Morton’s Lady Potters 50, Team with really long name 27
The Potters were not particularly sharp tonight in their victory over Wheaton Warrenville South to open defense of their State Farm Holiday Classic championship – and I know the feeling. For reasons that made sense at the time, I got out of bed at 2:15 a.m. Saturday. That’s 2:15 a.m., as in are-you-out-of-your-mind with this 2:15 a.m. thing? Exacerbating the crazy, I then drove to Walmart 18 mile away. (I am near no living thing except deer, raccoons, and a lone, feral cat prowling for mice.) A sane person’s question: Why did you go to Walmart at 2:15 a.m. on Saturday morning December 22? My answer: I was awake and I needed Christmas lights.
Turns out that 3 a.m. on a Saturday is good time to shop at Walmart. Most Walmartians are asleep in their alien-planet pods. I had clear sailing in the Christmas lights section. Of course, the Sam Walton Law of Merchandising makes it illegal to enter a Walmart and escape with only the stuff on your list. Done with a garland or two, done with lights for uses I’d never before imagined, done with the cash-register impulse buy – Snickers! – I was home and in bed at zero-dark-thirty. I believe that’s the same time our Special Ops people rang Osama Bin Laden’s wake-up bell. Among civilians it’s known as are-you-out-of-your-mind with this 4 in the morning thing?
Point is, I was not particularly sharp the rest of that Saturday. Seventeen hours later, I had to write about a Lady Potters game. By then I was spectacularly dull. A constellation of historic Potters stars made the Potterdome glitter that night with story possibilities. I should have asked what they thought of this year’s team. But did I hustle to get Brandi Bisping on record? Did I chase down Chandler Ryan? With Jadison Wharram and Kassidy Shurman in the house – my go-to quote machines back in the day!! – did I do any more than type their names into my story?
No, and here’s why. In 21 hours, I had slept three. Last Saturday night, I was the zombie sportswriter. I’ve been hooked up to typing machines a long time and I can make it sound like I worked my tail off. But I knew better. I’d mailed it in. The only thing to do in that case is the same thing the Lady Potters now will do – forget what just happened and tee it up again as soon as possible.
It’s not like a 23-point victory is a bad thing. It’s a good thing. A win is a win is a win. It was the Potters’ ninth straight, all by double figures, none closer than 17 points. It raised their season record to 13-1 going into Thursday night’s 8:30 p.m. quarterfinal game against Chicago Simeon at Normal Community High School. And yet, for all that, the Potters were truly good – championship-good – for less than seven minutes of the game.
Because he has been at this for 20 seasons now, the Morton coach, Bob Becker, believes he knows exactly what happened to cause instances where, at least twice, Potters made passes to people who weren’t there. At least three times, they missed point-blank layups. Who knows how many times they passed up wide-open mid-range shots? Good heavens, they outscored the Wheaton Warrenville people, 21-1, in 6 minutes and 40 seconds of the first half – which is spectacular until you realize it means that in the other 25 minutes and 20 seconds against that same team, they won only 29-26.
Becker blames the not-particularly-sharp night on “three days off.” He gave the team three days with no practice around Christmas. ‘Twas an educator’s gift to his students. They’re high school kids. It’s time with their families. They won’t always be teenagers, they’ll be gone. Give ‘em time around Christmas. The educator in the coach knows it was the right thing to do, but the coach in the educator gets antsy with three days off. He wants his team razor-sharp all the time, not some of the time. Three days off? It’s an eternity, and Becker himself felt its effects.
“I must’ve gained five pounds over Christmas,” he said. He wears one of those devil’s-workshop watches that counts your steps. He says his usual day, as an elementary school phys ed teacher and high school basketball coach, comes to 25,000 steps. “This week,” he said, with a smile born of pleasure and seasoned by regret, “about the only steps I took were from the couch to the food counter.”
To further his analysis of the three-days-off syndrome, Becker said, “They know this tournament is tough, and they know they’ve got to run the gauntlet of good teams to win it. And what happens after the time off and a game like this is that they’ll come back the next night and play well.”
I mentioned a 21-1 run that was essentially the ball game. It began with a Megan Gold fast-break layup at 2:44 of the first quarter and ended with a Courtney Jones move inside at 4:04 of the second. It was done with aggressive defense that forced the Wheaton Warrenville offense to set up two steps behind the 3-point arc. (The WW’s made only 2 of 21 shots in the first half.) Morton’s offense was its usual blend of transition layups off its trapping press, Tenley Dowell and Lindsey Dullard slashes to the rim, and the occasional 3-pointer (four tonight) loosening up the defense inside.
Dowell led Morton’s scoring with 13. Jones had 10 (including a catch-and-release 3 at the third-quarter buzzer), Katie Krupa 7, Dullard and Peyton Dearing 5 each, Gold 4, Maddy Becker 3, Olivia Remmert 2, and Addie Cox 1.
It is now 9:38 p.m. If you see me at Walmart at 3 a.m., please call my keeper. I have a game to write tomorrow.