Morton’s Lady Potters 80, Limestone 33
Quietly, almost without notice, the Potters tonight clinched their fifth straight Mid-Illini Conference championship. Their 45th consecutive victory in conference play gave them a 12-0 league record this season with two games to play. Everyone else has lost at least three. That said, I am here to celebrate loudly what we saw tonight, another tour de force performance by a rising star, Lindsey Dullard.
Certainly, she is not new news. The 6-foot-1 junior has been a starter for three seasons. Absolutely, by any measure, she has been a good and valuable player. With her in the lineup as a freshman, the Potters won a state championship. But what we’re seeing now, over the last month, is Lindsey Dullard growing into her game.
She has always been enough of a shooter, ball-handler, rebounder, and defender to win games by being good at one or two of those things on a given night. But in the last month, she has been good at every one of those things every night. Let’s make up a statistic. Let’s allot 25 percent to each of those four categories. Good at one thing a night, give her 25 percent. Two, 50 percent. Right now, for a month, she’s at 100 percent every night.
Not that Limestone was much competition. The Mid-Illini is down while Morton is up, now l24-3 for the season and ranked No. 3 in Class 3A. But at the end of one three-minute stretch in the first half tonight, I made a note, in my semi-cryptic code, that read: “Dull do all, defl, blox, steal, asst, reb, 3.” Translation: Lindsey Dullard did it all, a deflection on the press, a blocked shot under the hoop, an open-court steal, a fast-break assist, a rebound, and a 3-pointer from the right-side arc.
I made those notes after a possession that went this way: moving into a passing lane at the top of the Limestone key, Dullard plucked a pass out of the air. Three dribbles at full speed and she lobbed a pass ahead to Olivia Remmert. Remmert missed the layup. And who gets the rebound? The one who stole the ball in the first place, made the pass, and caught up to the break before anyone else got there: Dullard, who then moved the ball to Maddy Becker at the top of the key for a 3-pointer. One possession: a steal, a rebound, two perfect passes, one assist.
“The last six, seven games, Lindsey’s been just fantastic,” the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, said. “Tonight she filled up the stats sheet. Everything she’s doing makes everybody better. And if you’re seeing only what she does with the ball, you’re missing what she does off the ball. She’s an All-Stater, a no-doubter.”
Asked to explain what’s happening lately, Dullard said, “I’m really confident right now. My focus has really been on defense because defense turns into my offense. On defense I like to anticipate where the ball is going and . . . ”
I finished the sentence. “And steal it?”
“I find that very enjoyable,” she said.
She scored only seven points tonight, another reminder that scoring, while necessary, is not as important as being the most effective player on the court, which Dullard was tonight and has been for some time now.
She was so good early, by the way, that the Potters built a 51-12 halftime lead and gave your reporter a chance to do research on a question he has long pondered. Why is a school in Bartonville named Limestone High School?
“Must be a limestone quarry around here,” one Potter fan said.
“We’re in Limestone Township,” another said.
“But why,” I asked, “is it Limestone Township?”
So I went to Wikipedia, typed in Limestone High School, which led me to Bartonville, which led me to “The Haunted Infirmary,” which led me to the Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane, which led me to a photograph of the asylum’s hospital sometime between its opening in 1902 and its demolition a couple years ago, and I swear that huge, beautiful, scary-as-hell building looked like it was made out of . . . yes . . . limestone.
“Had to be a quarry nearby,” the first Potter fan said, and she was very proud of what she said next. “We’re getting to the bottom of it.”
Tenley Dowell led Morton’s scoring with 16. Maddy
Becker had 13 (with four 3’s). All 13 Potters who played scored: Courtney Jones 8, Dullard 7, Katie Krupa 6, Bridget Wood 6, Makenna Baughman 6, Claire Kraft 5, Megan Gold 4, Raquel Frakes 4, Peyton Dearing 3, Olivia Remmert 2.