The Morton High School Lady Potters won again tonight, at Bloomington, leaving the Purple Raiders beaten, bruised, and breathless, 68-40. The two-time defending state champion Potters did so many things so well, even sensationally, that any curmudgeonly scribe worth his box of Milk Duds is obligated to balance his report by listing all the bad things the Potters did.

The ponytail moment, for one. Late in the game, from my bleacher seat three rows behind the Potters’ bench, I saw Kassidy Shurman – it may have been Josi Becker – fiddling with her ponytail. It had come loose. Of all the bad things in girls basketball, a wild ponytail is high on the oh-no-this-is-bad list. Happily, before anyone called 911, Kassidy, or Josi, found a tie and had the ponytail arranged for further warfare.

There was Tenley Dowell’s footwear. She went through pre-game drills and was on the bench, ready to play, wearing her customary red sneakers. But coming out for the third quarter, she wore flip-flops. I’m thinking LeBron could play in flip-flops because LeBron could play blind-folded on one bare foot. But for a girl who sprained her ankle five days earlier – that’s Tenley – flip-flops were a risky choice. Of course, Tenley had no plans to play. “I wore the real shoes just to warm up,” she said.

To extend the silliness, let’s add the basketball-as-greased-pig thing. At the Morton end, the ball bounced off a Potter’s hands. It rolled across the paint. Bodies threw themselves in tangled-limbs pursuit, three or four Potters landing on the poor thing. Somehow, and I think I heard it squealing, the ball escaped. It ran toward the free throw line. From there, only a NASA satellite could have traced the ball’s movements. All I know is it wound up in Brandi Bisping’s hands. (Sooner of later, every loose ball winds up in Brandi Bisping’s bear-trap hands.) I heard her coach, Bob Becker, shout, “Power!” Bisping powered it through someone’s face. “And one!” Becker shouted, meaning Bisping was fouled, giving her a free throw, her 21st and last point of a double-double night in which she had 14 rebounds.

Undefeated in seven games, winners of 20 straight going back to last season’s state title run, and winners 73 times in their last 79 games, the Potters never gave Bloomington even a suggestion of hope. Less than three minutes into the game, Morton led, 9-0. The first seven points were scored by Dowell’s replacement in the starting lineup, freshman Lindsey Dullard. In her first varsity start, Dullard scored the game’s first seven points, all in 58 seconds – a 3-pointer at 7:12, a fast-break layup at 6:50, and a mid- court steal for another breakaway bucket at 6:14.

That Dullard fast-break layup at 6:50 – it began extraordinarily. It began with a rebound by Bisping, which isn’t the unusual part. Bisping had been knocked down under the Bloomington basket. She sat in the paint, as if at a picnic. And here came the ball, falling toward her as surely as that 17th century apple fell to earth in front of Sir Isaac Newton. Except where Sir Isaac just watched, Bisping snatched the basketball from gravity’s grasp. She flipped it to Dullard, who did the rest.

I suppose Bloomington might have considered itself in the game for a while. Though they trailed 20-9 after a quarter, the Raiders scored the second quarter’s first seven points to move within four at 20-16 with 5:57 to play in the half.

But Morton ended that consideration quickly. It went on a 12-0 run in the next three minutes and nine seconds.

First, Josi Becker made a 3-pointer. Then she made another 3 from near the same spot, at the arc’s right shoulder. Caylie Jones followed with a nifty drive down the right side of the lane, scoring with a soft hook off the board. Bisping raised the lead to 32-16 with a damned-if-I’ll-quit put-back of her own interior miss and, a half-minute later, a layup created by the Potters’ perpetual-motion offense.

Five minutes later, the Potters’ lead was 20 points on its way to 30. Game over.

Bob Becker’s list of good things: “First game on the road, good road win, we’ll take it.” “Great balance offensively. Three in double figures, another close, most points we’ve scored in a long time.” (Most in 32 games, since a 71-35 victory over Champaign Centennial on Dec. 28, 2015.) “We had Bloomington worn out in the second half.”

Bisping’s 21 points led the Potters. Josi Becker had 14, Dullard 12, Caylie Jones 8, Jacey Wharram 6, Shurman and Courtney Jones 3 each, and Maddy Becker 1. Nearly half the Potters’ points came on 3-pointers; five players divvied up 10 3’s.

One thing more. Tenley Dowell, in sneakers, will practice this week and is likely to play Friday against Limestone in the Potterdome. How much she plays depends on how the ankle reacts to practice. Bob Becker said, “If she can go hard for two hours . . .” Well, if she can go hard for two hours less than a week after that sprained ankle, it would be cause for the curmudgeon scribe to mumble, like, “Ah, to be young again.”

She’s thin and she’s a teenager and she looks light. So the coach, Bob Becker, decided to pick her up and carry her. He wouldn’t just help her get to the locker room, letting her lean on his shoulder and hobble along. No, the coach picked Tenley Dowell up, half of her, anyway, with assistant coach Megan Hasler taking the other side.

“Wow,” the coach said afterwards. “Heavier than you’d think.”

“She is tall,” Hasler said, leaving unsaid the truth that a 5-foot-11 sophomore who has played basketball forever comes with an athlete’s body, all bone and muscle, all weightier than anything Big Macs can do for you.

By game’s end tonight – Morton’s Lady Potters 49, Metamora 25 – the only moment anyone cared about was that instant when Tenley Dowell fell to the court. Dowell is a rare talent, capable of scoring from anywhere in any way and eager to defend the other team’s best. She went down early in the fourth quarter. She had made a pass out of a trap and taken a long step to follow the ball. Suddenly, she cried out in pain.

Becker’s first thought was a knee. He had seen ACL’s come apart. His daughter, Josi, lost a season two years ago. The all-stater Chandler Ryan played only nine games last season. But Dowell immediately reached back to her right ankle, and even as she dropped her head to the floor sobbing, even as Becker and trainer Katie Gavin knelt at Dowell’s side, there was some relief in knowing she reached for an ankle, not a knee.

Last season I asked Dowell a “on a scale of 1 to 10” question. In the sectional championship, she made two free throws to assure victory. She’d shot 50 percent at the line all season, so how nervous was she with that game on the line? “Like, 7,” she said. Tonight I asked, “How much did the ankle hurt?” She said, “Like, 8.” Translated into old sportswriter language, that means it hurt like hell. The good news is, a rolled ankle will fix itself in time, a couple weeks maybe, but no scalpels are needed.

There’s not much to say about the game. In horse racing, they’d call it a walk-over. In boxing, it’s the champ knocking over a tomato can. In baseball, a laughter. For the undefeated, two-time defending state champion Lady Potters, it was their sixth straight victory this season, their 19th in a row overall, their 26th straight at the Potterdome, and their 72d in the last 78 games.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the mismatch was what seemed to be Metamora’s absolute determination to commit as many offensive fouls as possible. I made notes of seven offensive fouls, five charges, one illegal screen, one a push-down from behind. Some of those fouls could be attributed to good defensive positioning by the Lady Potters. But most came as Metamora’s stumblers stumbled toward the hoop. That, and acts of frustration by girls who knew they had fallen into the deep end of the shark tank.

Look, it was 30-11 at halftime.

About the third quarter, I will not type a word other than to say Morton led at quarter’s end, 32-13. You do the math.

Dowell’s two free throws early in the fourth quarter had raised the lead to 34-13 before she made that long step and rolled onto the outside of her foot. After that, nothing mattered except the extent of Dowell’s injury. She returned to the bench with 5:14 to play, an ice pack on the ankle. Her father, Troy, in his day a Pekin High basketball star, came from the training room with her, carrying her shoe and a bottle of Gatorade.

“Sprained,” he said later. “She’ll be OK.”

Brandi Bisping led Morton’s scoring with 17. Dowell and Jacey Wharram had 8 apiece, Kassidy Shurman 6, Caylie Jones 5, Josie Becker 3, and Lindsey Dullard 2.

Last I saw of the Dowells, a half hour after the game, they were headed back to the training room for treatment. Again, Tenley didn’t have to hobble. This time her father picked her up and carried her.

It wasn’t the shoes. Now we know that. On Friday, three days after LeBron James sent new shoes to each of the Lady Potters, they overwhelmed two opponents in their Thanksgiving Tournament: poor, stumbling Normal Community, 62-37. and poor, exhausted Danville Schlarman, 66-31. In the doing, the Potters needed no magical shoes. They wore their old ones, perhaps planning to bronze LeBron’s. Anyway, who needs LeBron when you’ve got Brandi, Jacey, Josi, Kassidy, and Tenley?

As part of a national Nike promotion hash-tagged #ComeOutOfNowhere, a crateful of James’s shoes arrived at Morton High School on Monday. With the shoes came a video that the coaches showed the Potters.

The video begins, “Hey, LeBron here,” LeBron says, as if there’s a basketball player anywhere who doesn’t recognize LeBron. “Congratulations to each and every one of you guys on last year’s journey, but obviously this year is a new journey . . . ”

James said he’d be following “from afar.” Then, with a smile, he suggested at times he’d “be watching very close. . . . It’s going to be an unbelievable season and best luck to each and every one of you.”

After the video, the Morton coaches plotted a surprise Tuesday afternoon. At each player’s locker, there was a T-shirt bearing the legend, “Come Out of Nowhere.” Hidden under each shirt, a box. To say the girls were thrilled on discovering the box contained a new pair of LeBron James shoes is to say LeBron can play a little. Suddenly, two days before Thanksgiving, it was Christmas.

Along with the shoes came a note signed by LeBron:

“Potters,

“You came out of nowhere last season. You lost 20+ points a game to an ACL injury. It would have been easy to take a seat. You already had a state title. Instead, the next girl stepped up. Now you have 2. What’s it going to take to win 3?

“I’ll be watching.”

Friday, LeBron would have seen the two-time defending state champion Potters playing so sensationally that their coach, Bob Becker, first said, “They played great,” and then, more loudly, “They played
GREAT.”

In both games, the Potters caused invocation of the tournament’s “mercy” rule in which the clock runs continuously once a team builds a 30-point lead. Their 15 three-pointers were divvied up among six players. On defense in someone’s face at every turn, they broke Normal Community’s spirit as prelude to leaving Danville Schlarman in despair.

The Potters are now 3-0, winners of 16 straight games reaching back to last season, winners of 25 straight in the Potterdome, winners 69 times in their last 75 games. Saturday morning, they play Champaign St. Thomas More. Saturday evening, in what shapes up as the five-team round-robin’s championship game, they play Peoria Richwoods.

Comes a moment of truth in all games. LeBron decided the NBA championship last June when he made that chase-down block on a Golden State break. No mere mortal could have done what he did, and no team led by that man was going to lose that night. The stage is smaller in girls high school basketball. But such moments are just as important, as when Tenley Dowell lit it up against Normal Community Friday morning.

First, the sophomore dropped in a 6-foot runner to give Morton a 31-18 lead with 1:29 left in the first half. At 1:07, from the right side, she made a 3-pointer. With 37 seconds left, another 3-pointer, this one from the top of the key. That gave her 20 points in the half, scored from everywhere in every way with either hand. She had given Morton a 37-18 lead. She robbed Normal Community of hope. In the middle of that run, Normal Community’s despair was made audible, if not palpable, to all. One of the Lady Iron, not all iron, tripped in the lane and landed on her hind-end with a ker-lumph that we heard and she no doubt felt.

Dowell finished with 25 points in that victory, Brandi Bisping added 10, Josi Becker and Lindsey Dullard 7 apiece, Caylie Jones 6, Jacey Wharram 3, and Claire Kraft and Megan Gold 2 each.

Danville Schlarman dressed only eight players. It required no practiced eye to see that only one much mattered. That one was a 5-foot-10 guard, Anaya Peoples, a sophomore already considered a Division-1 prospect (with an alleged 13 scholarship offers as a freshman). She did next to nothing against the Potters. Seven points. The Potters played her straight up with Kassidy Shurman, Dowell, and Bisping taking turns on defense – and that’s where this one ended for Schlarman.

It happened early. The Potters held an 11-2 lead. At point guard, handling the ball every time down, Peoples was intent on making something happen. Trouble for her was, Morton’s defense was intent on letting nothing happen. When Peoples could find no teammate moving, she just kept dribbling, looking for an opening. She found none. I counted the dribbles. She bounced the thing 24 times – that’s 24, two dozen times, eight times enough to get your hind-end ker-lumphed onto Becker’s bench – wasting an entire minute – and then, finding herself near the low block on the right side, stumbling, almost falling –you couldn’t call it a shot, Peoples just flipped the ball lamely backwards at the basket, hitting nothing but air.

Ten seconds later, taking that ball out of the air, the Potters had made two passes that led to a Josi Becker 3-pointer and a 14-2 lead at the quarter. From there they ran Schlarman silly at both ends.

Bisping led Morton’s scorers with 15, Dowell had 13, Josi Becker 9, Claire Kraft 6, Courtney Jones and Maddy Becker 5 each, Jacey Wharram and Megan Gold 4 each, Lindsey Dullard 3, and Bridget Wood 2.

**

LeBron’s note about the Potters winning last season despite losing a “20+ scorer” is cause for an update on that scorer, Chandler Ryan. Now at Florida Gulf Coast University, Ryan recently reinjured her right knee and has not played this season. She is scheduled to have exploratory surgery Dec. 9 to see if further surgery is needed to repair the ACL. In any case, she will miss this season without losing any eligibility.

Not to worry, dear reader, we will get to the basketball in this basketball story. We will account for the Lady Potters’ latest championship. They won their own Thanksgiving invitational Saturday with two victories, 47-17 over Champaign Thomas More and 50-35 over Peoria Richwoods. The scores deceive. The first game wasn’t that close. The second was too close.
Explanation is coming.

But first . . .

About 9:45 Saturday morning, the smoke alarm went off in the Morton High School gymnasium. The sound was accompanied by flashing lights around the Potterdome. Someone called the fire department, and a couple minutes later someone called the fire department to say, “Never mind.” By then, I recognized the problem. More often than a guy should admit, I, too, have set off the smoke alarm while making popcorn.

The Potterdome concession folks had started their morning preparations for the Potters’ Thanksgiving Tournament crowd. I believe it is a law that no basketball game can be played inside the village limits unless popcorn is popped. So someone tossed popcorn into the popping machine and turned on the necessary electric juice. Then everyone walked away – only to return, coughing, as smoke curled to the ceiling.

Turns out you burn the popcorn if you forget to put popcorn oil in with the popcorn.

Been there, done that.
Many years ago, I learned better than to do a meandering, direction-less start to a story. I was told that readers have lots to do. An editor said, “I could knit a sweater from dryer lint before you get to the point.”

So I usually start quickly. Not today. Nope. We all could have died in a popcorn fire. Think about that. But we survived. What’s the rush, then, to get to the point? Let’s celebrate. Let’s deal here with interesting stuff that usually gets put at the end of basketball stories, such as – yes! – women referees.

Two women worked Morton’s games, one in the morning, one in the championship game. I’ve always thought it odd that so few women are basketball referees, particularly in women’s games. I asked both the women why that was.

“Meanness,” the morning woman said. She believes spectators say things to women referees that they don’t say to the men.
The second referee laughed. She said, “They don’t like getting yelled at.”

I love Things You Learn While Learning Something Else. Talking to the referees, I learned about uniform rules in girls’ basketball. I’d seen a referee go to the Potters’ Brandi Bisping during pre-game warm-ups and order a change of head-bands. Bisping switched from red to black – because head-bands must match the color of a player’s knee pads. Also: Spandex shorts must match head-bands Also: undershirts must match head-bands and knee pads.

Huh? Really?

“Really,” the second woman referee said. “We’re the uniform police.”

Here’s another interesting thing that getting-to-the-point-in-a-rush might cause us to miss: an out-of-town coach’s assessment of the Potters. Because the tournament brought in teams along I-74 from Danville to Champaign to Normal to Morton to Peoria, the games attracted maybe a dozen college and high school coaches. One said, “Morton’s coaching is as good as it gets. And those girls play hard and unselfishly. I just love the unselfishness. They play the game the way it’s supposed to be played.”

OK, now we’re talking basketball. To leave Thomas More in arrears not to mention out of breath, the Potters went on a 20-0 run in eight minutes of the first half for a 33-7 lead. The sophomore Tenley Dowell, a star on the rise, scored 12 of those game-deciding points – on a floater in the paint, two fast-break layups, a put-back, a jumper from the top of the key, and two free throws.
Afterwards, I asked the Thomas More coach, Tom Garriott, whose Prairie Central teams lost to Morton in the Potters’ two state-championship seasons, how this year’s group compared to those.

“Same,” he said. “Disciplined, deep, and they all can shoot.”

Dowell led Morton with 16 points. Bisping had 13, Lindsey

Dullard 9, Josie Becker 5, and Jacy Wharram and Courtney Jones had 2 each.

Peoria Richwoods did a nervous-making thing against the Potters. Though it never led, Richwoods used a mobile and hostile 2-3 trapping zone to force the Potters into ball-handling errors and hurried shots. The Potters built an apparently comfortable lead at 29-16 midway through the third quarter. They did it suddenly, with three 3-pointers in 1 1/2 minutes – one by Becker, two by Dowell.

But Richwoods made the Potters uncomfortable by scratching within seven early in the fourth quarter, 31-24. Again, the Potters moved away, this time on a 3-pointer by Kassidy Shurman and another 3 by Dowell. And yet Morton led only 40-33 with 3 1.2 minutes to play. By then, Richwoods was forced to foul and hope Morton missed free throws.

But the Potters closed it out with a 10-2 run, the last six points coming at the line.

Dowell had 19 points, Bisping 12. Caylie Jones 6, Dullard had 5, Shurman and Becker 3 each, and Jacey Wharram 2.

Morton is now 5-0, winner of 18 straight games going back to last season, winner of 27 straight in the Potterdome, and winner in 71 of its last 77 games.

Three basketball factoids out of the four-game tournament: the Potters’ defense gave up as many as 12 points in a quarter only once, to Richwoods. . . . meanwhile, the Potters made 34 3’s (by 6 players) . . . which means Morton scored 102 points on 3’s while opponents scored only 120 on everything.

Now, before watching “Saturday Night Live,” I’m going to make some popcorn. Wish me luck.

With a mystery girl in the middle, the Morton High School Lady Potters opened the 2016-17 basketball season Monday night at the Potterdome with a 51-24 thumping of Chatham-Glenwood. I say “mystery girl” because she came in disguise. It was baffling. I first saw her during the jayvee game when the Potters’ varsity took seats in the bleachers a row ahead of me. That brown-haired girl? Who was she? I had seen the varsity three nights earlier in a scrimmage. But not her. That girl with the brown hair, where’d she come from?

At halftime of the jayvee game, the varsity girls strolled onto the court to shoot around. The brown-haired girl was out there. Good size. Moved smoothly, confidently. Looked like she had played before. But I still hadn’t caught a glimpse of her face. Even while trying to puzzle out her identity, I wondered why the Potters’ star, Brandi Bisping, was not on the floor. The mystery deepened — until I saw the brown-haired girl shoot a 3 from the corner.

Then I knew. That girl, she used to be a blonde. That brown-haired girl, she used to be a blonde, a shimmering blonde, a blonde sometimes so blonde as to put canaries to shame. The brown-haired girl was the formerly blonde Brandi Bisping.

When she returned to the bleachers, I said, “Uh, Brandi, the hair . . .”

“Too expensive,” she said.

No more cut-and-colors at $90 apiece.

“I’d have recognized you,” I said, “when the game started.”

“I hope I show up,” she said.

No worries there. Four minutes into it, Bisping had two offensive rebounds, a steal leading to a fast-break layup, and another layup off a nifty in-the-paint pass from Josi Becker. The Lady Potters had an 8-0 lead that became 17-5 at quarter’s end. Though Morton never shot well, especially in a dreary second quarter, the 8-0 run established a dominance never in question.

To call the Potters’ second quarter dreary is to be kind. They scored once in the first six minutes and allowed the visitors to move within five at 19-14. The Potters scored only once in those six minutes mostly because they were busy throwing ill-advised passes and clanking open shots. There was so much ill-advisement and rim-rattling, in fact, that a team as good as the Lady Potters would soon decide, “Enough of this ratzenfratzin’ tomfoolery.”

From 19-14, the Potters got serious. They scored the first half’s last six points and the second half’s first nine points. The 15-0 run made it 34-14 with 2:38 to play in the third. Dreary had become electric. The Potters contested every rebound, winning most of the contests. While their defense never rose to last season’s shut-down-anybody quality, it limited Chatham-Glenwood to 5 points in the first quarter, 4 in the third, and 6 in the fourth.

Morton shot poorly, 5 for 27 on 3’s. With an ordinary performance from out there – say 9 for 27 – the Potters might have won by 40. Not that the coach, Bob Becker, was much worried. His little guard, Kassidy Shurman, missed her first six 3-point tries. During a timeout, he gave her a knuckle-bump and said, “Keep shooting.” Her seventh sailed softly to the rim, bounced once, bounced on the other side, rolled to the glass, and fell off even as Becker leaned this way and that, hoping to coax the shot in. “Kass has been shooting terrifically in practice,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”

Sophomore Tenley Dowell led the Potters’ scoring with 16. Bisping had 13, Josi Becker 10 (with three 3’s), and freshman Lindsey Dullard 7 (all in her first two minutes of varsity play). If we count those victories at the end of last season – of course we count them, they led to a state championship – the Potters now have won 14 straight games.

One more thing. Chatham-Glenwood’s star, Mackenzie Bray, needed 17 points to reach the 1,000-point mark in her career. She had 10 points at halftime. Then came the second half. And for much of that game-deciding time, it was Bisping on Bray, Bisping of whom Bob Becker once said, “If Brandi doesn’t want you to get the ball, you’re not getting the ball.” Needing seven points for 1,000 and finding Bisping in her face, Bray scored four more, leaving her at 997.

“Not getting her 1,000,” Bisping said. “Not in the Potterdome.”

The Lady Potters now have 23 straight games in the mystery girl’s house.

I come now with a report on the first public sighting of the 2016-17 Morton High School Lady Potters basketball team. This report will serve as a storm warning to teams so unfortunate as to be on Morton’s schedule this winter. The report also will be a keep-the-date reminder to all living souls between Ackerman’s pumpkin patches and those nervous birds at the Yordy Turkey Farm. The date is Monday, Nov. 21. You are invited to the Potterdome. The fun begins: the Lady Potters open the season against Chatham-Glenwood.

However good the Lady Potters were last season in winning a second straight state championship, they’re at least that good now. Whether they can three-peat is to be determined by talent, luck, and fate. But what’s already clear – as seen in Friday night’s Red-White scrimmage – is that the Potters are a sensational mix of proven veterans and precocious newcomers.

I am of a certain age with certain infirmities. So I had to fetch my reading glasses to be certain of numbers on the Potters’ roster. Was I reading those heights correctly? Well, yes. Last year the Potters had only one starter over 5-foot-9. Suddenly, they’re likely to have three at 5-foot-11 and another at 6-1. Seldom, if ever, will these Potters be the smaller team on the court.

More important, they almost always will be the better team. Their starting lineup is likely to have two seniors, 5-11 Brandi Bisping and 5-11 Jacey Wharram; two juniors, 5-4 Josi Becker and 5-3 Kassidy Shurman, and the 5-11 sophomore Tenley Dowell. First off the bench: 5-8 junior Caylie Jones, 6-1 freshman Lindsey Dullard and 5-8 freshman Courtney Jones. Six of those players have been on the back-to-back state champion teams that went 33-3 each year. The two freshmen went 53-3 in grade school with one state championship.

So there you have a team that is eight players deep with little drop-off in quality, such a rarity that I asked the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, “How many teams will you play this season that can go eight-deep?”

Becker’s answer was a smile born of serenity. Most high school girls basketball coaches are happy if they can find not eight girls who can play, not seven, not even five. Most are thrilled with two or three.

This will be my seventh winter watching Lady Potters basketball. I have seen Mariah Nimmo and Lexi Ellis, Sarah Livingston and Kait Byrne, Erin Tisdale and Cortney Allenbaugh, Emma Heisler and Chandler Ryan, Brandi Bisping and Jadison Wharram. Their teams have gone 27-5, 31-3, 30-6, 26-5, 33-3, and 33-3. That’s 210-25 with an Elite Eight finish and three trips to Redbird Arena, twice coming home with the big trophy.

All that is good, even fabulous, more than anyone could ask or hope for, and yet . . .

Yet I left the Potterdome on Friday night thinking this team might be the best of all.

Because Becker’s teams always do it, this one will play relentlessly at both ends, applying real and psychological pressure 32 minutes a night, more than enough to break the will of most opponents.

This team may not be as dominant defensively as last season’s; it lost Jadison Wharram and Kayla McCormick, who lived for defensive challenges. But it will still be good. Becker insists on it. With greater length on his top eight, along with speed from his small guards, the coach imagines his team effective not only with its basic man-to-man defense but, when needed, with a full-court press.

Offensively, this team will be very good. It can score from everywhere. Becker believes it can average 60 points a game, up from last season’s 52. He has good reason to think so. In the Friday night scrimmage, Brandi Bisping again showed the inside/outside game she has, scoring on rebounds, dribble-drives, and 3-pointers. Tenley Dowell, the team’s third-leading scorer last season as a gangly freshman, is a year stronger, two inches taller, and as determined as ever to get to the hoop (where she can finish with either hand). Josi Becker, Kassidy Shurman, and Lindsey Dullard all threw in 3’s.

At one point, as the Reds and Whites flew on fast breaks, I turned in the bleachers to ask an expert what she thought.
“Looking good to me,” said the expert, Jadison Wharram, home from college for Thanksgiving break. “They’re all running the floor so well. And everybody can score. I’m so excited for them.”

The key line in Wharram’s assessment was the one saying “everybody can score.” As always, the Potters’ offense is generous in its balance. With an offense built to maximize her skills, Bisping could score 30 a game. But for all the good coaching reasons — team chemistry, protection against gimmick defenses, the inevitable bad nights — Becker prefers an offense that spreads the floor and gives all his good shooters a green light.

After the scrimmage, as he had done before it, Becker allowed himself a contented smile. This time he also spoke. He said words that gladden the heart of everyone – raise your hands, folks – who admire and respect great defense but admire, respect, and love great offense a tiny bit more.

Becker said, “We’ve got firepower.”

I say, “Hooray.”
**
My book on the girls second state championship season, “True Grit,” will be published by the end of the month.

You can order it off the team’s website at Mortonladypotters.com.

When I have books in hand, they will be for sale at Eli’s Coffee Shop, 206 West Jefferson Street in Morton. Also, at Lady Potters’ home games.

Here’s a bonus. If you need last year’s book – “Mighty in Heart” – I have some in my garage, $1 each. Let me know how many dozen you need.

Chandler Ryan wept.

It was December 15, 2015.

Now she has wept again.

It is March 5, 2016.

The Morton High School Lady Potters have made the improbable happen and they made it look implausibly easy, 58-41 over Chicago North Lawndale. It’s the Potters’ second straight state championship. Only five other schools in 39 seasons have won back-to-back titles in Morton’s class, and the Potters are the only downstate team to do it.

I will sing the Potters’ praises as soon I finish singing of Chandler Ryan because I love what she has done this season as much as I love what her team has done.

Do you remember that day in December? I made notes . . .

“5:39, Ryan down. Crying. Knee? Holding Becker’s hand. Saying something. Taken off to locker room.”

On that day in Dunlap, her high school basketball career ended.

Notes from that day’s third quarter: “5:16, Ryan on bench, crutches.”

In the season’s first eight games, Ryan, a 5-foot-6 guard with a shooter’s gift from behind the 3-point arc, had scored 21.4 points a game. Twice she had scored 26. A consensus all-stater the season before when she led the Lady Potters to their first state championship, Ryan was a captain, the team’s offensive heart, and its go-to guy when all else failed.

With her, the Potters were undefeated in eight games and worked with an unspoken commitment to a bold idea: Not only would they repeat as state champions, they would go undefeated.

Then, flying to the basket on a fast break that day, Ryan took a bad step.

“I heard the knee pop,” she said later. “I was telling Coach Becker, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’”

Without Ryan, the Lady Potters could have no bold ambitions.

But on March 5, 2016 – today – the Potters played for a second straight state championship. They had re-invented themselves as a defensive machine with a grind-it-out offense and had made their way to the title game with a 32-3 record, identical to their record the year before when Ryan had lit up scoreboards and had predicted a state championship by saying, “33 and 3 — I’m all about 3’s.”

On this March day, at halftime of the state championship game, here came Chandler Ryan to the Potters’ bench.
No news there. She had become a kind of associate coach. Since surgery to repair her torn anterior cruciate ligament, she had been at every team practice, at every meeting, at every game. First time on the bench, she was so into it as to shout, “Timeout,” and save a Potter possession. She admitted to embarrassment at her unauthorized intrusion, but, it should be noted, she didn’t apologize. She’s a gamer, after all.

No news, then, in Ryan coming to the bench for the second half today at Redbird Arena with Morton leading North Lawndale, 25-13. For weeks she had been a mentor to the team’s young guards, Tenley Dowell and Josi Becker. For weeks she had talked tactics along the bench. One of the great Lady Potters players ever – the fourth-leading scorer all-time – made herself content, if not happy, with the hardest thing she had ever done. She sat and watched and cheered.

Now, in March, 81 days after Dunlap, here she came to the bench as the second half was about to begin.

I didn’t see her at first. I saw an odd thing. Morton players were looking down-court. They began to clap. Here came Ryan walking from the locker room not in her black warm-ups but in the Potters’ red-and-gray game uniform.

Next, the Morton student section saw her – saw her as if she were ready to play – and they knew what they saw. They saw Chandler Ryan in the uniform she hadn’t worn since, like, forever. They saw the number 4 on her back. They sent up a waterfall’s thunder of celebration for her.

And Ryan wept.

She touched the corner of an eye, and her face was flushed, and she smiled, and she touched the corner of the other eye, and she took a seat on the bench, everyone now knowing that, at some point, she would walk onto the Redbird Arena court, not to play – she’s months from that – but to make an appearance, to be honored by her coach and teammates, to be where she has meant so much to the Lady Potters.

Some days and nights, the Potters needed Ryan playing. Not this day. Morton allowed North Lawndale one point in the first quarter. It was 12-1 before the Potters allowed the losers a field goal. It was no contest, one team so superior in so many important ways – fundamentals, poise, basketball IQ — as to make the other seem foolish. Brandi Bisping led Morton with 19 points and 8 rebounds. (She had Final Four totals of 40 points and 16 rebounds, and don’t get me started on the Illinois coaches’ association that gave Bisping only honorable mention in its all-state voting. If the inarguable MVP of a two-time state champion is not an all-stater, it’s not an all-state team worth knowing.)

There were 29 seconds to play this day when the Morton student section sent up a chant.

“We want Chandler . . . We want Chandler . . .”

Bob Becker, who had held her hand in December, looked at Ryan.

She nodded.

Becker went to a referee to explain that he would put Ryan into the game but only so she could stand at the sideline, not to move, just to be where she belonged for one more moment. “A great kid,” Becker said later, “one of the greatest Potters”.

With 27.9 seconds left, Ryan stepped onto the court, and now the hundreds of Morton fans in Redbird Arena let her know what they thought of her.

She blinked against tears.

A second later, during a dead-ball moment, she left the game. Becker met her with an embrace and her teammates surrounded her, all reaching to touch her.

After all that – after winning back-to-back titles – after giving Chandler Ryan the thanks she had earned in three glorious seasons – I had only one question.

Can we start next basketball season now? Like tomorrow, or Monday at the latest. This is too much fun to stop.

“The future is bright for Morton basketball,” Becker said this afternoon. Seven of today’s 11 Potters, including three starters, return next season. An hour after the game, Becker stood outside Redbird Arena in the chill of a fading winter’s day. He watched those players pass around the big trophy that goes to the state champions. Yes, state champions. Again. Look at the trophy. It says so right on the thing: State Champions 2016.

That’s back-to-back state championships for the only small-town public school ever to win one Class 3A state championship, let alone two.

By the way, no one has won the big trophy three times in a row.

“Three-peat?” said a Lady Potters’ assistant coach, Megan Hasler. “It we three-peat, I’ll get a tattoo.”

Say again, please?

“A tattoo.”

What kind of tattoo?

“On my back, I’ll get a tattoo of Brandi Bisping’s face.”

Yes, let’s start next season now.

What, are we dreaming? Is this real? The Morton High School Lady Potters are one victory away from another state championship. Another. As in a second state championship. A second straight state championship. They embarrassed Morgan Park this afternoon, 54-39, and I know the perfect word for what’s happening here. It’s a whole bunch of letters and syllables, which I should avoid, but I’m going to type the word here and you can look it up or you can trust me that it’s the perfect word even though none of us have ever heard it said out loud. The word is phantasmagoria.

This is no dream, no wish, no hope. This is real. This is the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, telling the press after a 54-39 victory over mighty Morgan Park, “We’re here to take another title.” What we’re seeing with Becker’s team are amazing events built on amazing events, each more extraordinary than the last. I covered a World Series once, Phillies and Astros, and one game went on forever, 14 innings or some such, and everything happened that could happen in a baseball game, and someone asked the Phillies’ relief pitcher Tug McGraw what it was like seeing all that. He said, “It was like riding a motorcycle through an art gallery.”

So it is with these Lady Potters.

Here’s a piece of the Potters’ art . . .

Little Kassidy Shurman, a 5-foot-2 sophomore, is in the game for a minute midway through the first quarter. She’s in only because Becker, didn’t like a Tenley Dowell mistake on defense. And what does the little squirt Shurman do when the ball comes to her deep in the right corner? She might do the safe thing and throw it back to somebody older and bigger. Instead, she does the right thing. Unguarded, she puts up a 3-point shot. It goes in. It puts Morton up, 11-3, and sends a message to the Chicago folks. We ain’t scared. Becker knows that of his girls: “They’re not intimidated by anybody, whether it’s their record, or their height, or their athleticism.”
Another piece of art . . .

Jadison Wharram is on fire. The senior forward has made four straight baskets in under three minutes to move Morton from a 12-all tie to a 20-16 lead late in the second quarter. But that’s not the prettiest part. That, she creates with 2:11 to play in the half. From a step behind the free throw line, Wharram rises for a jump shot. She has already made her first five mid-range jumpers and a layup, 6-for-6. As her 17-footer floats toward the basket, Wharram floats away, half-turning to start back on defense because she is fairly certain, now floating on a shooter’s high, that she soon will be 7-for-7. “When I let it go,” she said later, “I thought, ‘That feels good.’” It was good, Steph Curry-good. Morton led, 22-16, and Morgan Park never came closer.

It’s not so much that the Potters beat Morgan Park and now will play Chicago North Lawndale for the title Saturday afternoon. It’s the way they did it.

Here was Morgan Park, out of Chicago, a powerhouse in the city of big shoulders, a winner 30 times in 33 games, a tall, fast, jump-out-of-the-building team with two Division-1 signees, a team runnin’ and gunnin’ to 66 points a game, once getting 104, never fewer than 47. And what did the Lady Potters do?

The little team from the pumpkin patches of downstate Illinois won by double figures. But even that is not it. To say the Potters beat Morgan Park is to understate it. Morgan Park never had a chance. Up by eight at halftime, the Potters won the third quarter, 10-2, and led, 34-18. By game’s end – really, long before that – the Chicagoans had been reduced to a scratching, clawing mess.

Another piece of Potters’ art . . .

Tenley Dowell, a freshman, has the ball, late in the game, dribbling away from Morgan Park’s star, Deja Cage, a Division-1 quality player already committed to Loyola University. Her team’s leading scorer all season, Cage played this day on a sprained ankle, ineffective from the start. And now she is chasing after Morton’s rookie, desperate to keep up so she could foul her. Finally, exhausted, the big star reaches out and grabs a chunk of jersey. Dowell makes two free throws. It’s 50-34.

The master artist in all the Potters’ works was the coach, Becker. At his team’s last full-speed practice Wednesday afternoon, he told the players how the Morgan Park game would go. In every aspect, he was dead-on . . . .

“They won’t guard us for more than two passes, and I guarantee you that.”

“We can take advantage of them with back cuts and drives to the hoop.”

“They won’t box out on rebounds. They’ll try to out-athlete us.”

“Offensively, we will attack the paint and we will be patient.”

“Defensively, we’re not built to deny them everything. But we will deny them the paint. We’ll take our chances with them shooting 3’s. I’m not saying they won’t light it up. But I’ve been to Redbird many times and I’ve seen shooting percentages go down. I hope they make their first two or three. We’ll stay the course. Then hope they go 3 for 24 and we get 90, 95 percent of the rebounds. That would be lovely.”
“We have to be good fundamentally.”

He wanted the Potters to do the little things perfectly, such as back-cut passes to people slashing from the side – as done by Kayla McCormick to Dowell, as done by Caylie Jones to Wharram. He also wanted the Potters to do the seemingly simplest thing perfectly. Catch a pass the right way. Come to it, catch it, rip it to a secure spot against your side, face the defender, and “let the dust settle,” meaning see what’s happening around you before making another move.

I am here to tell you that as the Potters left Morgan Park in a puddle of despair, I, the veteran sportswriter, did something I’ve never done before. On every pass in the fourth quarter, I watched how the Potters caught the ball. I swear that every time – not most of the time, every time – they did catch/rip/face/let the dust settle.

They shot 48 percent from the field to Morgan Park’s 32.6. They matched the bigger, more athletic team in rebounds, 22 apiece. The losers didn’t go 3-for-24 on 3’s but they were 7-for-19 and 4 of the 7 came too late to be meaningful.

Meanwhile, being patient while attacking, Morton committed only 7 turnovers against the losers’ pressing defense and forced them into 26 fouls. The Potters made 28 of 35 free throws to Morgan Park’s 2 of 2. Brandi Bisping went 19 for 21 at the line, making 12 straight in the fourth quarter when all of Morton’s 20 points came on free throws. A curious note: In the fourth quarters of last year’s two Final Four games and this one, Morton has made one field goal – one – and 51 free throws. Becker said, “We’re very good with a lead. They can’t guard you at the free throw line.”

And now what?

A year ago, assistant coach Bill Davis set the road-to-a-state-championship tone with a locker room speech in January during which he said, “Now you have to finish it.”

Now the Potters play another Chicago team, North Lawndale Prep.

Sound familiar?

In December’s State Farm Holiday Classic, North Lawndale made three improbable 3-point shots, two of them at the buzzer, to keep alive a four-overtime game in which it eventually beat Morton, 48-46.

“They’re one of the three teams to beat us this season,” Bisping said. “And that’s not going to happen again.”

Good.

Before the Morton High School girls basketball coach, Bob Becker, climbed the ladder to the net, he had kissed his sophomore point guard, who is his daughter, and once up there he snipped the last loop and twirled the net above his head, letting it fly down to the celebrants. It landed in a player’s hands, Jadison Wharram’s, and the canny veteran did a canny veteran thing. She tossed the net to a precocious rookie, Tenley Dowell, who draped it around her neck, a halo lit by her smile.

Dowell had already celebrated once. She took a rebound on Burlington Central’s last shot and dribbled up-court, pausing only to toss the ball in the air happily. All of which was delightful and wonderful and a perfect way to celebrate survival when every possession came with the possibility of heartbreak – all fabulous, except for one thing. The game wasn’t over. Wharram, if not Dowell, knew it.

“When Tenley was fouled, there was still one second to play,” Wharram said.

Actually, in this high-tech time, the clock showed 01.5 seconds to play. Morton led, 32-29. So Dowell would go to the free throw line with a chance to 1) ice the victory, or 2) miss a free throw and allow Burlington Central to throw one in from 70 feet (the things a guy imagines) and send the game into overtime while causing several Mortonites to faint into their popcorn.

Dowell, after all, is a 50 percent free throw shooter, or was before she grew up in the Washington sectional championship game and made 5 of 6 free throws when 5 of 6 were needed. This time, with 01.5 seconds to play, and the Burlington Central student section hoping to distract her by chanting, “USA . . . USA,” Dowell made the first free throw (thank you, rookie) and added the bonus for a 34-29 final.

“When I got the net,” Wharram said, “I gave it to Tenley so she could celebrate again.”

The victory in the super-sectional at Manlius last night moved Morton into the Final Four at Illinois State’s Redbird Arena again. The No. 1-ranked Lady Potters need two more victories for a second straight Class 3A state championship. In a Friday afternoon semifinal, they play second-ranked Morgan Park with the winner playing for the title Saturday afternoon. It is the Potters third Final Four appearance in the last four seasons, their fourth in 10 years.

I could tell you a thousand ways that Morton beat Burlington Central, but I won’t, partly because I can’t read my frenzied scribblings, but mainly because Bob Becker, floating on a cloud of joy an hour after the game, said it all better than any play-by-play notes could say it.

“I love my kids,” the coach said. “They are tough, they are resilient, they will do anything to gut it out. Guts, grit, determination, however you want to say it. They know how to win. They’re winners. They’re winners now and they’ll be winners their entire lives.”

Wait. I hear the basketball gods whispering. They demand explanation of Becker’s euphoria. That much, I can do. I can explain two plays that illustrate the Lady Potters’ refusal to lose.

Both came with the score tied at 25, and both came after Brandi Bisping had made careless passes intercepted by Burlington Central.

At 5:03, Josi Becker, the coach’s daughter, sprinted in pursuit of the Burlington Central girl who had stolen Bisping’s pass. Not only did Becker catch her a step from the hoop, she reached in front and knocked the ball away. Burlington Central retained possession, but Becker’s all-out hustle gave Morton a chance to play 5-on-5 defense — and the Potters’ defensive stop there kept the game tied.

Thirty-two seconds later, Bisping redeemed herself after a second careless pass by out-running the thief to the hoop and setting up so quickly as to draw charge and regain possession.

So, now, let’s do the movie thing and cut to the chase where it has become 27-all with two minutes and six seconds to play. These were two good teams. Both played tenacious defense. Both handled the ball well. In essence, they were the same team, mirror images in important ways, both coming in off dominant seasons (Morton 30-3, Burlington Central 26-4). The lead changed hands seven times in the first half. Burlington Central up two at the most, Morton up five twice early in the third quarter.

With 2:06 to play, Burlington Central tied it at 27 on a driving layup by Kayla Ross, one of five senior starters and one of three Rockets with more than 1,000 points in her career. (Think how good your defense has to be to give that team only 29 points.)

Only 15 seconds later, Morton answered decisively. From her team’s set offense, running a play called “Snap,” the little senior guard Kayla McCormick delivered a pass at the right time and in the right place to the slashing Brandi Bisping, whose left-handed layup produced a bucket — and a free throw if she could ignore the raucous Burlington Central student section again chanting “Brandi . . . Brandi” in hopes of distraction.

Hah. Even before the game, Bisping had cut those students out of her life, never to allow them in again. During warm-ups, she took Morton’s other starters to the side for a talk, most of it meant for Dowell and Josi Becker, newcomers to big-stage moments.

“Those Burlington students were super-mean,” Bisping said later. “I just wanted to make sure that Tenley and Josi didn’t let them get in their heads.”

Bisping’s free throw gave Morton a 30-27 lead which it never lost, thanks to four free throws in the game’s last 25 seconds by Wharram and Dowell.

Bisping led Morton with 13 points, Wharram had 11, Dowell 6, Caylie Jones 2, and McCormick and Jacey Wharram 1 apiece.

One thing more. I should mention the team bus trip to Manlius. Manlius, as I have said, is a tiny village on the prairie of north central Illinois, an hour and 20 minutes north of Peoria on Illinois 40. As reward for making it to the super-sectional, the Lady Potters rode in style, not in a clankety-clank school bus but in a comfy chartered coach. It was a scenic ride, if you like your scenery in Fifty Shades of Brown. Along that stretch of 40 in late February there is nothing but brown grass and brown dirt and siloes and grain elevators and trees that look like witches’ arthritic fingers.

We saw Singing Bird Road, Hillock Hollow Road, and the Murkel Ridge U-Cut Christmas Tree farm. Signs pointed to Wyoming (not that Wyoming, but you could wonder) and Sparland and Osceola. In Bradford, we passed a home flying a Marine Corps flag. We passed three cemeteries. We straddled a dead skunk. We saw a ’38 Packard in a barn lot. The Potters’ trainer, Katie Gavin, once shouted out, “Turkeys! Two in that field!”

Winning made Illinois 40 a paradise. On the smiling ride back through the dark wilds of Stark County, assistant coach Megan Hasler called out to Bob Becker, “Coach, if we win State again, can we buy this bus and use it for all our games?”

A good idea.

A good idea?

Hell, it oughta be a law.

Don’t ask me how they did it because I was there and I have no idea except that their littlest big girl grabbed the game by the throat and then their scaredest (is that a word?) rookie got brave when she needed to be the bravest kid out there and so the Morton High School Lady Potters beat Washington, 42-35, for a sectional championship that moved them into the Elite Eight, three victories away from a second straight state championship.

I’ll stop here. I’ll catch my breath. You might want to read that first paragraph again because I’m pretty sure I was on a fast break with no idea how to finish it. So I’ll wait here until you read that again and I’ll do my part by trying to make plain what the hell I’m talking about.

Better, yes, to explain it in four simple, clear words. Those words are . . . .

Jadison Wharram!

Tenley Dowell!

Wharram claims to be 5-foot-8 and I claim to be a Brad Pitt clone, grown old. Jadison is 5-8 “in her tennis shoes,” assistant coach Bill Davis has said, but she plays inside with the big ‘uns, which is why I call her the Potters’ littlest big girl. She was never bigger than in the third quarter of last night’s game at Galesburg High’s John Thiel Gymnasium.

In 5 minutes and 5 seconds, she scored 11 of Morton’s points in a 13-2 run that brought the Potters from three down to eight up. She did it with a driving layup on the baseline, then a pair of 17-foot jump shots followed by two more baseline drives and a free throw.

Afterwards, asked about those moments, it was as if all that had happened without her notice.

“I wasn’t thinking about anything like we were on a run,” the senior forward said. “The baseline drives were there and I just took ‘em. What I felt at that time was that the team was really coming together.”

From there on, Washington never got closer than three points largely because, near the end of the frenzied game, who steps to the free throw line for Morton except maybe the last girl you want to step to the free throw line with the game and the season depending on how she does.

Tenley Dowell is a freshman, a 5-9 guard. She’s going to be really good. Right now she’s good. She’s good at many things, but one of those things is not free-throw shooting. For the season, she’s at about 50 percent. On this night, she’d made 1 of 2 in the first quarter and hadn’t been back to the line until there were 65 seconds to play and Morton led, 35-32. Here she came.

“I was nervous,” she said later. “I was thinking, ‘I gotta make these.’”

On a scale of 10, how nervous?

“I think a 7,” she said nervously.

Wednesday mornings, before school, the Potters shoot. The greatest of the Boston Celtics, Larry Bird, used to do morning sessions in high school at French Lick, Indiana. His high school team once lost a game because a kid who never showed up for the morning work missed an important free throw. Thirty years later, Bird could still tell you that kid’s name.

Point is, Tenley Dowell shows up at the Potterdome on Wednesday mornings, wanting to be better than a 50-50 shooter at the line, and so with 65 seconds to play last night and Washington threatening, here’s what Tenley Dowell did.

Made ‘em both.

And 23 seconds later . . .

Made another.

And 7 seconds after that . . .

Swish, swish.

The freshman made 5 of 6 when she needed to make 5 of 6 and Morton’s lead moved from 35-32 to 40-33 with 35 seconds to play.

At that point, for the first time in an hour, a guy could exhale and consider the truth that Morton had beaten Washington again (for the third time this season) and raised its record to 30-3. It did it with the tenacious, relentless defense and grind-it-out offense that has shaped the team’s identity since its leading scorer, all-state guard Chandler Ryan, was lost for the season with a knee injury 24 games ago.

Wharram led Morton with 19 points. Dowell had 8, Caylie Jones 7, Josi Becker and Brandi Bisping 3 each, and Kayla McCormick 2.

It was the kind of hard-earned victory that moved the team’s coach, Bob Becker, to rhapsodies of praise for his girls’ grit, toughness, resolve, purpose, and all-around determination to do exactly what assistant coach Davis had proposed in the locker room before the game.

Dipping into his high school basketball days at Morton, Davis told the girls about a cheer he remembered. He even did it for them . . .

“Rah-rah-ree, kick ‘em in the knee!

“Rah-rah-rass, kick ‘em in the . . .other knee!”

Bisping, the team’s leading scorer this season, was among the Potters’ leading knee-kickers this night. Though she rebounded and defended well, her offensive work was limited by one official who called three offensive fouls on her, at least of two of which were of the phantom/invisible/are-you-kidding-me kind. It was further testament to the Potters’ refusal to lose that they won despite Bisping’s fouling out with 2:50 to play when Morton led 31-26. Unlike your correspondent, Bisping could explain the whole thing simply: “We’ve got heart through the roof.”

Now it’s on to the super-sectional against Burlington Central next Monday night at Bureau Valley High School.

You well may ask, “Where is Bureau Valley High School?”

At Manlius.

You then may ask, “Where’s Manlius?”

Damned if I know.