down. He also proposed a Great Arbitrator operating a joystick to control the basketball.

“Imagine guys on a fast break,” my friend said. “A long pass is thrown, but when the ball hits the floor, it just goes dead. Stops. Then, as everybody scrambles for the ball, the Great Arbitrator could make it go straight up in the air and the floor would start moving back and forth. That would put an end to dull basketball.”

Not to say such thoughts crossed my mind tonight during the Potters’ second-round victory in the State Farm Holiday Classic.

However, those thoughts crossed my mind on the way home.

Rock Island put them there. They seldom tried to score. The basket stayed in the same place all night, but the Rocks scored four points in the second quarter and one in the third.

It was not as if the Potters’ defense was sensational. It was OK man-to-man, but nothing sensational, mostly reactive. The Potters watched the Rocks dribble dribble dribble/pass pass pass/stand stand stand. Rock Island did score18 points in the fourth quarter when someone had the wild idea of throwing the ball in the air and hoping the Great Arbitrator would guide it into the hoop. AND HE DID! Rock Island’s three 3’s in the fourth, two in the last minute, gave the illusion of basketball.

For the second night in a row, the #1 seeded Potters, now 12-1 on the season, had a poor first half offensively, leading 22-17 at the intermission. But they didn’t follow up with a 29-point third quarter as they’d done against Bloomington. This time they had a 7-point third quarter, three coming on a Tatym Lamprecht shot in the first 35 seconds. “What were we on 3’s,” Katie Krupa said, “oh-for-17?” The senior all-stater knew better than that — she’d made a 3 herself in the second quarter — but it certainly felt like 0-for-all-night.

The game was decided in one four-minute stretch, a 10-0 run by the Potters. Late in the first half, tied at 17-all, Krupa’s 3-pointer from the top of the key and her little mid-range jumper moved Morton to a 22-17 lead at intermission. Early in the third, Addy Engel’s driving layup followed Lamprecht’s 3 from the left corner to make it 27-17.

With Rock Island content to dribble/pass/stand, the Potters’ lead grew to 39-23 with three minutes to play.

I felt sleepy.

I did stay awake long enough to make notes on my favorite moment of the night. It came late. A Rock Island dribbler fell down. No referee called anything. Had she been tripped by a Potter? Though I was at the far end of the building, I heard the Rock lsland dribbler go, “OOOPS.” A referee took that as circumstantial evidence that she had fallen down all by her ownself. He called traveling. (Though it’s possible, I guess, that she fell when the floor started funhouse-sliding around.)

Krupa led Morton’s scoring with 19. Addy Engel had 10, Lamprecht 6, Paige Griffin and Maggie Hobson 4 each, Izzy Hutchinson 3, and Ellie VanMeenen 2.

Morton’s semifinal opponent tomorrow night at 7 at Normal Community will be #4 seed Geneseo, a 51-48 winner over Springfield.

The Potters’ head coach, Bob Becker, remained at home recovering from Covid-19.

Morton Lady Potters 60, Bloomington 40

I heard the Bloomington coach tonight. Small animals burrowed deeper into the forest on hearing the Bloomington coach tonight. Perhaps Bob Becker, stuck at home with Covid-19 tonight, raised a window to hear better what he thought might be a grizzly in the garden, only to find it was the Bloomington coach ratzenfratzing the referees, for which the coach earned one warning, one technical foul, and was told to stay after school and write on the blackboard 100 times, “We lost by 20, it wasn’t that close, sorry, Mr. and Ms. Referees.”

The only people who didn’t hear the Bloomington coach tonight were the people best prepared to render him mute, silent, and shaddup already.

Those were the Lady Potters, one of whom, Tatym Lamprecht, seemed puzzled when asked if she’d heard the Bloomington coach.

“Uh, no, really, I don’t hear anything out there,” she said. “Just kind of knew something was going on.”

I’m happy to report that — ignoring the high-volume coach attacking the zebras for an hour — the main thing going on tonight was Tatym Lamprecht at work with the basketball. The Potters played poorly in the first half, leading 17-16 at the intermission, raising the dread specter of a #1 seed losing to a #16 in the first round of the State Farm Holiday Classic. “We were getting good shots, but they weren’t falling,” assistant coach Dakota Neisen, standing in for Becker, said. I had the Potters 1-for-13 on 3’s at the intermission.

That changed quickly in the third quarter. “We’re good shooters,” Neisen said. “I told ’em to keep shooting. Then we exploded.” It was an explosion ignited by Lamprecht 22 seconds into the third quarter. From dead on at the top of the free throw circle, the junior guard squared up and . . .

BANG!

Followed 28 seconds later by Maggie Hobson from the left corner, Katie Krupa from that neighborhood, and Hobson again from the left . . .. .

BANG BANG BANG!

In 2 minutes and 2 seconds, those four 3’s restored order to the universe.

Always relentless on defense, the Potters were suddenly playing with confidence born of those successes on offense. They moved to a 34-22 lead in four minutes of the third quarter. That means the Potters scored as many points in four minutes as they had scored in the first 16 minutes. By quarter’s end, they led 46-30. Yes: first half,17 points; third quarter 29 more. Krupa smiled wide and recalled previous nights this season when Becker’s baked-in insistence on third-quarter dominance had paid off. “That third quarter again,” the senior all-stater said.

The third quarter belonged to Lamprecht. She was 4-for-4 on 3’s The first lit the fuse. The second at 5:04 kept the lead at 10, as did the third at 2:51. Her fourth, with 10 seconds left in the quarter, made it 46-30 and we might speak of that shot as the shaddup-already-3. Game over, thank you very much.

“Tatym’s adjusted so well,” Krupa said of the junior guard who transferred to Morton from East Peoria this summer. “At East Peoria, she was just making shots. It’s such a different environment here. And she’s been so huge for us.”

Once again, folks, the valiant interviewer did his best to get a smiling word from the happy Lamprecht. But as I put a question to her — “How did that third quarter feel, making those 3’s?” — Krupa, standing there, interjected, “ELECTRIC!”

That praise caused Ms. Lamprecht to duck and hide, the shyest of stars. She did kind of whisper two words. I think she said, “Yes, electric.”

Yes, electric was the word.

Krupa led Morton with 24 points and Lamprecht had 17. (Four times in 11 victories, K & L have combined to ourscore the opponents.) Hobson had 13 and Addy Engel 6. (The Potters had nine 3’s tonight, 5 by Lamprecht, three by Hobson.)

The Potters’ second-round game will be at 4 p.m. Tuesday In the Normal Community gym against #9 seed Rock Island. a 54-36 first-round winner over Pekin.

Metamora 46, Morton Lady Potters 43

I’ve been told it’s OK, even healthy, to talk to my wife, gone six months now.

“Sherri, I miss you. On my way to Metamora. Tough game tonight. Already dark at 5 o’clock. Hate that. Good night for driving, no rain and fog like going to Pekin last week. Easy drive on 117.

“I wish I could hold your hand. Wish we were 17 again. Remember that year? What a year.

“In Metamora now. Where’s the high school? You remember? I’m lost every time here. Been coming here for 10 years, never find the turn off 24 toward the gym. How can I always be lost in these little towns?

“Turn on Washington Street?

“What’s that dark space? Aarggh, must be Metamora Fields. Wrong way. Gotta do a u-turn in somebody’s driveway.

“Turning right on Progress Street. And a left back to 24. Past McDonald’s, no good. Recalculating.

“Left on Lafayette. Lights ahead. Made it. Want some popcorn?”

Metamora, now 9-1 for the season, played well defensively, moved the ball well on offense, took the lead early in the third and never gave it up in ending Morton’s undefeated streak at 10 games. It’s Metamora’s first victory over Morton since January of 2010. In those 11+ seasons, Morton defeated Metamora 25 straight times. The Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, called this one a game “we can learn from.” He also said, “There are lots of things we can do better.” A handful of careless turnovers is bad enough; the Potters made two handfuls. They also made costly fundamental basketball mistakes; twice in the critical last two minutes, the Potters somehow lost defensive rebounds on Metamora’ s missed free throws. In a one-possession game, no one can afford those mistakes.

“Wish you were here, Sherri. Stopping at McDonald’s for a comfort meal. Double cheeseburger, mustard and pickles. Want anything?

“Need to hold your hand on the way home.

“Love you.”

Katie Krupa led Morton’s scoring with 19. Paige Griffin had 15, Tatym Lamprecht 7, Izzy Hutchinson 2. The Potters were without senior guard Maggie Hobson, a late scratch from the starting lineup with a concussion sustained Tuesday at Washington.

Morton Lady Potters 43, Washington 42

Home from Washington, fed the kitten, took the dog out, ate a stack of Oreo Thins. It was a be-still-my-heart night. Nine lead changes. No lead bigger than five. Two lead changes in the last 87 seconds. A 3-ball took flight with five seconds to play and the way things were going, it well might have fallen from the sky and sent us into overtime. Home. Breathing again.

There was some doubt of that with 1:24 on the clock. Washington was up 38-37, Morton with the ball, the Potters spread to all corners, running a play called “Michigan,” and I’d describe the movements of each player except I have no freakin’ idea what those movements are other than to say whatever they are, they wound up with Tatym Lamprecht shooting a 3, and that, sports fans, is a beautiful thing.

“I love coaching that kid,” the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, said. “Tatym’s a competitor, a winner, hitting the big shot, making plays.”

With 1:10 to play, Lamprecht took a pass at the top of the key. Had the geometry been different, “Michigan” might have called for the little junior guard to flash down the lane for a pass from Katie Krupa. Instead, with nowhere to go inside, she waited outside. There, a step behind the arc and two steps free of a defender, she squared up for the shot. Whatever Lamprecht’s season’s 3-ball percentages were at that moment, they didn’t matter. Squared up, given space at the top of the key, she is not going to miss that shot.

BANG!

The 3 gave the Potters a 40-38 lead with 1:10 to play. And 22 seconds later, Lamprecht made two free throws, 42-38.

More frenzy ensued in a game that was physical from the get-go, every possession contested, neither team able to create a sustained run against aggressive defenses; in fact, neither team scored more than five points without interruption. Washington came in with a 9-1 record, Morton 9-0, and they played like elite teams that might not lose three or four games all season.

In that last burst of chaos, with a chance to cut Morton’s lead to two, Washington missed two free throws badly. And yet, in a whirling, spinning, falling scramble to get the rebound of the second shot, Washington gave that despairing free throw shooter a reprieve. Unable to make a free throw unguarded, she yet threw in a long jump shot to make it 42-40 with 19 seconds left.

At :12.9, Krupa’s free throw moved the score to 43-40. After a Washington timeout, during which Bob Becker told his team, “DON’T FOUL,” Washington had :06.6 seconds to put up a 3. It got the shot off, badly, and a put-back two was inconsequential.

“I told the kids I was really, really proud of them,” Becker said later. “They showed a gritty level of toughness.”

And what did Tatym Lamprecht think of her play?

I saw Jim Mattson, the television idol, with his camera light on Lamprecht. She’s not a teevee star yet, and Mattson had to laugh afterward because the closer he came to her with his camera, the more she backed away, a happy girl smiling into the light. What she said on camera, I dunno. I caught her, too, and she explained the “Michigan” play — not that I understood the nuances of movements — and she said a few words that all 3-shooters would love to say: “It was really fun tonight — at the end — when we won.”

Lamprecht and Krupa each had 13 points, Paige Griffin had 9 (and an exceptional floor game), Maggie Hobson 4, Izzy Hutchinson 3, and Addy Engel 1.

Morton Lady Potters 61, Brimfield 41

Tonight, before the Potters played Brimfield, there was a moment of silence in the Potterdome. We all stood and we were all one in that moment. A young man from Brimfield died on Tuesday of this week. The folks who came down I-74 from Brimfield knew him. Those of us from Morton knew him, too, maybe not by his name, Jacob A. Look, but we all know a young man like him, 17, an athlete, a basketball player, a life to live. We stood for a moment, silent, praying for Jacob A. Look who could be our son, our friend, someone we love.

Then five Potters players moved to the end of their bench. There they each picked up a bouquet of flowers. They walked toward center court with those flowers. Five seniors — Katie Krupa, Maggie Hobson, Paige Griffin, Paige Chapin, and Maria Lopko — handed bouquets to the Brimfield starting five — Ella Luna, Jaclyn Fabry, Elynn Peterson, Sophie Bedell, and Elly Doe. They were flowers in memory of Jacob A. Look and they were flowers saying we’re all in this together, Brimfield and Morton, girls and boys, moms and dads, all of us lucky enough to rise for a moment of silence.

How nice. How very nice.

A nice night all around, actually, a night on which the Potters played their very best basketball of the season, if only for a half. They led at halftime, 40-11. Though the Potters are a 3A power and are expected to defeat any 1A power, even a program as strong as Brimfield’s has been for years, that 40-11 margin at halftime was extraordinary. Coach Bob Becker said, “We were terrific at both ends the whole first half.” In one three-minute stretch, Morton outscored Brimfield 16-0 to go up, 40-8.

How good was that run?

So good it made me ask a man behind me, “What year is this, 2019?” That was the year the Potters won their fourth state championship. At halftime tonight, both Krupa and Tatym Lamprecht had outscored Brimfield — Krupa with 14, Lamprecht 13 (all but one of those in a spectacular two-minute run that included a four-point play when fouled on a long 3-pointer.)

“That first half,” Krupa said, “was almost perfect.”

But the third quarter, not so much, not even a little bit.

“The worst three minutes of a second half ever,” she said.

Actually, it was a pretty bad 5 minutes and 15 seconds in which Brimfield outscored Morton 12-3 and moved within 20 at 43-23.

It was then that a man who needs hearing aids needed no hearing aid to hear Bob Becker address his players this way: “THE GAME IS NOT OVER.” He respected the Brimfield team that came in win an 8-0 record, winning by an average of 40 points, and admired their resilience in tonight’s game against a four-time state champion on their home court. “They weren’t going to quit coming after us,” he said.

Though Morton’s lead dropped to 16 with a quarter to play, the issue was never in doubt. It is a measure of a team’s possibilities that it can be undefeated, can win nine games, can win them all by at least 16 points and by as many as 26, and play its best half of the season to build a 29-point halftime lead against a previously undefeated team, and still believe it should have been better.

Lamprecht led Morton’s scoring with 21. Krupa had 20, Hobson 9, Addy Engel 5, and Chapin, Anja Ruxlow, and Ellie VanMeenen had 2 apiece.

Morton Lady Potters 55, Pekin 35

Let’s begin with the terrifying drive through a foggy typhoon trying to be a monsoon to get from Morton to Pekin . . .

Then add Mother Nature drumming her thunderstorm-y fingernails on the roof of Dawdy Hawkins’ gymnasium . . .

Right before the Tornado Watch set off everybody’s iPhone weather buzzers . . .

And did you hear the sirens!!!

Sirens? Sirens mean tornadoes . . .a tornado on December 10?

Checked Clime on my iPhone and it’s freakin’ 61 degrees outside . . .

Mama Nature, it’s DECEMBER, Mama, not JUNE, settle down . . .

And then the Pekin High School athletic director, Barry Gurvey, got on the microphone to say there’d been a , , , ,.

TORNADO WARNING!

That’s the big one, a notch higher than a Tornado Watch, meaning somebody had put eyes on a tornado . . . .

So after driving like an insane person to weave my way through the I-74 fog-soon/18-wheeler race track and hearing Mama Nature’s nails hammer their scary tune on the roof and hearing SIRENS ! and it’s summer warm in DECEMBER, here came Barry Gurvey lowering his Covid-19 mask to talk into the public address microphone and tell the gathered basketball folks, maybe 500 of us . . .

GET THE HELL OUT OF THE GYM . . .

Or, in his official lingo . . . . .

“It’s not safe,” he said, “to stay in the gym.”

Otherwise, just another night with the undefeated Potters winning by 20 in Pekin. They’re now 8-0, Pekin is 2-7.

It was less than the Potters’ best performance, but hey, winning by 20 is better than waking up somewhere far away and hearing yourself say, “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Illinois anymore.”

Once freshman Ellie VanMeenen made a 3-pointer to give the Potters an 8-6 lead in the first quarter, they never trailed. Neither, though, could they put Pekin away. They led by three at halftime, by six after three quarters, and were only seven up, 40-33, with 4:20 to play — which is when my iPhone buzzed with TORNADO WARNING.

I saw Pekin AD Gurvey go to Morton’s bench and whisper into coach Bob Becker’s ear that Mother Nature was making a scene.

Play went on for another two minutes, the Potters scoring the next seven points — on a Paige Griffin layup, a Tatym Lamprecht fast break layup off a long Katie Krupa pass, and an Addy Engel 3-pointer. That made it 47-35 with 2:17 left.

Then we were told to leave the gym and go into the school corridors, but not down by the trophy case, an admonition suggesting it wouldn’t be healthy to be impaled by a tornado-propelled trophy.

We stayed in the hallfways 33 minutes before the coast was clear and the game resumed. In the post-tornado period, Morton scored all the points, running the victory margin from 12 to 20.

It was a fun time set off by Tatym Lamprecht. When she missed the second free throw of a one-and-one, she somehow scrambled to get the rebound, put it in and was fouled again. That’s five Lamprecht points in four seconds, which is tornado-fast, though it may not be in good taste right now to crack wise about a tornado. Krupa followed with four free throws, and both sides subbed in the deep-benchers for the last 1:20, giving 15 or 20 girls a story to tell their grandchildren someday about The Night We Played Through a Tornado. (And Becker, the Hall of Famer, can now claim that his team has never been scored on after a tornadic interruption.)

Lamprecht, the Potters’ leading scorer tonight with 19, had asked Becker for extra work this week. “I didn’t think I’d been playing as well as I can,” she said. (A high standard. She’s playing sensationally.) She worked on her shooting — she made three 3’s tonight — and worked on finishing drives with her left hand. I don’t remember her scoring with her left hand tonight, but she did everything else well when Morton’s offense was otherwise slow to get much done. Her last bucket, in fact, grew from great defense. After her second free throw, when Pekin thought to toss the ball in-bounds, Lamprecht simply stepped in front of the would-be receiver and turned the pass into a steal and two.

Trying to make us all comfortable in the hallways, the Pekin AD, Gurvey, announced that he’d open some classrooms if we wanted to sit down.

Someone shouted, “Do we have to study?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling, “and there’ll be a test.”

Lamprecht’s 19 was followed by Krupa’s 14. Paige Griffin and Maggie Hobson each had 7, Engel 5, and VanMeenen 3.

Morton Lady Potters 60, Dunlap 42

Nothing happened on this play, except everything. It started early in the second quarter, Morton leading, 19-9.

Tatym Lamprecht, relentless on defense, knocked the ball loose from a Dunlap guard near midcourt. She did this so near midcourt as to do it directly in front of the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, who was off the bench and in a defensive crouch himself, practically part of the fun.

It’s not enough to say Lamprecht forced the ball out of the Dunlapian’s hands. She then fell on it, making it hers. And as she rolled over with the ball, on her back on the floor, she threw it to her left to Ellie VanMeenen running free.

We’re not even half-done here, folks, hang on.

VanMeenen, a freshman, moved the ball to the senior all-stater, Katie Krupa, at the midcourt line. Krupa was then in command of this play that led to nothing while meaning everything on a night when the Potters had something to prove. Krupa surveyed the floor ahead of her and whom did she see filling the right lane?

Tatym Lamprecht. She had risen from the pile of bodies at midcourt and done the great thing of getting back in the play. She was hustling downcourt when Krupa, after two or three steps, hit her with a pass near the free throw line.

Still with me?

Lamprecht had the ball trying to finish on a drive to the hoop, only her shot rolled off.

And who got the rebound?

Lamprecht. She wrestled it away from two Dunlap people and went up in the crowd for another shot, only to have it blocked out of bounds.

It was Morton’s ball, and here we pause to take a breath. All this happened in less time than it took to type it up. And nothing happened. No points at either end. Not a play you’ll see as a Mattson “Jim Dandy.”

So why, back there at midcourt, did Bob Becker do what my notes say he did?

“Becker clapping.”

The coach loves him some relentless defense, hustle, and especially does he love him what he scrawled pre-game on his lost-but-found whiteboard: “Competitive fire.”

From the Lamprecht steal until the end of the second quarter, the Potters went on a 12-5 run that gave them a 31-14 halftime lead. They had trailed at halftime in their last two games, 12-11 and 29-25 before winning by 20 and 21.

Now undefeated in seven games, all by margins ranging from 16 to 26 points, the Potters had fallen into a desultory, dispiriting, and just plain bad habit of needing big third quarters to beat mediocre teams. After the second such victory, Krupa said, “We’re a great third-quarter team. We need to be a great all-quarters team.”

That was Becker’s message to his team before tonight’s game against Dunlap, winner of the Mid-Illini regular-season championship last year.

The Potters’ leading scorer tonight, sophomore Addy Engel, said, “Coach emphasized that we needed to play all four quarters. We came out strong from the get-go.” Engel scored in every quarter — 5, 6, 4, and 6. Her points came from inside on nifty finishing work at the hoop and from outside on a 3-pointer and 15-foot jumper.

“Addy Engel was awesome,” Becker said. She’s the fourth Potter to lead the team in scoring, following Krupa, Lamprecht, and Maggie Hobson.

Whatever darkness may have settled on Becker in his team’s last two games, it was gone after this one.

“That was fun,” he said. “The kids were competing. That makes my job so much more enjoyable.”

Engel had the 21, Krupa 12, Lamprecht and VanMeenen 6 each, Hobson 5, Isabella Hutchinson 4, and Paige Griffin and Gaby Heer each had 3.

Morton Lady Potters 44, Canton 23

What I do sometimes, because I can sometimes, is make a note from something I see on Bob Becker’s coaching whiteboard.

It’s big enough and his Magic Marker scrawls sometimes are clear enough to be read from the bleachers’ second row behind the Lady Potters bench.

Tonight I couldn’t read it because he’d lost it. Somewhere between Tuesday night’s game in Normal and tonight’s in the Potterdome, the whiteboard disappeared.

So Becker had a mini-version of the board tonight, not nearly big enough to contain his starting lineup, the defensive assignments, and bits of wisdom, encouragement, and pleadings.

No wonder, it says here, the Potters had so much trouble with Canton. Yeah, yeah, I know, whiteboard, schmiteboard, it’s got nothing to do with the game. But, hey. Blaming it on the missing whiteboard is as good an explanation for the troubles as what Becker said afterward. What he said, in analysis shared with the assembled press (me), was, “I dunno.”

Anyway, the Potters once trailed, 12-5. At halftime, when it was 12-11, I traded small talk with two ex-Potters now playing at Illinois Central College, Courtney Jones and Peyton Dearing. I urged them to suit up for the second half. Failing to persuade them, I scribbled a note, “M better be good in 3d.”

Morton was good in the third quarter. It opened on a 13-1 run after scoring the second quarter’s last six. That’s 19-1. It took 8 minutes and three seconds. At full-game length, that run becomes 76-4.

One section of that run explains everything.

It began with Katie Krupa’s put-back of a Tatym Lamprecht 3 that rolled around and out. Then Krupa, aggressive on defense, made a mid-court steal for a breakaway layup. After Maggie Hobson’s defense forced a Canton turnover on a five-second call, Hobson followed up with a 3 off a Krupa pass. Best of all, Krupa, did a thing. Trapped with the ball under the Potters’ basket, her back to the baseline, tight-roping her way across the paint, with her left hand — her left hand! — she put the ball so high off the glass and so softly off the glass that it fell through the net, a thing of remarkable beauty.

In less than three minutes, Morton’s lead grew from four points to 10. There was still a quarter to play, but this game was over. Talent had prevailed. Remember that Canton once led, 12-5, meaning the Potters won the rest of it, 39-11. There’s good reason they’re undefeated in six games. It just took a while to get there tonight.

There was good whiteboard news after the game.

“The world is right again,” Becker said. “Found it!”

Where?

“On the floor, behind my desk.”

Krupa scored 17 points, Lamprecht 12, Hobson 9, and Addy Engel, Paige Griffin, and Abbey Pollard had 2 each.