SWEET SIXTEEN BERTH TO BE DECIDED TUESDAY NIGHT AT E.A. DIDDLE ARENA
Three months and change, after they all got started, Bowling Green High School and its crosstown rival, Warren Central, stand in each other’s way.
Perhaps we should have seen this coming.
Perhaps it was almost preordained.
What it is, without question, is one of the most anticipated basketball games seen in these parts for years.
Warren Central vs. Bowling Green.
Dragons. Purples.
Just like 2020, before the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic shut down Warren Central’s chance to compete in the Sweet Sixteen in Lexington.
Bowling Green advanced to the KHSAA’s 4th Region championship game for the ninth consecutive year, steamrolling Clinton County 78-47 at WKU’s E.A. Diddle Arena.
Ninety minutes or so later, it was confirmed that the Purples would get another shot at Warren Central, the 14th District champion. Bowling Green hammered Clinton County behind senior guard Turner Buttry’s spectacular game, and it was his friend and AAU teammate Jaiden Lawrence’s turn for Warren Central in the nightcap.
Lawrence hit a series of steely 3-point field goals in the first quarter and the Dragons never looked back, crushing Barren County 70-37. The 6-foot-4 WCHS senior swingman scored a game-high 17 points, and like Buttry, he spent the fourth quarter as a spectator, on the bench, while the Dragons completed the task at hand.
Did they ever.
Warren Central improved to 25-3 on the season, while veteran BGHS coach DG Sherrill’s Purples improved to 26-6, heading into Tuesday night’s title tilt at Diddle.
“It’s going to be a battle … it’s going to be a war,” Warren Central coach Will Unseld said. “I’ll tell everybody, you have to take the (previous) games we have played, and throw them out. They’re (Bowling Green) well coached. They are physical. They have a great senior leader in Buttry, a Mr. Basketball candidate. He deserves to get that. He’s led a young team, to this point. We’ve got our hands full.
“I like my team. Coach Sherrill likes his team. Let’s see what happens.”
Sherrill pointed out that one preseason poll had the Purples picked as low as the seventh-ranked team in the region. Sherrill took a senior-laden BGHS team to the KHSAA’s Sweet Sixteen last year, reaching the quarterfinals before losing to Ballard, but Buttry would be the only player returning who logged significant minutes over the course of the 2020-21 season.
Outside expectations were, in a word, modest.
“We had three seniors, no juniors, a lot of sophomores and freshmen,” Sherrill said. “We’ve got an eighth grader, Trevy Barber. Sometimes a young team is going to play like a young team.
“We put a really good schedule together. We’ll play anyone (outside the 14th District) willing to play us … I don’t think anybody had us here, back in December, but you can’t put the cart ahead of the horse.”
No, you can’t.
And the winner of Tuesday night’s 4th Region showdown has already drawn high school basketball royalty from the south side of Louisville, No. 1-ranked Male High School, in its opening round game next Thursday at the University of Kentucky’s Rupp Arena in Lexington.
The Male Bulldogs are 28-5 on the season, and likely will loom as a prohibitive favorite — against Warren Central or Bowling Green — next week on a neutral court. On Sunday night, Sherrill laughed about that imposing task for the team that eventually cuts down the nets inside Diddle Arena.
“Any team would play UK if they just got the shot to go up there,” Sherrill said.
The drama is just beginning.
BOWLING GREEN 78, CLINTON COUNTY 47
Turner Buttry made sure the Purples had the wind at their back going into their fourth game with Warren Central this season.
Buttry opened the scoring with a deadly 3-point field goal from the left wing. After two baskets from BGHS sophomore forward Elijah Starks, Buttry got the ball to teammate MJ Wardlow, who drilled a 3-pointer of his own.
Bowling Green led 12-0 with 4:42 left in the first quarter.
It would get worse for the Bulldogs.
Wardlow drilled another 3, this one from the right wing, and it was 15-0. Clinton County finally got an inside basket from its leading scorer, senior forward Nick Delk, with 3:45 to go in the first quarter, but the damage had been done.
And Buttry hadn’t even gotten started.
“I had a really good focus tonight,” said Buttry, an Eastern Kentucky University signee. “I tried to make sure everybody else did, too.”
Guess it worked.
Buttry scored on a drive to the basket, adding a free throw after being fouled on the play, and the Purples led 20-4 after the first quarter. Both teams began to settle into an offensive rhythm, but it was Bowling Green’s that really rocked the house.
Specifically, it was Turner Buttry’s splendid perimeter game that put the Purples on the path to the championship game, seemingly leaving the Bulldogs on roller skates.
Buttry hit a 3 from the top of the key to put Bowling Green in front 28-12. Sophomore center Mason Ritter turned an offensive rebound into a spectacular 3 from BGHS senior guard Curtis Lin, midway through the second quarter, at which point Buttry kicked his game into overdrive.
“It was no secret, we wanted to start with a triangle-and-two (zone defense),” Clinton County coach Todd Messer said. “We wanted to stay with Wardlow and Buttry … The 3s that Lin hit there in the first half were huge.
“We tried to make adjustments, on both offense and defense. They have so many guys who can put it on the floor and make plays.”
Bowling Green led 39-21 at halftime, giving the Bulldogs some sense of hope in making it a competitive game. Buttry had other ideas.
The fiery BGHS point guard opened the third-quarter scoring with a 3-pointer from the left wing. Delk answered with a nice inside move, trimming the Bulldogs’ deficit to 42-27, but Buttry drilled a 3 from about 25 feet from the basket above the top of the key.
Then Buttry drained a 30-footer, give or take, from the left wing, and the Purples would win in overwhelming fashion. Buttry wasn’t pleased with his team’s effort and intensity last week, when Bowling Green stopped Franklin-Simpson 62-45 in the quarterfinals, but Monday night’s game with Clinton County was clearly different.
“A lot of people had doubts about us in the offseason, and they started poking the bear,” Buttry said in the E.A. Diddle hallway after the press conference. “That’s going to add some fuel to the fire.”
Buttry didn’t play in the fourth quarter and still finished with 29 points on 9-of-10 shooting, all but one of them from 3-point range. He also had five assists, without a single turnover, while adding three rebounds.
Buttry’s supporting cast was pretty impressive in its own right.
Wardlow finished with 12 points, while Starks added 10. Through three quarters, Bowling Green shot 62 percent from the field, and an amazing 68 percent from 3-point land. Curtis Lin, the slender senior, had 9 points, all on 3-pointers in the first half. A total of 10 Purples players made their way into the scoring column.
Blake Melton, who made the inbounds pass last week that set up the winning field goal in Clinton County’s 43-40 quarterfinals victory over Glasgow, finished with a team-high 10 points. Melton, one of five Bulldogs seniors known in Burkesville as the “Fab Five,” and Messer were joined at the podium by the four others playing in their final Clinton County game — Delk, rugged point guard Bryson Cross, power forward Cole Nuetzman and swingman Nick Hay.
“This group of seniors had four 20-win seasons and two district championships,” Messer said. “They’ve done a lot of things that made the Clinton County community proud.”
WARREN CENTRAL 70, BARREN COUNTY 37
Warren Central has been a team on a mission for months, intent on making a statement in perhaps the Commonwealth’s toughest district for boys basketball.
In the final Associated Press Top 10 statewide poll, the 14th District was represented by Warren Central, Bowling Green and Greenwood. All three squads defeated one another on their home court during regular-season play, and Warren Central was the host for last month’s district tournament.
Warren Central hammered Bowling Green 68-42 in the championship game, giving the Dragons a 2-to-1 edge on the Purples heading into Tuesday night’s game.
Will Unseld was quick to point out that the slate had been wiped clean for this showdown. Senior forward Jaiden Lawrence led the Dragons with 17 points in Monday night’s game, while the ultra-quick Omari Glover added 14. Damarion Walkup finished with 11 points, three rebounds and three assists, as eight Warren Central players made their way into the scoring column.
It was an inspiring performance. Thorough, consistent. Focused.
“I tell people all the time, one through eight, one through nine, that this is the best team I’ve ever had,” Unseld said. “You can throw out the other games (against Bowling Green) … We’re really guarding, at a high rate. I could see it in their eyes … they were ready to play in the championship game.”
So here we are.
“We haven’t even hit our ceiling yet,” Unseld said. “These young men, they’re completely focused on establishing their own legacy.”
Barren County’s Aden Nyeken, the KHSAA’s 15th District Player of the Year, led the Trojans with 11 points and three rebounds. Senior guard Mason Griggs added 10 points while drawing one tough defensive assignment after another.
“You just have to give (Warren Central) a whole lot of credit,” Barren County coach Warren Cunningham said. “They’ve got a lot of different guys who can score. They get a lot of shots, a lot more shots than you’re going to get … These (BC seniors) are special kids. A lot of them have played together since the eighth grade.
“They’ve been a big part of what we’ve done at Barren County.”
