Dunlap 59

Lady Potters 38

The good news: When Tatym Lamprecht threw in her fourth 3-pointer and Ellie VanMeenen followed with a banked-in 3 from the top of the key and Addy Engel added a free throw, the Potters led at halttime, 29-27.

After that, nothing but bad news.

Third quarter, the Potters scored three points.

Fourth quarter, six points.

Outscored in the second half, 32-9.

By Dunlap. Dunlap is a good team in these parts, 14-3 overall, maybe the second-best team in the Mid-Illini Conference. But c’mon. It’s Dunlap. Dunlap is not a great team. Dunlap does not take your heart out and stomp that sucker flat.

But Dunlap scored the first 13 points of the third quarter and then, after a Lamprecht free throw, it scored six more. It outscored Morton in the third, 22-3.

Somewhere in there, Morton called timeout. For the longest time in that timeout – and time moves slowly in such dismal situations – the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, must have set a record for silence. He crouched in front of his team and said nothing. Finally, he spoke softly. And whatever he said, it did not end the night’s mysteries.

“I asked them in the locker room afterwards, ‘What happened in the second half?’” he said.

Lamprecht got one shot in the second half, a futile fling on a drive into traffic. The Potters’ only field goal, other than two late layups, was a 12-footer by Graci Junis in the third quarter; by then, the Potters’ offense was a stuttering mess of weak passes and uncertain movement.

As in three or four games lately, the Potters played as well as possible for a while – that first half – followed by an extended time in which they played as poorly as possible. They have now lost four of their last five games and are 11-7 overall.

“Dunlap came out with more intensity in the third quarter,” Becker said. In those poor stretches, the coach said, “The opponent is playing harder, tougher, scrappier, mentally and physically, than we are. We gotta do some soul-searching.”

Morton’s scoring tonight: Lamprecht 17, Engel 10, Izzy Hutchinson 4, VanMeenen 3, Junis 2, Ruby Brubaker 2.

Peoria High 56

Lady Potters 38

From a distance, this one promised to be trouble. Up close, it was.

Peoria High came to the Potterdome tonight on an eight-game winning streak that made its season record 14-2 and moved it to #7 in the state’s latest Class 3A poll. Meechie Edwards, the Lions’ coach, was in full-throated roar, as always, and his team found its own authoritative voice with a 12-0 run in three minutes of the fourth quarter that ended any thoughts the Potters had of an upset.

Down by 12 entering the fourth, and despite making only 5 of 12 free throws to that point, Morton trailed only 35-28 with 6:11 to play. Then Peoria sprinted away on a 15-footer, another from there, a layup, a 3-pointer, and a layup-and-one for the killing dozen points. Truth is, the Lions hardly needed those points; their defense, quick and relentlessly aggressive, already had harassed/trapped/frightened Morton into so many turnovers (19 at that point) that I quit counting.

It was almost fun for a half. Only a 3-pointer at the buzzer gave Peoria a 20-17 halftime lead. I can’t say it was ever truly fun because even in a three-point game the Lions were always dominant. They showed it in the third quarter. That suffocating, ball-hawking defense forced the Potters into nine turnovers in the quarter. Four 3’s helped them win the quarter, 14-5. After that, the issue was never really in doubt.

Now, here’s a sentence often typed in the last 12 seasons: One team was clearly better than the other. Of course, in days past, that “one team” was always Morton. But not tonight. Not when Peoria made 10 3’s (to Morton’s 3), dominated the paint, never let the Potters breathe on offense, and won going away.

“They’re definitely a better team right now,” the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, said. “They’re difficult to guard. They’re skilled at a lot of spots. It’s not just one or two kids.”

The Potters are now 11-6, losers in three of their last four games, and their schedule offers little respite. Friday in the Potterdome they play Dunlap, with whom they share second place in the Mid-Illini Conference at 4-1 (13-3 overall). A week from tonight they go to league-leading Washington, another of Class 3A’s top-10 teams.

All this with an offense going nowhere. In the Potters last three losses, they have had quarters in which they scored 7, 5, 6, 6, and 5 points while losing by 5, 10, and tonight’s 18.

“So we gotta find a way,” Becker said. “It may not be exciting, but maybe we gotta play games in the 30’s.”

Morton’s scoring tonight: Tatym Lamprecht 16 (with all the team’s 3’s), Izzy Hutchinson 8, Addy Engel 8, and two apiece from Julia Laufenberg, Ellie VanMeenen, and Graci Junis.

Geneseo 44
Lady Potters 34

I walk in the house about 10 o’clock tonight and there’s Casey, my cat, who is curious.

“How’d it go?” she says.

“Can you believe it, Casey, it’s 57 degrees outside. The snow has all melted. Suddenly, we’re Florida.”

Casey says, “Meow.”

Meaning I should fetch her a can of salmon.

She says, “Not salmon again.”

Casey is finicky. I was forever a dog person until Casey showed up. For Christmas my sister dear, Sandy, gave me a T-shirt with a legend: “This human belongs to Casey.” So I do what Casey wants me to do.

I drop the salmon and get tuna. She purrs. She says, “You said you were going to a basketball game.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.

“Now who’s finicky?” she says.

So I tell her what happened in the Bloomington High School gym in the fifth-place game of the State Farm Holiday Classic.

“Geneseo showed up, and Morton didn’t,” I say.

“No game then?”

“Nope.”

“So, where have you been the last three hours?”

I say, “Casey, Casey. Do you know what curiosity did to the cat?”

“Don’t bring that weak stuff in here,” she says. “I know ‘curiosity killed the cat.’ I also know the quote goes on to say, ‘But satisfaction brought it back.’ So, satisfy me with a report on the silly game you humans play in the winter.”

(Who knew that Casey can operate the Google machine and trace the origin of ancient lines?)

I tell Casey I talked to the Potters’ coach afterwards. I tell her that Bob Becker said, ‘I haven’t been this disappointed in a long time.’ It wasn’t like losing a perfect season and a state championship on the last shot to Chicago Simeon. That was “heartbreaking.” This was different. ‘Tonight was very poor.’ He said, ‘I gotta get better, I gotta be a better coach and a better leader, and we gotta get better.’’’

I asked Casey, “You ever heard of Joe Paterno?”

“A cat person?” she says.

“A football coach. He lost a big game once. Somebody told him he shouldn’t take it so hard. He said, ‘If a carpenter builds a house and it falls down, he’s supposed to be OK with that?’ That’s what Becker was saying.”

“Becker’s team fell down?”

“Casey, do a dog thing. Open the fridge, fetch me a beer.”

Here’s Morton’s scoring tonight:

Tatym Lamprecht 15, Addy Engel 7, Graci Junis 4, Izzy Hutchinson 3, Ruby Brubaker 3, Magda Lopko 2.

Lady Potters 43

Rochester 36

Odd, what’s happening with these Potters. This afternoon they were up by 20 against a team that scared the tournament’s #1 seed yesterday before losing by 13. They had played “very well for three quarters,” coach Bob Becker said. He believed his team was on the verge of winning by 20 or 25, except–

–there was that fourth quarter thing again.

You may remember Morton’s fourth quarter in its State Farm Holiday Classic’s second-round game against Normal. The Potters had five points in the fourth that night, to lose by five.

Against Rochester, four points, none in the last five minutes.

This time, instead of putting their foot on somebody’s throat, Morton was–

–listen to Becker.

“The finish was terrible, a poor, weak finish. They out-hustled us, out-scrapped us, and we became complacent and wimpy with the ball.”

It was 13-8 after a quarter, 27-11 at the half, and 39-23 after three. Morton’s aggressive 2-3 zone defense stifled any offense the Rochester folks thought might work. Against a passive Rochester zone, Morton’s ball-handling was efficient enough to produce 20 points in the paint.

Both Ellie VanMeenen and Tatym Lamprecht had 9 points through the first three quarters, each with a 3-pointer.

But from a 39-19 lead at 2:08 of the third, the Potters were outscored the rest of the way, 17-4. Most of that damage – the “poor, weak finish” – came in the fourth quarter after Rochester junked its zone and put so much pressure on the Potters’ ball-handlers that in the game’s last five minutes Morton managed only one shot – one, as in 1, one more than none, that 1 a gawdawful, falling-away fling of a thing.

Then came the first wimpy turnover. Followed by another. Though his team was up by 14 with 1:40 to play, Becker, never in favor of wimpy ball-handlers, called a timeout. Followed by another turnover. And another, causing Becker to call another frustrated-coach timeout, this one with 29 seconds to play.

Followed by the Potters’ fifth turnover in the game’s last two minutes.

Then, after a Rochester 3-pointer with four seconds to play, it was over.

One was glad.

Another oddity, this one about history: Morton had played Rochester twice before, both times in state championship games, winning in 2015 and again in 2017. The scores were 47-37 and 44-37. This time 43-36.

Anyway, the victory sent Morton into the winner’s bracket fifth-place game later in the evening.

Morton’s scoring this afternoon: VanMeenen 11, Lamprecht 9, Addy Engel 7, Ruby Brubaker 6, Izzy Hutchinson 5, Abbey Pollard 3, Magda Lopko 2.

Normal Community 40

Lady Potters 35

By noon tomorrow, they’ll have forgotten this one. Maybe. Hope so. Kind souls might even call this one a moral victory. The Potters, a Class 3A team with a 10-3 record, went to the wire against an undefeated team, 13-0, ranked in the top 5 of the state’s Class 4A. That team, Normal Community, “probably expected to slap us around,” the Morton coach, Bob Becker, said. “But our kids didn’t let that happen.”

NCHS led, 37-30, a minute into the fourth quarter of a State Farm Holiday Classic second-round game. For the next 5 ½ minutes, Morton stayed alive. First, Tatym Lamprecht somehow worked a prayer of a running 6-footer into the net. She followed with another slash to the rim before Izzy Hutchinson’s free throw brought the Potters within two, 37-35, with 2:28 to play.

Alas, from there on, the Potters did nothing good. They did not get another shot. For a full precious minute, they could not solve Normal Community’s keep-away offense. When they made a steal with 1:00 left, they missed both ends of a two-shot free throw possibility. Then they did not commit desperation fouls that might give them the ball should NCHS miss its free throws – until there were 4.2 seconds to play, and Normal made both free throws.

Here’s the good news. Morton won the first quarter, 12-11. As bizarre as it sounds, it is nevertheless true that Morton won second half, 12-10. (Yes, really. Morton won the third quarter, 7-5. Each team got 5 points in the fourth.) Normal Community’s 19-11 second quarter was the difference, a difference built on superior play at both ends, particularly on offense where the winners created a dozen in-the-paint scoring chances to Morton’s two or three.

If you liked hacking, clawing defense, you liked this game.

If you liked all-out effort from the get-go, you liked this game.
However.

If you like, oh, even a touch of smooth-flowing offensives, if you like at least a hint of in-rhythm outside shooting, if you came to this game hoping to appreciate careful ball-handling, you did not much like this game. For instance, Normal Community scored as many as seven straight points once all night; Morton scored six straight only twice. And none of that happened in the last half when good defenses met mediocre offenses and produced 16 minutes of when-will-somebody-make-something-happen.

At 12:30 Thursday afternoon, Morton plays Rochester in a winner’s consolation bracket game.

Morton’s scoring tonight: Lamprecht 11, Ellie VanMeenen 6, Julia Laufenberg 6, Addy Engel 6, Izzy Hutchinson 4, Ruby Brubaker 2.

Lady Potters 72

Springfield 44

Good heavens, did you see that? The Potters had six people on the floor in that fourth quarter, maybe seven, sometimes eight. Nothing else explains what they did. There’d be one of ‘em flying down the lane, three more grabbing at the ricocheting rebound, after which four threw themselves ass over teakettle to wrestle the rolling-loose ball away from the Springfield girls, who were bewitched, bewildered, and beleaguered into a 28-point loss when with five minutes to play they still had a chance to win.

Here we need video with surround sound.

Words are good, yes, words are very good, but I need audio-visual help to make best use of the hieroglyphics I scrawled into my notebook in the last five minutes of this opening game in the State Farm Holiday Classic, played at Bloomington High School.

Like this note, scribbled when it was 51-41, Morton, 4:42 to play . . .
“Iz ft, miss 2d, re, pass, Gr 4’.”

Meaning Izzy Hutchinson made a free throw, missed the second, somehow materialized down the right side of the lane to steal away the rebound, took two dribbles into the paint (maybe three?) and passed (handed?) the ball to Graci Junis, who scored on a little 4-footer. A little 4-footer? Big in the moment, it was Morton’s first bucket in the quarter, and it set off a 20-3 run that included stuff like this . . .

“Iz lu, T pass, off ob play, who threw it in?”

Meaning the score became 62-44 when Tatym Lamprecht, at the top of the circle, took a baseline in-bounds pass (from someone, maybe the ghost of Brandi Bisping?) and moved the ball to Hutchinson breaking down the left sidre of the lane for a layup.

All that was part of Morton’s game-closing 21-3 run in which Springfield scored only once in th4e last 5 minutes and caused Bob Becker, the Morton coach, to do what every basketball coach likes to do: praise his team’s defense for being so good it jump-starts the offense.

“All of our great teams started with great intensity at the defensive end,” said the coach whose teams have won four state championships. “Tonight we had lots of hustle plays, kids on the floor, scrappy, played hard. That’s gotta be part of who we are. Scrappy, hustle, relentless effort all over the place.”

Of all the Potters-great-teams’ 28-point victories over the years, this one is unique.

They won the first quarter, 20-4. And they won the last 5 minutes, 21-3.

So, in 13 minutes, Morton outscored Springfield, 41-7.

In the other 19 minutes, Springfield won 37-31.

Becker, said of the early-late dominance: “We showed what we’re capable of.” As for the other part, he allowed himself a big winner’s wry smile: “And we showed what we’re capable of.” Capable of poor second-quarter defense. “Complacency? Maybe a little lazy,” the coach said. But he really liked that fourth quarter. “Layups and free throws – that’s what good teams do, extending the lead. Usually, I would’ve subbed more at the end. But that group did a great job and they earned the chance to play.”

No Potter did it better at the end than Lamprecht, who scored 12 of her 24 points in the fourth quarter and, given the ball out front, ran the Potters offense while daring Springfield to make a defensive mistake: attacking, she scored on three driving layups and six free throws.

What I like most about Lamprecht’s play is that she’s a senior, in her second season after transferring from East Peoria, and while she has always been a star, she spent most of last season hiding from stardom. Now she has grown into a team leader, a captain, a high-fiver, a star happy to be where she is.

She has an explanation.

“I love this team,” she said

Next up for the fith-seeded Potters Iis #4 seed Normal Community, at 5:30 Wednesday at Bloomington High.

Morton’s scoring tonight: Lamprecht 24, Hutchinson 17, 6 each from Junis, Addy Engel, Ellie VanMeenen and Magda Lopko, Julia Laufenberg 5, Abbey Pollard 2.

Lady Potters 67

East Peoria 38

Three minutes and 24 seconds in, the Potters were up 13-0.

I didn’t stop watching.

But this was a no-doubter. The Potters put defensive pressure on East Peoria and East Peoria had no clue. The only drama was the usual Morton-East Peoria question. When would the running-clock start? (Spoiler alert: it happened two minutes into the fourth quarter.)

I watched enough to see the Potters pick East Peoria pockets from end to end. I saw Addy Engel get every rebound she wanted. A deep-bench reserve, Kerrigan Vandel, a junior transfer from East Peoria, scored 8 points, including a 3-pointer on her first shot; she also was valuable defensively. I saw Tatym Lamprecht lead the Potters’ scoring with 15 the hard way (no 3’s, but two open-court steals for breakaway layups and one put-back wrenched away from the bigger people).

My favorite Tatym moment came when she was fouled late in the third quarter, just after those two breakaways.

She was flying in for yet another when an East Peoria defender threw the basketball version of a cross-body block that sent Lamprecht sprawling across the endline. To quote the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, “Tatym got HAMMERED!” In case the reporter standing two feet away didn’t hear him, Becker said, “HAMMERED!,” with yet another exclamation point. “And that’s a FACT,” he said.

When no referee thought the HAMMERING was a foul, Becker walked onto the court in the direction of a zebra on the far side. He also said some words that might have traveled well enough to catch the referee’s attention. She soon came from the far side to the baseline and around toward the Morton bench. There she called a technical foul on Becker.

What had he said to earn the T? “I guess I said enough,” Becker said. Most likey he reminded the referee that officials had been reminded this season that a foul in the first minute of a game is a foul in the last minute of a game. I bet she didn’t like being reminded. “And you gotta protect the kids,” he said, suggesting a cross-body block at speed can be dangerous.

Anyway, I saw all that.

I had more fun hearing stuff.

From the fourth row in the bleachers, can you hear the shoes squeaking against the basketball court?

Did you know the ball makes a duller sound when bounced on some spots?

You’ve heard broadcasters say a shooter “rattled” that one in, but have you ever heard the actual rattle of a rim?

It was one thing in years past when Becker wore dress shoes and HAMMERED his hard leather soles against the floor. But tonight, from the fourth row, even as the coach simply walked to and fro, I heard Becker’s sneakered feet slapping the hardwood.

We’ve all seen players go down hard, sometimes so hard it takes your breath away and you wonder not when but if they’re going to get up – but, good grief, when Lamprecht went down tonight, I swear I heard bones cracking.

My hearing went south somewhere during the Pleistocene Age. I was at a basketball game with a crowd so loud my ears began ringing and never quit. People tired of my saying, “Huh?” suggested hearing aids. I quoted my dear mother who at age 95 denied a hearing problem. She called it a speaking problem. “If people would just SPEAK UP,” she said, “I hear fine.”

I got hearing aids at 1 o’clock today. At 8:24 tonight, I heard Bob Becker say, “Tatym got HAMMERED.” I would have heard him without ‘em.

Morton is now 9-3 for the season. The Potters play at Peoria Manual Thursday, unless the blizzard blows us all away. East Peoria is 0-11.

Morton’s scoring: Lamprecht 15, Engel 12, Ellie VanMeenen 11, Izzy Hutchinson 9, Vandel 8, Ruby Brubaker 4, Anja Ruxlow 3, Julia Laufenberg 3, Magda Lopko 2.

Sycamore 48
Lady Potters 43

But if we count just the last three quarters this afternoon, it was . . .
Lady Potters 43
Sycamore 25

Alas, alack, and sad to say, the rules insist that we must count the first quarter, which was . . .
Sycamore 23
Lady Potters 0

I will spell out that last one. Sycamore twenty-three, Lady Potters zero nada nil nothin’ zilch and rotten bananas.

Never in my hundred years writing about the Lady Potters has there been such a thing. It has worked the other way with the Lady Potters pitching a shutout for a quarter, once for a half. But this? The Potters on the other end of a beat-down? Good grief. Where have you gone, Brandi Bisping, a lonely PotterNation turns its eyes to you.

It wasn’t as if the Potters were thrown in against the Boston Celtics; Sycamore had two really good players, a 6-foot-4 post and a D-1 commit point guard, and yet the Spartans had won only two of eight games.

But when the Potters make eight turnovers in the first quarter – my count – and when they get “no decent shots” – my note – and when they watch that big post player get five quick, easy buckets – lots of watching by the Potters smallish bigs – a partisan observer could be forgiven for wondering if a 110-mile school bus trip in fog and rain had caused the Potters to sleepwalk for a quarter.

I mentioned Brandi Bisping, an all-timer in Potter lore, three times the beating heart of state championship teams. No one would sleepwalk through a Brandi Bisping minute. Her idea of basketball was get ‘em down, stand on their throats, and then, when they call timeout to check their extremities, you smile at the poor suffering darlings, maybe even curtsy, blow ‘em a kiss. And walk on.

Instead of that, these Potters too often are passive. They allow the enemy to set the terms of engagement. Now 6-3 for the season, the Potters have lost all three of their road games. In those losses, they have gone quiet for long stretches of play. We thought it was bad when Rock Island made a 19-6 run. It was worse when Metamora went 18-1. Those nights, next to a first-quarter 23-0 shutout, were sundaes with a cherry on top.

Oh, we might say the Potters made a great comeback from looming catastrophe. Call it a gallant run. Say they never quit. All that would be true. (We’ll get to details in a minute). But we should hear the coaching truth from Bob Becker. Even after first praising his team for a “valiant comeback,” the Potters coach made it clear he was not selling only soft soap tonight.

“A ‘nice comeback’? No,” he said. “A nice comeback would be coming back to win.”

In this comeback, whatever the adjective – I call it astonishing – the Potters became the aggressors at both ends, frightening the Sycamores with a full-court press, scratching and clawing their way to a 22-2 run in 9 minutes and 17 seconds. Sycamore’s lead, once 23-zilch, was now 25-22.

In that run, four Potters scored: Izzy Hutchinson had 11, with a 3 from the low left corner, a put-back, and four free throws earned on just-try-to-stop-me drives to the hoop; Tatym Lamprecht had six, Addy Engel 3, Ellie VanMeenen 2.

Twice more, Sycamore seemed to have the game in hand with double figure leads. Twice more, Morton refused to go away, staying in its aggressors’ press, attacking in the paint at every opportunity. Take away the cursed first quarter, it was a beautiful basketball game played by both sides.

With 2:04 to play, the Potters were still alive. From 11 down midway through the fourth quarter, they had cut it to 8. The clutch baskets came from Lamprecht, a 3 from the right corner, and from VanMeenen, scoring against the big girl on a rebound.

But at 1:25, a Sycamore 3 made it 48-37.

Game over?

Not yet. At 1:12, Lamprecht two free throws. At :55, Julia Laufenberg a put-back. When Sycamore missed two free throws at :13.2, Lamprecht scored on a runner in the paint. It was 48-43. There were four seconds to play. I saw the clock. Before the clock operator caught the Morton timeout call, the clock showed :01.5. A long in-bounds pass ended it.

Morton’s scoring:

Lamprecht 14, Hutchinson 11, VanMeenen 9, Engel 7, Laufenberg 2.

Lady Potters 50, Canton 37

So Addy Engel, bumping into folks, stumbling in heavy traffic, gets rid of the ball. If you’re kind, you say Addy Engel put up a little shot from the low right box. But you can’t really call it a shot. The best you can say, in coachese, is she “attacked the basket.” Just ride a little bump’em cars, hurl the rock up there, hope to draw a foul and two.

But when there was no whistle, here is what Addy Engel did not do next.

She did not go oh-gosh-darn, nor did she sulk even a ltitle bit.

Here is what she did do.

Over Canton’s bigger people, the 5-foot-10 junior forward Addy Engel ripped the clunker-shot rebound from their hands and on a second try put it softly off the glass for two.

It was no big deal, the Potters already up by five, but it was no little deal, either, because up by seven with seven minutes to play is better than up by five.

Besides, here came a repeat.

This time the 5-8 junior guard Izzy Hutchinson came flying in – “attacked” is an inadequate verb when Hutchinson comes flying in sideways, crossways, and every way but upside-down to try one of her improbable “layups,” an inadequate noun – and, of course, this improbability clanged off the rim, and again no whistle, no foul.

And Izzy Hutchinson, not even jumping because she had barely straightened out from the flight in, lost among the bigs under the hoop, somehow came up with the ball and – I cannot swear to this, but I will swear to it anyway – she had her back to the basket when she flipped the ball skyward, it fell onto the rim, and sat there, sat there, sat there, and perhaps the earth’s rotation had something to do with what happened next.

The ball rotated east, toward Carlock, ever so slowly, a leather pebble at a time.

And crawled into the net.

Up by nine if better than up by seven.

And one minute later, here came 5-10 sophomore forward Julia Laufenberg. She took a pass on right wing. She had taken such a pass in the fourth quarter of the psychol-thriller comeback against East St. Louis. As she had done that time, she did this time, too. A 3-pointer, smooth, easy, beautiful.

Up by a dozen is better than up by nine.

\And when 5-7 senior Tatym Lamprecht followed a minute later with a 3 of her own, the Potters had declared this one theirs.

They’re now on a six-game winning streak after a season-opening loss at Rock Island, where they let a 10-point lead disappear in the fourth quarter.

The issue tonight was never in doubt. Canton came in with a 6-3 record that included a three-point victory over the Rock Island team that beat Morton by three. But when the Potters led after a quarter, 12-5, I made two notes that suggested the outcome: “M lots of steals, lots of missed layups.”

“Missed” was too harsh a judgment on those layups and those moments of attack that didn’t work.

“I felt bad for the kids,” Bob Becker, the Potters coach, said. “It can be a frustration. Sometimes you can do everything perfectly and the ball just doesn’t go in the basket. They were getting good shots, they just weren’t going in. It’s a crazy game.”

Then came that fourth quarter when even missed shots led to put-backs that were catalysts for 15-5 run that moved Morton ahed 47-32.

Game over, and Becker liked most of what he saw: “I like our team. I think they’ ve got a little resiliency, a little grit about them, and I think they’re believing they can be pretty good.”

Morton’s scoring:

Engel 19, Lamprecht 12, Ellie VanMeenen 9, Hutchinson 6, Laufenberg 3, Magda Lopko 1.

(And this winner’s statistic: Morton was 16 of 23 on free throws, Canton 4 of 5.)

Rock Island 57, Lady Potters 52

I was in mid-season form. The Potters not so much.

I first stopped at a Dr. Gyro’s cure-your-hunger cafe on Rock Island’s 18th Avenue. I asked, “Where am I?”

Lost. Again. Driving to the season opener. In a city. In the daylight. Wait until I try to find the map-dot village of Dunlap with snow flying sideways across the tundra on a February night. Next stop, a Saskatchewan pizza parlor.

Anyway, early on today, the Potters played about the way you might have expected. It’s a young team that will be learning its way around for a while. Five turnovers in today’s first four minutes. Nerves. Coach Bob Becker used nine players in the first quarter. They scored six points. The good news was, Rock Island scored seven.

The Potters led at halftime, 28-24, though I made a note at the beginning the third quarter: “RI mean, aggressive, pushing, shoving. M weak.” Even so, Morton was still up four when Tatym Lamprecht made back-to-back 3-pointers in 40 seconds to push the lead to 41-31 with 1:54 left in the quarter. Ellie VanMeenen’s short jumper a minute later made it 44-36.

From there, the Potters, too, were lost. Their lead fell to 46-45 when Rock Island opened the fourth quarter with three 3-pointers in 68 seconds. It was 50-all with 5:06 to play when this happened: A referee decided the game.

I know, I know, c’mon, Dave, don’t start with the zebras.

Yes, yes, I know, the egotist in question did not cause the Potters to score only two more points in the game’s most important five minutes.

But I am here to say that an I-am-God-and-you’re-not referee might have caused a young team to wonder WTH’s going on.

With 3:52 to play, he called a 5-second violation on a Potter ballhandler even as she was advancing the ball down the right side. Turnover.

One minute later, he called a 3-seconds in the lane violation when the Potters were moving the ball on the perimeter with no one looking into the paint. Turnover.

I know, c’mon, Dave, quit nit-picking the poor fella. Maybe, I admit, he could justify those calls on video. But c’mon. He made calls that he did not have to make for one reason, to show just how extraordinary he is. He could have let the girls play. Reminded me of a Deer Creek cop I met once. Noon hour, flashed his lights. I stopped. “Twenty-nine miles per hour through town, 25 limit,” he said. Really, did I leave peeling-out rubber in front of the Village Tap? (I wanted to say.) “And you rolled through the stop sign.” Oh, Lord. Barney Fife has moved from Mayberry to Deer Creek! (Didn’t say that, either.)

From that 41-31 lead, then, Morton was outscored in the last 10 minutes, 26-11.

Not that the Potters made any of my retired-sportswriter complaints, nor should they have, for they lost this one on their own. They gave up 9 3-pointers! Nine! (To their four). They allowed themselves to be shoved around under the boards by the beefier, more aggressive Rock Island girls. Mostly, they sabotaged themselves with sloppy, hurried ballhandling – also “indecisiveness,” to quote Becker– that led to too many turnovers of the unforced persuasion. “This is one that probably got away. But we’ll be back at it in practice, and we gotta get better in the next couple weeks.” (Morton next plays on the Friday after Thanksgiving in its own tournament, against Batavia.)

Addy Engel led Morton’s scoring with 18 points (14 in the first half, but when moved into the post the second half she seldom touched the ball, so ineffective were Morton’s ballhandlers). Lamprecht had 11, Izzy Hutchinson 9, Magda Lopko and VanMeenen 5 each, and Graci Junis 4.

This Rock Island team, by the way, lost its season opener at home this week to Peoria High, 61-26. Uh-oh.