Bowling Green is moving on.
Behind a dominant rebounding effort – which included a 41-30 edge on the glass – the Purples defeated Franklin-Simpson 57-46 on Sunday evening in the Boys’ Region 4 Tournament quarterfinals at E.A. Diddle Arena to extend their season.
BGHS (25-5), which outrebounded Franklin-Simpson 28-13 in the first half, only led 14-10 after the first quarter and 28-26 at halftime but used a big third period and another strong rebounding half to hold off the Wildcats.
“That’s been a strength of ours all year,” Bowling Green coach Derrick Clubb said of his team’s rebounding. “We’ve got a lot of long kids – we’ve got some strong, athletic kids – and when they go, we usually get a lot of ‘em. I thought they kept going tonight. At halftime, we had more than two times what they had in rebounds. We were doing what we needed to do.”
Isaiah Mason led the way for the Purples with a game-high 14 points, while Conner Cooper, Kolbe Gray and Cobi Huddleston each finished with nine. Turner Buttry rounded out the Bowling Green stat sheet with seven points.
Dayveon Harris scored 10 points to lead Franklin-Simpson (16-13) in its season-ending defeat.
With Bowling Green’s win, it’ll now face Clinton County (24-7) at 6 p.m. Friday in a regional semifinal.
“That’s all we want to do,” Gray said of surviving and advancing. “We’re taking it game-by-game, one game at a time. I’m a senior – I don’t want to lose now.”
Bowling Green jumped out to a 7-2 lead at the 4:25 mark of the first quarter, but Franklin-Simpson tied it at 7-all with an and-one from Harris just under two minutes later. The two sides exchanged a pair of 3-pointers on the next two possessions, but the Purples scored the final four points of the period to lead 14-10 after one.
Gray’s 3 at the 5:55 mark of the second put Bowling Green up 20-15, and it was later 24-17 after a score from Cooper. The Wildcats answered with five straight points – all coming from Andreyous Miller – to get within 24-22 before scoring the final four points of the half to only trail 28-26 at the break.
“I thought my guys played hard,” Franklin-Simpson coach Dee Spencer said. “I think they kind of killed us on the glass. I felt like that was really the difference in the game.”
The Purples held a 32-26 advantage at the 6:31 mark of the third after Gray recorded a basket, but Franklin-Simpson soon cut its deficit to 35-32 with a triple from Dawson Knight. Bowling Green fired back with an 8-0 run, which included back-to-back 3s from Mason and Huddleston, to go up 43-32 before Harris beat the buzzer with a layup on the other end to make it 43-34 entering the fourth.
After Gray made a pair of free throws to make it 52-42 Bowling Green with 2:51 remaining, Harris hit two of his own to get the Wildcats back within single digits, but that’s as close as they would get as Mason’s bucket with 2:27 left made it a 54-42 contest and sealed it.
“I’m a lucky guy – I’ll be the first to tell ya. I’ve got a lot of kids that can play,” said Clubb. “I’ve got a lot of kids that can score. If you were gonna write down everything it takes to have a good basketball team, we’ve got it all. The great thing about our kids … they want us to win.”
FSHS – 10 16 8 12 — 46
BGHS – 14 14 15 14 — 57
FS – Harris 10, Knight 9, Miller 9, Stutzman 8, Chatman 5, Partinger 3, Hogan 2.
BG – Mason 14, Cooper 9, Gray 9, Huddleston 9, Buttry 7, Wardlow 3, Dingle 2, Flanery 2, Strode 2.
