At the half, it was 17-15, Morton. To give you an idea of how exciting it wasn’t, Pekin scored 6 points in the first quarter, Morton 4 in the second. Had I had brought along reading material – yes, the L.L. Bean Christmas catalogue – I would have ordered new duck hunting gear, though I’ve never been duck hunting in my whole entire life.

Page 38 of the catalogue advertised Bean Boots, lined with flannel, $219.

Wait.

$219, for boots with pajamas in ‘em?

Anyway, praise be, there came a halftime intermission during which game-changing decisions were made that allowed first-half transgressions to be redeemed by second-half good works.

I mean, after starting 1-for-11 on 3-point tries, in the second half the Potters tried three 3’s, making none, as in none, nada, zero, one fewer than one. Instead, they made 14 field goals, all from point-blank range, a dozen layups and two rebound put-backs. “Attacking the basket,” to quote the Potters coach, Bob Becker, they won the second half, 28-7.

I hurry to say that not all “layups” are alike. Thinking here of an Izzy Hutchinson “layup” that comes at the end of a long, long, long sprinter’s stride around defenders that takes her to a place where she can sneak the ball over the rim. Thinking here of an Ellie VanMeenen “layup” as the exclamation point on a sentence that begins way out there beyond the arc and winds it way to conclusion in the paint.

All that, and more, now thinking of successive Addy Engel field goals on a night she scored 14 points, all on “layups.”

The first came when she crashed into a Pekin defender, did not say excuse me, and with her left hand, her natural hand, put the ball off the board.

The second “layup” was a beauty, a wonder to behold, and more pleasing to these eyes than any of a thousand thunderous dunks by big boys with no imagination.

What Engel did was drive down the left side of the lane. At speed, she rose off her right foot. If not fully turned away from the hoop, she was most the way turned. Then, with her right hand, her off-hand, she flipped the ball back over her head and against the glass. Two points the hard way, a “layup” that, if the rulesmakers had any sense, should have been worth three.

Could she even see the rim?

"Kind of," she said, "for a second."

“I didn’t teach her that,” Becker said. “If I tried that, I’d hurt myself.”

The coach declared it a good night, half of it anyway. “We were dominant. Much more purposeful at both ends in the second half.” Then he raised the stakes to capital letters. “We were DOMINANT in the paint.”

With a fourth straight victory and seventh in eight games, the Potters are 8-3 oversll (with three home games to play before Christmas) and 3-0 in the Mid-Illini Conference. Though Pekin is now 2-6 for the season, it had been competitive against good teams, losing by 11 to Class 4A power Normal Community and by 13 to Mid-Illini contender Dunlap.

Engel’s 14 led Morton’s scoring. Freshman Paige Selke, making the first start of her career, had 13. Ellie VanMeenen scored 8, sister Abby had 4, Hutchinson 3, and Magda Lopko 3.