Morton’s Lady Potters 68, Pekin 18. It really wasn’t that close.
From my perch in the third row of the bleachers, right behind the 5th and 6th graders Heat team, I texted a friend a note that was not-at-all mysterious: “M 53-0 at the half.”
Being a girls basketball fan, she understood perfectly. She knew the Morton High School Lady Potters were Culverizing the poor Lady Dragons of Pekin High.
She texted back: “Go home. No story there. Go directly to the State finals.”
Duty demanded that I stay to the foregone conclusion. Besides, at the time of our correspondence, the Potters were three short of the 10 3-pointers that would cause the local Culver’s fast food restaurant to give away FREE ICE CREAM! to everyone in the Potterdome.
You’ve seen major league ballparks where they hang K’s to keep track of strikeouts. They were hanging 3’s on the Potterdome’s south-end stage. When it got to eight 3’s, Phil Skinner got on the phone. He owns the Culver’s franchise in Morton.
He said, “I told ‘em to get ready, we might have 300 customers coming in for FREE CUSTARD!”
Oops, yes, my bad. It’s FREE CUSTARD! Or, as the man in charge explained, “It’s premium ice cream!”
I’m old school. I thought custard was like yogurt or tofu or some dainty delicacy. Look, I remember the Good Humor wagon ringing bells. I want FREE ICE CREAM! With sprinkles! In a waffle cone! Handed to me by a Mr. Rogers look-alike in one of those brilliantly white Good Humor uniforms.
But, OK, I defer to greater wisdom here. I happily accepted a coupon for custard handed out by a Lady Potters’ freshman, Maggie Hobson, who on this night was a busy young woman. She played very well in the jayvee game, helped hang the 3’s on the stage, and admitted the varsity game was “a little stressful.”
Stressful?
“I ran the spotlight,” Hobson said, meaning the light that is turned on the each of the Potters starters as they hustle out during pre-game introductions in the darkened Potterdome. “It has to be right on time on each player.”
Safe to say, I believe, that Maggie Hobson did all of her jobs perfectly because, on this night, everything the Lady Potters touched turned not to gold but to … FREE CUSTARD!
Speaking of gold, why was Megan Gold running through the high school parking lot in uniform at 5:23 p.m.? She’s one of the Lady Potters’ seniors. A bunch had been hanging out at a player’s house when they realized they better get to the gym. “Hi,” she shouted while running, and later dropped in a mid-range jumper that gave Morton a 21-0 lead, and even later said, “It was an historic night.”
Historic?
“53-0,” she said, and was kind enough to not include a duh.
“Truly a clinic,” head coach Bob Becker said. “Relentless. High energy. At both ends.”
“Never seen a halftime shutout,” assistant coach Bill Davis said.
However mediocre Pekin is, and whatever their record is means nothing to this story, because on this night the Potters would have made even a good team beg for tender mercies. In fewer than three minutes of the first quarter, Morton scored 18 points in every way points can be scored: a powered-up layup by Katie Krupa, a pair of 3’s by Lindsey Dullard, a mid-court steal and breakaway by Tenley Dowell.
Six points a minute for a game makes it 192-0.
It was so one-sided that one side of my notebook was empty. I split the pages, Morton’s scoring down one side, the opponents scoring down the other. When the opponents do not score, it gives a wise-guy sportswriter plenty of white space to fill with wise-guy notes, such as:
“Let the Heat take over.”
“Somebody get the 10th. I’m hungry.”
The blessed somebody became Raquel Frakes. Her 3 from the top left of the arc at 1:12 of the third quarter gave Morton a 62-7 lead and set off the loudest cheer of the Potterdome night. To be fair, it was perhaps only a decibel or three greater than the cheering, some of it no doubt sincere, when Pekin first scored a minute and 39 seconds into the second half, a 3-ball cutting Morton’s lead to 53-3.
Morton is now 8-1 for the season and 2-0 in the Mid-Illini Conference (in which it has won 35 straight games and 44 of its last 45.)
Thirteen Potters scored. Dowell, Dullard, and Bridget Wood all had 11 points. Maddy Becker had 6, Frakes 5, Olivia Remmert 4, Courtney Jones 4, Gold 4, Krupa 3, Kathryn Reiman 3, Peyton Dearuing 2, Claire Kraft 2, and Addie Cox 2.