Some nights the game doesn’t much matter. The score was 90-33, the Lady Potters over somebody named East Peoria. What mattered most was that the Potters made it Brooke Bisping’s night by retiring her jersey.

Never more than 5-foot-7 and yet often playing inside, Bisping is still the Potters’ all-time leading scorer seven years after graduation. Her name decorates the record book everywhere from rebounds to 3’s to steals. She is only the third Lady Potter whose jersey now hangs in the Potterdome, there with Cindy Bumgarner and Tracy Pontius. In thanking her parents, teammates, coaches, and God, Bisping declared herself “honored” and “blessed.”

Even after the current back-to-back state championships, some people believe the Potters’ 2006-07 team was the program’s best. Bisping was a sophomore on that team led by the four-year starter Pontius, a sensational scorer and ball-handler who went on to star at Bowling Green University. It’s telling, then, that Pontius counts herself lucky to have been in Bisping’s company.

“She was a great all-around player and a deadly 3-point and free throw shooter,” Pontius told me. “It was great to watch her grow as a player and become more confident in herself. I had faith in her to make the big shot we needed or get the steal we needed at critical times. She was a great player and an even better person. She is the type of person who would do anything for you.”

To study up for the proceedings, I tracked down a video tape of Bisping as a junior. I had never seen her play, save for a single game her senior year. On the tape – a game against Limestone for a regional championship in ’08 – Bisping does the remarkable thing of playing remarkably without doing anything remarkable. Translation: she did everything well. She made no turnovers. She played stand-your-ground defense. She missed no shots. (Literally. Perfect from the field, perfect at the line, 25 points in a 64-39 victory.) As she ran to the bench with victory assured, her face was aglow with a smile born of work well done in a game her team won. You gotta love that girl.

Now, back to tonight’s game . . .

Had the people from the eastern banks of the Illinois River been good at any one basketball thing, this might have been a game. The East Peorians were bad at every basketball thing. Worse for them, they were bad on a night the Potters were impenetrable on defense, unstoppable on offense, uncatchable on the run, and double-damn dogged in pursuit of every loose ball, as in an early-game moment in East Peoria’s end when . . .

Josi Becker dove under an East Peoria girl – maybe the girl with a broken nose (we’ll get back to her in a minute) . . .

And Becker didn’t really grab the ball while skidding on the court, but . . .

She had her hands on it solidly enough to scoop it toward Kassidy Shurman, who . . .

Spotted Tenley Dowell sprinting away and tossed the ball downcourt so quickly that . . .

Dowell dropped in a layup before Becker, who’d started the whole thing, got untangled from the East Peoria girl.

And so it went for the Potters all night long in the 90-33 victory that was nowhere near as close as the score might indicate. Such can be said of few 57-point victories. But this was one of those few. Had it been 119-3 it would have come as no surprise to anyone who knows there’s air in the Wilson.

The Potters’ 90 points were their most in at least the last seven seasons. (They had 85 against Bloomington a year ago. Their record is 96 against East Peoria in 1990.)

With five different Potters contributing, they made 13 3-pointers. Josi Becker led the scoring with 22, Dowell had 14, Caylie Jones and Shurman 12 each, Bridget Wood 9, Courtney Jones and Jacey Wharram 8 each, Lindsey Dullard 5.

The Lady Potters are now 15-1, East Peoria is 3-12, and maybe you, though not I, can imagine the basketball skills of three teams bad enough to have lost to East Peoria.

“Redemption night,” said my neighbor in the bleachers. She remembered that East Peoria defeated the Potters last season, 37-35. For centuries that game will live as one of the universe’s mysteries. It was one of Morton’s three losses in its state championship campaign; at one point the Potters trailed 25-5. After that game, the winning coach refused to talk to me, apparently on grounds that I had insulted her and her cheap-shot team the year before. My neighbor rooted for a 60-point victory while I would have been happy with a greater margin, perhaps the difference between 119 and 3.

Earlier here I mentioned the East Peoria player wearing a transparent mask, held against the head by straps, usually to protect a broken nose. My neighbor noticed that mask, too. In fact, at one point as I grocery-listed the ways in which the East Peorians insulted the game of basketball, my neighbor said, “But you do have to give them props for the Hannibal Lechter mask.”

The Morton Lady Potters are currently #2 in Class 3A according to the latest AP Poll, released February 7th, 2017.  The Potters season record currently sits at 26-2.  Their next game is Friday, February 10th (7pm) vs Washington, at Morton High School.

Wait, the third girl from the end? Walking with the Morton High School Lady Potters toward the locker room. Is that Brandi Bisping? She’s supposed to be home, resting in recovery from mononucleosis. I catch a glimpse before the girl disappears into the shadows. I ask the Potters’ assistant coach, Brooke Bisping, “Did I just see your sister here?” We’re at Illinois Wesleyan University’s basketball arena where the Potters would play for the State Farm Holiday Classic championship.

“Yes,” Brooke says.

“She’s supposed to be in bed,” I say.

Brooke laughs. “We told her she could come under two rules: No yelling and no hugging.”

Five seconds into the game, Brandi Bisping is yelling.

“Let’s go, red!” she yells, red being the Potters’ uniform color on this night against Rock Island.

She’s yelling from the bench because she’s there as a civilian, wearing team warmups, having made a plea deal with her father for a one-night pardon from the couch at home. She wanted to come to the tournament’s first game. He said no. The second. No. And no to the third. “Then I told him if the team got to the championship game, I was going to go,” she said. “He said, ‘Agreeable.’”

Alas, it was a largely disagreeable game Friday night. Rock Island won, 60-40. So ended the Potters’ 14-game undefeated streak this season and their 27-game winning streak reaching into last season’s state championship run. Twenty-point defeats are decisive but they are dispiriting only if the losers never had a chance. Morton, a Class 3A school, had its chances against a big, strong, quick, once-beaten team at the top of the state’s Class 4A ratings.

Midway through the fourth quarter, Morton had reduced a Rock Island 14-point lead to nine at 47-38. By then, as in the tournament’s first three games, the full measure of Bisping’s absence was evident. Where the all-state senior excels – rebounding with bear-trap hands, scoring on power moves at the rim – the Potters failed too often. Such failures were not necessarily fatal had bounces gone Morton’s way. But this night, when a ball on the rim might have decided to fall into the net, it fell the other way. Too many times under the boards, with the ball there for the taking, Morton’s fingertips allowed it to fall into Rock Island’s hands.

The Potters’ Kassidy Shurman cut Rock Island’s lead to 47-38 with her third 3-pointer of the game. The clock showed 4:55 to play, not much time but time enough if, suddenly, a team can do well what it had done poorly all night. Instead, Morton’s defense gave up five quick points on plays that bedeviled them in their first three tournament games, each won by three points.

Fouled taking down an offensive rebound, Rock Island first made a free throw. Then it scored on a layup, a girl dribbling across the paint, low, curling through Morton’s interior defense. Finally, a Rock Island guard drove from the top of the arc, twice taking the ball between her legs on a zig-zag sprint to the hoop that no Potter could stop.

The lead was 52-38 with 3:21 to play. Game over.

Shurman led Morton’s scoring with 9. Tenley Dowell, named to the all-tournament team, and Caylie Jones, who did fine defensive work on Rock Island’s star, had 8 apiece. Josi Becker scored 6, Jacey Wharram 4, Lindsey Dullard 3, and Courtney Jones 2.

With his players in the locker room afterwards, the Morton coach, Bob Becker, did a little speech of reassurance that all is well. Aside from the rebounding problems – “It’s something to work on, and we will” – there were positives to take from the week. Eleven of Becker’s 13 players are underclassmen. Some played under big-game pressure in a big arena for the first time. What happens in December is important, Becker said, but what matters most is what happens in February and March, state tournament time.

“At 14-1 we’re a really, really good team,” Becker told the players. Yes, it would have been nice to win the Holiday Classic. But a two-time defending state champion that has announced its hopes of a three-peat can live without a Classic trophy. “Our goal,” he said, “is to get back and win the big one.”

He also spoke to Brandi Bisping, seated cross-legged on the locker room floor.

“You,” he said, smiling, “go home and sit on the couch.”

A note of historical import: On this date two years ago, December 30, 2014, the Potters made their only other appearance in the Holiday Classic championship game. They lost by 25 to U High. Sixty-seven days later, on March 7, 2015, they won the state championship.

Behind with two minutes to play, twice behind in the first overtime, and twice more behind in the second overtime, the Morton High School Lady Potters defeated U High, 42-39, in a semifinal of the State Farm Holiday Classic tonight and damned if I can tell you how they did it because what they did was somehow bring order out of chaos when chaos surrounded them, such as in this moment . . .

It’s 40-39, Morton.

Second overtime, the clock reads :11.9.

U High has another offensive rebound and is going up for an easy bucket to win the game, and a guy next to me in the bleachers goes, “Oh, God . . .”

Not exactly a prayer, but . . .

U High misses that point-blank, game-winning shot, and then . . .

In the chaos of battle for the rebound of the missed shot, the ball gets batted around, here, there, everywhere, off U High’s hands, off Morton’s fingertips, until it is rolling loose out by the free throw line where . . .

A U High player has the ball, only to lose it between her feet, and if there’s anything these Potters like, it’s a loose ball between a girl’s feet, especially with time disappearing, because a loose ball with a game to win is signal for them to throw themselves at it, to dive between the girl’s feet, to knock her down, pin her flat, everyone going elbow over tea kettle, Lindsey Dullard there, Tenley Dowell, Courtney Jones, Lord knows who else, and then . . .

A jump ball is called.

Possession to Morton at :04.7.

Two seconds later, fouled on the in-bounds pass, Dowell makes two free throws, giving the sophomore star 24 points for the night, 11 coming in the fourth quarter and two overtimes.

In-bounding at :02.6, U High manages only a 60-foot heave at the buzzer, a prayer unanswered.

And in the Morton locker room afterwards, coach Bob Becker tells his Potters what he thinks of them. He tells them what he thinks of girls who came from behind five times against a previously-undefeated team. Girls who have won their three Classic games by three points each night. Girls who threw themselves after that loose ball. But before I tell you what he thinks of those girls I should tell you those girls loved every word of it. The coach told them, “You are the toughest little shits in the entire state of Illinois.”

Hell, maybe in Indiana, too.

The victory, moving Morton into Friday night’s championship game against top-seeded Rock Island, was the Potters’ best this season. It came against a very good U High team that had won 13 times. Perennially strong inside, the Pioneers dominated the boards. They had 16 offensive rebounds; at least twice they up four shots in a single possession. Their defense was tenacious and for long periods of time Morton could not manage a decent shot. While some of that was attributable to good defense, clearly the Lady Potters are a lesser team at both ends without all-state senior, Brandi Bisping, out for a third straight game with mononucleosis.

Until the game’s final moments – in regulation and in both overtimes – there wasn’t much to recommend it. You could take your pick as to why the game was a snore so long. Perhaps the defenses were so sensational that neither team could score. Or perhaps the offenses were so poor that neither team could score. I come down on the latter. Without Bisping, Morton could get nothing done in the paint. Without anyone who could drop the ball in the ocean from a rowboat, U High could get nothing done from outside.

But all that desultory play was forgiven in the chaotic fun near the end of regulation and in the two overtimes. Here’s how Becker’s TLS’s came from behind six times in a game that his daughter, point guard Josi Becker, described as “nerve-wracking . . . a fun game . . . I love that kind of game”:

1. The Potters scored the last basket in regulation time at 1:47, a driving layup by the 5-foot-3 Becker through everyone bigger than her, for a 28-all tie.

2. Down 30-28 in the first overtime, the Potters went ahead on a 3-point shot by Dullard at 2:38.

3. Down 32-31 in that overtime, they tied it on Dowell’s free throw at :13.7.

4. Down 34-32 in the second OT, they tied it again on Becker’s driving shot. It’s not enough to call that thing a layup. It was more of an amazing, flying, running, curl-it-into-the-air hook shot lofted over those bigger people and high off the board. “I don’t know how that went in,” she said, smiling a winner’s smile. Could she even see the basket? “I was staring at the rim all the way.”

5. Down 39-38 in that second OT, Becker stole a U High pass and worked the ball to Dowell, whose slash to the basket gave the Potters the lead with :24.6 on the clock. (A digression here: However long Bisping’s absence becomes, the Potters already have shown they can play well. Dowell has assumed the role Bisping played when all-stater Chandler Ryan went down last season. In the 13 games following Ryan’s ACL injury, Bisping averaged 18 points a game. This time, with Bisping sitting out three games, Dowell has scored 17, 14, and tonight’s 24, an average of 18.3.)

6. Finally, let us give solace to the poor U High girl who lost the ball between her feet in the game’s final seconds and looked up to discover half the village of Morton arriving with malice aforethought.

Small wonder, then, that Bob Becker declared himself “giddy” after this one. His Potters had shown “the grit that we’re all about.” His girls were “fighters” whose “toughness separates them” from other teams. He said, “I’m blessed to coach this group.”

If it goes in, it’s overtime. It it doesn’t, the Morton High School Lady Potters win. Thing is, the ball hangs in the air. A 3-pointer from the left corner by a good shooter and the ball hits the far side of the rim. Great, it’s no good. But wait. The cursed ball bounces straight up. It might still fall in. The buzzer sounds, the backboard lights up red, game over. No. Wait. Not yet. The ratzenfratzin’ ball is high in the air, seemingly directly over the basket. It’s easy, if painful, to imagine the ball coming straight down and denying the Potters a victory they had earned tonight by coming from behind in the game’s last two minutes.

“It was an awesomely designed play,” the Morton coach, Bob Becker, said. “They got the ball to their best spot-up shooter. Then, oh, my goodness.”

About an hour later, give or take a few oh-my-goodness minutes, the ball descended on the far side of the basket.

Morton 35, Wheaton Warrenville South 32.

The victory moved the undefeated Potters, 13-0, to the semifinals of the State Farm Holiday Classic where they will play undefeated U High, 11-0, at 8:30 tomorrow night. You know the Potters’ numbers by now: 26 straight victories reaching back to last season’s state-championship run and 79 victories in their last 85 games. As good as those numbers are, Becker may like a smaller number more: 2-0. On back-to-back nights his team is 2-0 against good teams, winning by three points each night without all-stater Brandi Bisping, who is at home resting in recovery from mononucleosis. With a sigh, Becker said, “We’ve been tested.”

Let’s go to the videotape of tonight’s test. Let’s go first to the Potters’ littlest big girl, Kassidy Shurman. After opening the season with about umpteen consecutive missed 3-point shots, the 5-foot-2 ½ guard made four tonight just as she had made four the night before, causing Becker to say, “Kass is on fire. Even through that 0-for-18 or whatever, we’ve never taken the green light away from her.” Shurman’s two biggest 3’s tonight came in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter. They broke a 23-all tie and put Morton up, 29-23.

Let’s go now to the game’s last two and a half minutes. Whatever bad happened earlier – such as the Potters going scoreless for nearly 13 ½ minutes, including the full second quarter against an impenetrable 1-2-2 zone – was long forgotten in the heroics of crunch time.

With 2:20 to play, Wheaton Warrenville led, 32-29 before Tenley Dowell scored Morton’s first basket in the three minutes since Shurman’s second 3.

At 2:03, Josi Becker stole a pass and sprinted in for a layup – only to miss the shot. Worse, teammate Lindsey Dullard fouled on the rebound.

Remember those names, Becker and Dullard. The last two minutes of a basketball game are filled with opportunity for redemption. Players who find ways to redeem their mistakes are winners. Becker and Dullard will find ways.

First, Wheaton Warrenville missed the front end of its bonus opportunity on the Dullard foul. That gave Morton the ball with under two minutes to play. Against that formidable zone, Dullard moved without the ball from side to side on the baseline. One of the Potters noticed Dullard wide open under the basket. “I saw her, but the ball was on the other side,” Courtney Jones said.

Dullard is a freshman. So is Jones, who has played a dozen games of varsity basketball, usually the third girl in off the bench. And in the last minutes of a tight game, one freshman noticed another freshman wide open under the hoop and made a decision.

“When I got the ball,” Jones said, “I looked to see if Lindsey was there.”

Yes, she was. And Jones threw a strike to Dullard.

“Lindsey kind of bobbled it,” Jones said. “But I knew she’d make it.”

At 1:34, Dullard dropped in the layup. Morton led, 33-32.

At :20, Wheaton Warrenville made a mistake of the kind that separates winners from losers. It allowed a ball-handler to get trapped in a corner, surrounded by three Potters, one of them Josi Becker. When the ball-handler tried a desperate pass to escape trouble, Becker intercepted it. Again, as earlier, she sprinted downcourt. But this time she did the smart thing, stopping, backing away from pressure, killing time in those last game-deciding seconds.

Two pieces of drama were to come. At :09.7, Dowell was fouled. She had made four straight free throws in the third quarter, but they had come much earlier without the game on the line. After she made the first to raise Morton’s lead to 34-32, Wheaton Warrenville called timeout, perhaps thinking to jangle Dowell’s nerves.

But the sophomore has been there, done that. Last season, with a sectional victory to be taken, Dowell made two free throws and later confessed that, on a nervous scale of 1-10, she was “I think a 7.” Now faced with the timeout and a second free throw, an odd thing happened.

As she came to the line, referee J.D. Coleman told her, “Number 10 is shooting.”

Dowell is number 1. She said, “No, it’s me.”

The referee laughed and flipped her the ball. “Just kidding,” he said.

Dowell smiled and then made the second free throw for a 35-32 lead. As a measure of a sophomore’s increased confidence under pressure, she said her nervous number this time was smaller. “A 4,” she said, “maybe 5.”

Up by 3, Morton had the game won – unless someone went crazy and threw in a 3-pointer at the buzzer. That wouldn’t happen. Would it? That shot wouldn’t hit the rim, fly above the backboard, and come straight back down. Would it?

Never a doubt.

Dowell led Morton with 14 points, Shurman had 12, Dullard 7, and Caylie Jones 2.

About 7:15 p.m. tonight, there surely came a  sickly little “whoooop” from Brandi Bisping. It would have come in celebration after she read a text from her father reporting that the Lady Potters had won their opener in the State Farm Holiday Classic, 62-59 over Normal West.

Bisping was stuck at home in Morton. She has mononucleosis, diagnosed over the weekend. She is likely to be out for a month. It is all but impossible to imagine the warrior Bisping staying in bed when a battle is at hand. So, an hour before tip-off at Bloomington’s Central Catholic High School, I had a question for her father, Todd:

“Did you have to handcuff her to a water heater or something?”

“Oh, she wanted out,” Todd Bisping said. “Yesterday she had dressed for practice and I wouldn’t let her go. Today she told me, “You can’t make me NOT play.” I said, “Between me, Coach Becker, and the doctor, I bet we can.”

Mono calls for complete rest. Part of the danger is an enlarged spleen, which, if ruptured, can cause death. That’s why doctors advise/order/demand that mono patients avoid contact sports until the infection is past. Bisping can play basketball with great finesse. She also plays with great enthusiasm, as when she realizes something good has happened and she goes, “WHOOOP! WHOOOP!” Most important to know in these mono days, Bisping also plays with small regard for corporal punishment, including her own. For the 5-foot-11 all-state senior more than for most high school girls, basketball is not only a contact sport, it is a collision sport.

So while Bisping was wrapped safely in blankets at home, unbeaten Potters won their 12th game of the season, their 25th in a row reaching back to last season’s state championship run, and their 78th in 84 games. Unlike the previous 11 victories this season, achieved by margins of 15 points or more, tonight’s came hard. Without Bisping’s scoring, rebounding, defensive mastery and on-court command of her team’s movements, the tournament’s second-seeded Lady Potters had a long, anxious, and scary night against the number 15 seed, Normal West, a 5-5 team.

Morton was beaten badly in departments it usually dominates. For one, Normal West scored six put-back field goals to Morton’s zero. For another, the Potters’ defense failed to shut down Normal West the way it has shut down everyone else. In addition to the six put-backs, the losers scored 11 more buckets daring the Potters to stop them driving to the rim. That’s 17 field goals from point-blank range to Morton’s 10 (with 7 of those coming in the first quarter when the Potters sprinted to a 19-5 lead).

Happily for the Potters, they can score from everywhere. They made 9 3-pointers (giving them 94 for the season). Morton’s biggest little player, 5-foot-2 guard Kassidy Shurman, had four of the long ones. She also had the two most important 3’s. They came early in the fourth quarter after Normal West had moved within a point at 46-45.

With 5:18 to play, Shurman made a 3-pointer from the left corner to make it 49-45. Fewer than 30 seconds later, again from the left side, she threw in another 3 for a 52-45 lead. That seven-point margin was good for four minutes until Morton seemed to lose its poise under pressure and allow Normal West to tie it at 58 with 26 seconds to play.

Nine seconds later, the Potters’ 5-foot-3 Josi Becker found herself in foreign territory, stuck with the ball in the paint. She did about the only thing that made sense. She shot it. From 12 feet. She made it. Normal West had a chance to tie with two free throws with 6.9 seconds to play, but made only one. With 5.7 seconds left, Tenley Dowell’s two free throws gave Morton reason to breathe again.

Dowell led Morton’s scoring with 17. Shurman had 15 (13 in the second half), Lindsey Dullard 14 (all in the first half), Josi Becker 8, Courtney Jones 4, Caylie Jones and Jacey Wharram 2 each.

Tomorrow night the Potters play Wheaton Warrenville South, 7 o’clock, at Normal Community High School.

No suspense again tonight, the Lady Potters 64, Canton 28 — unless you count as suspense the time Brandi Bisping’s shot rose to the edge of space and floated straight down to Earth . . .

It began with Bisping sprinting at full speed, slowing only for the nano-second she needed to gather for the long shot . . . Flying past midcourt by a step maybe . . . I say “maybe” because it happened so fast I’m not sure of anything except two things . . . Thing One: When the ball left Bisping’s hands, I looked up at the clock and it showed :00.8 . . .Thing Two: By the time the ball fell from the sky and through the net – nothing but net, nothing but that sweet silky song sung by a perfect shot – by then, still running, Bisping had reached the free throw line and here’s what she did when she heard her song – she jumped like a little kid on Christmas morning, dancing on air, jumping once, twice, three times. And then she began running again, off the floor, straight into the locker room. Bo Jackson once did that for the Raiders. Steph Curry did it last year for the Warriors. This one, I loved more.

Bisping came to tonight’s game sick. A virus, she hopes. She’ll have tests later this week to rule out mononucleosis. She missed practice Monday. The Lady Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, has a team rule. If you miss practice the day before a game, you can’t be in the starting lineup. So Bisping watched most of the first quarter. Not that the Potters missed the all-stater, running up a 15-0 lead and causing Canton’s coach, Layne Langhoff, to say, “You’re in trouble when you’re down 15-0 and their best player is coming in.”

Playing little more than half the game, Bisping led Morton’s scoring with 17. After the mid-court shot, she made two more 3’s. It’s necessary here to say that the facts are the facts and the facts understate the truth of Bisping’s performance. The truth is in these notes from the first four minutes of the second quarter . . .

BB, jump, ball trapped under her back…BB dives, bats to Maddy…BB rips out of C hands…BB put-back, 7:19…BB power LU, 6:05…BB takes chg, 4:25.”

Unless you have seen Bisping play, those notes might as well be hieroglyphics painted on King Tut’s sarcophagus. But those of us lucky enough to know Bisping’s manner will understand. The sportswriter’s shorthand notes show the 5-foot-11 senior was, again, as always, an unforgiving warrior at both ends – or, to quote her, “Pretty good for a sick girl.”

All of Bisping’s good, even sensational stuff, was of a piece with the Lady Potters’ full-game performance. As good as they were in 15-0 sprint out of the gate, the Potters were better in a 19-2 run that included Bisping’s mid-court shot and stretched three and a half minutes into the third quarter.

They ran a 26-16 lead to 45-18 – mostly because Becker sent his team into a full-court press that rendered Canton helpless. That press featured a front line of Bisping, sophomore Tenley Dowell, and freshman Lindsey Dullard. They go 5-11, 5-11, and 6-1, and they have arms that reach forever. Becker’s assistant coach, Bill Davis, a hockey aficionado, calls those long, tall girls the “Condor Line.” Unless you were a Canton fan, it was amusing to see Canton’s girls think they could throw a pass OVER or even THROUGH the Condor Line. In the first 3:37 of the third quarter, Morton outscored Canton, 14-2.

Dowell began it with a fast-break, Josi Becker added two free throws, Kassidy Shurman a 3, Bisping two free throws and a 3 of her own, then Becker two more free throws.

There 45-18. Game over.

Canton came in with an 8-3 record and is probably the second-best team in the Mid-Illini Conference. The Potters rendered Canton helpless and are now unbeaten in 11 games. They are winners of 24 straight going back to last season’s state championship run. They have won 29 straight at the Potterdome and have won 77 of their last 83 games, enough to move the losing coach, Langhoff, to superlatives.

Talk about happy faces, look at Jacey Wharram’s. She’s running off the court. She’s smiling and she’s laughing and she’s aglow. I shouldn’t ask ou look up a word. But look up a word. Look up “incandescent.” Jacey Wharram, incandescent, is sprinting toward the Lady Potters’ bench, and she’s flying past her teammates, slapping hands in celebration, and she hears Brandi Bisping.

Bisping is shouting. “Dude, you got 19 rebounds!”

Hardly slowing down, Wharram is shouting. “How MANY?!?”

BB: “Nineteen!”

JW: “Don’t be lying to me!”

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so I asked her father, once a college player, when he last had 19 rebounds in a game.

“Never happened,” Jed Wharram says.

And then I asked her mother, once a college player, when she last had 19 rebounds.

“Maybe if you add up two or three games,” Julie Wharram says.

The other Wharram girl, Jadison, the combative soul of the Lady Potters’ state championship teams the last two seasons, is home from college on Christmas break. Two rows up in the bleachers at Pekin High School, she waits to see her kid sister come out of the locker room. And then Jadison bends down to wrap a big ol’ hug around Jacey’s neck.

Yes, the Lady Potters had themselves some fun tonight. They whipped up on Pekin the way they’ve whipped up most everybody. The score was 70-34. The undefeated Potters have won 10 straight this season and 23 in a row reaching back into last season’s state title run. They scored 70 for the first time in their last 34 games. And still no one this season has scored more than 40 against them. The Potters’ average margin of victory is now more than 25 points, 56.7-31.4.

It’s not true that Jacey Wharram, a 5-foot-11 senior, got every rebound for the Potters. It just seemed true. As with all good rebounders, on this night she established inside position and kept it until, inevitably, the ball came to her. The 19 rebounds – the other Potters had 13 – were the team’s individual high across the last five seasons, two more than Bisping had on Jan. 17, 2015. In addition, Wharram scored 12 points. She achieved the double-double the rebounders’ way: three put-back buckets and six straight free throws.

As to how Wharram got all those rebounds, she said, “I guess nobody boxed me out.” No, no, too modest by half. Pekin’s failings may have had a little to do with Wharram’s big night. More likely, her 19 can be accounted for by citing a rebounder’s greatest asset – as when Wharram mentioned a rare rebound that slipped away. “In my heart,” she said, “I got them all.”

Again, as in the Potters’ nine previous games, this one wasn’t much. Morton is eight-players deep when its Mid-Illini Conference opponents are happy to be two-deep. It was close for a while in the first quarter. But the Potters then went on a 29-5 run that brought them from 13-11 down to 40-18 up midway in the third quarter. In that run, Wharram scored 8 points and Kassidy Shurman 6 while Bisping, Tenley Dowell and Josi Becker all had 5.

Oddly, that game-deciding run began with a technical foul call that I, for one, had never seen before – and it turned out to be a mistake. This takes some explaining.

Because the Potters often substitute two or three players at a time, it’s possible to wind up with too many players, or too few, on the court. At 2:53 of the first quarter, Morton’s coach, Bob Becker, sent in two subs. But three players came out. That left the Potters with four players on the court against Pekin’s five.

When Becker realized the mistake, he told Dowell to get back on the court. As soon as she jumped back into play, near midcourt, not even close to anything going on, a referee at the far end saw her and called a technical foul on Morton.

Becker argued that he had the right to send out a fifth player.

The referee said no, no, “She can’t just walk in the game.”

Becker said, “Show me the rule.”

Well. Put a man in zebra stripes, he don’t need no silly rulebook, he can make it up as he goes. So the zebra man gave Pekin two free throws and the ball. The free throws put Pekin ahead, 13-11. Coincidence, karma, whatever – that’s when the Potters began that 29-5 avalanche that buried Pekin.

And lookie here. Look at the rulebook. “10.2.4 SITUATION B” says that a coach who finds his team with four players on the court can order a fifth into play. “RULING: No technical foul is charged to A5 (the fifth player). A5’s return to the court was not deceitful, nor did it provide A5 an unfair positioning advantage on the court.”

Of course, some people already believe Morton has “an unfair positioning advantage” in that it has really good players playing really well and maybe it would be a good idea if the Mid-Illini passed a rule saying the Potters MUST play with four players instead of five to give other teams a chance.

Until then, the Potters will continue to play at a high level at both ends of the court. With 10 more 3-pointers tonight – by five different players – Morton has made 78 3’s this season – meaning it is averaging 23.4 points a game on 3’s. Defensively, look at these numbers: The Potters have played 40 quarters. They have held opponents to fewer than 10 points in 24 quarters, giving up an average of only 5.5 points in those hope-killing, spirit-killing, game-deciding quarters. Pekin, for instance, scored three points in the second quarter tonight and six in the third as they fell 30 points behind.

Dowell led Morton’s scoring tonight with 14. Josi Becker had 13, Wharram 12, Bisping 11, Lindsey Dullard 8, Shurman 6, Caylie Jones 4, and Courtney Jones 2.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The last place Kassidy Shurman wants to be is under the basket. There are big people there. She is a little one, a charm on your charm bracelet, 5-foot-2, or “5-2 1/2 in my basketball shoes.” So what happens tonight? The Lady Potters are flying on a 4-on-1 fast break. Shurman is shuffled under the basket, on the low block, left side. And not only is she lost from sight among all those big people, she is stuck with the ball. What to do now?

Next thing I saw, the ball popped up from wayyyyyy down below, rose wayyyyy high, kissed the board and fell in.

Ace reporter that I am, I turned to my neighbor and said, “What happened?”

“Left-handed, too,” a reliable source reported.

From somewhere very near the very hardwood itself, using her off-hand, forcing the solitary Limestone defender into a foul, Shurman had twisted in the night’s most improbable shot. With the free throw added, Shurman’s three points followed a Tenley Dowell 3-point shot and sent the Lady Potters on a 21-0 run that guaranteed a victory over Limestone High. The final: 50-34.

Before that run, in fact for most of the first half, the Potters had turned one of their signature strengths, unselfishness, into a turnover-producing liability. They seemed to make one too many passes on every other possession. The last pass would be too cute by half, someone thinking that a clever pass would work when the right pass was one not made at all. Credit should go to Limestone’s defense as well. Of Morton’s first six field goals, four were 3-pointers – a sign that the Potters couldn’t move the ball inside.

Limestone had taken the first-half lead four times, last at 20-19 with 2:30 left in the second quarter.

Before the game, Morton coach Bob Becker had written five lines of pep talk on a whiteboard at the bench:

REBOUND
ATTACK
BE THE AGGRESSORS
TOUGHNESS
COMPETE TOGETHER

Down 20-19, the aggressors’ attack began with the Dowell 3-pointer and Shurman’s magic act. Josi Becker added a layup and Dowell followed with a 15-footer to end the half, Morton now leading, 29-20.

Then it was Brandi Bisping’s turn. Morton’s defense switched from its first-half man to a 1-3-1 zone, sending Limestone into confusion. On offense, Bisping sent Limestone into defeat. She scored the second half’s first 11 points in less than 3 ½ minutes. First came a 3-pointer at 7:28, then a put-back of her own missed 3-pointer at 6:14, followed by two free throws at 5:39, a power move inside at 4:28, and a fast break layup at 4:00.

The 21-0 run took only 6 minutes and 3 seconds. Morton had come from 20-19 down to 40-20 up. Game over.

Bisping led Morton’s scoring with 18. Josi Becker had 11, Dowell 7 (back from that ankle sprain, limited in movement but playing well), Shurman 6, Lindsey Dullard 3, Caylie Jones and Megan Gold 2 each, Courtney Jones 1.

Updating the numbers: the Potters, now 8-0, have won 21 straight reaching back to last season’s state championship run and 27 straight in the Potterdome. They have won 74 of their last 80 games.

**

A happy note on Chandler Ryan, the Potters’ all-stater now a freshman at Florida Gulf Coast University: Her recent knee injury did not require a second ACL surgery. Scar tissue was removed. She will resume workouts and may play in a month or so.

**

Because the boys’ teams played the second game – it’s an annual Morton-Limestone agreement – there were more than the usual number of people in the Potterdome tonight. Among those new people were members of the Morton High dance team and the boys’ team cheerleaders, four or five dozen dancers and cheerleaders in all. The Morton boys won, 61-38. It was a nice game. Not a Lady Potters game, but nice. Those new people should come out more often.