When the Morton High School Lady Potters are ahead late in a game, as they were in tonight’s 51-39 victory over Chicago St. Ignatius, it’s fun to watch what they do. They make people crazy. They play keep-away. Desperate defenders scramble after the ball. It’s here, it’s there, and by the time defenders figure out where the damn ball went, it’s gone somewhere else. You’ve seen cats chase their tails. It’s like that, only with a basketball.

The Potters spread the floor. Four players go to the corners of the court. One, Caylie Jones, takes up a spot above the free throw line. There she becomes the center of all ball movement. Now it’s a roulette wheel, the ball spinning around that center and where it stops no one knows. Trapped out front, Josi Becker, or Tenley Dowell, or Kassidy Shurman, gets rid of the ball by throwing it to Jones in the middle.

“My job then is ‘catch and look opposite,’” Jones said. If she takes a pass from her left, she looks to move the ball to someone in the right corner. Then it comes back out to the front and the wheel keeps spinning, the cat keeps chasing, and on this night the St. Ignatius people became frustrated and breathless. “Burned,” said their coach, Cara Doyle, shorthand for burned out and, perhaps, burned up by the futility of chasing the spinning ball.

The victory put the Potters in the championship game of the State Farm Holiday Classic for the third time in four years. Bob Becker, the Morton coach, said, “We’re right where we want to be.” With a chance to win the Classic for the first time, they will play Normal Community, an upset winner over previously undefeated Peoria Richwoods tonight. Morton beat Normal Community five weeks ago, 55-49.

Though the victory was Morton’s 10th straight and gives the team a 13-1 record, the issue seemed in doubt even three minutes into the fourth quarter. The Potters’ lead, once as large as a dozen points, had been reduced to five at 39-34. St. Ignatius may not have known it, but it was about to enter the minutes when Morton drives people nuts.

Whatever happened before no longer matters. That Morton went on a 10-0 run in the first quarter to establish a cushion it never lost, forget it. That St. Ignatius came back with a barrage of 3-pointers – it was 7-for-15 from behind the arc while Morton was 3-for-17 – forget that, too. The game would be won or lost in the frenetic last three minutes when Morton went to its spread-delay game.

In those three minutes, Morton made no turnovers against the St. Ignatius pressure. The Potters controlled the ball so well that St. Ignatius did not get the ball long enough to take a shot – not a single shot – until there were 21 seconds left. The Chicagoans had been forced into such a mad rush that they committed four straight turnovers. For those three minutes, the game was essentially confined to Morton’s end of the floor.

Meanwhile, unable to take the ball from Morton, St. Ignatius had to foul. The Potters’ last eight points and 10 of their last 12 came on free throws. It is a tried and true formula: get the lead, protect the ball, make free throws. It has helped the Potters win three straight state championships and it now has them on the brink of a Classic title that has eluded them for a decade and more.

So, yes, I wanted to see tonight’s game.

Snow?

What snow?

Snow was coming down, maybe six inches worth on the way, when a friend asked if I intended to drive to Normal for the game.

The things some people ask.

You know the postman’s motto. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

So, c’mon. Snow?

“Take an emergency bag, please,” she said in a text. “Blankets, water, snacks, and a flashlight in case of accident delays and/or your car dies en route.”

Do Christmas cookies count as snacks?

They did today. Santa’s cookies went into the back seat with boots, socks, a blanket, a flashlight, and gloves. I even found my AAA card. I was prepared for disaster. I told my friend, “Now I’m going to be disappointed if I don’t drive into a ditch.”

So I made it there and back, and that was a good thing, and it was good to see the Potters play well. Besides distributing the ball flawlessly under that great pressure late in the game, Caylie Jones was a major factor rebounding. Lindsey Dullard again excelled inside defensively. Tenley Dowell was an offensive force, gliding through defenses, and with Courtney Jones she starred defensively. They shared duties on St. Ignatius’s star guard, Molly Gannon, who had scored 20 and 17 points in her team’s first two Classic games; Gannon had only nine against the Potters, none in the game’s decisive last 11 minutes. “They did a great job on Molly,” Doyle, the St. Ignatius coach, said. “They were all over her.”

• Dullard led Morton’s scorers with 14, Dowell had 11, Josi Becker 10. Coufrtney Jones scored 5, Caylie Jones 4, Maddy Becker 3, and Megan Gold and Kassidy Shurman 2 each.