Bowling Green's Beau Buchanan (6) is sacked by St. Xavier's Kyle Nalley (91) in a high school football game at El Donaldson Stadium in Bowling Green, Ky. on Saturday, Sept. 2, 2017. (Photo by Joe Imel/jimel@bgdailynews.com)

Don’t even bring it up in the locker room.

Beau Buchanan doesn’t want to talk about it, and his superstitious head coach wants to avoid speaking of it like a pitcher with a no-hitter in the sixth inning.

But the fact remains: Buchanan, Bowling Green’s first-year starting quarterback, is 11 games into the season and has not thrown an interception.

“I’ve been a little surprised,” Buchanan said. “It’s something I don’t really think about.”

For a quarterback, the turnover statistic is the most glaring column when measuring failure, yet Buchanan is flawless in that department so far. He wants that streak to continue Friday when Bowling Green (9-2) hosts Greenwood (4-7) in the second round of the Class 5A playoffs at El Donaldson Stadium at 7 p.m.

Buchanan has chiseled up a fine season in his first year leading the Purples offense after a rather shaky first half to start. He’s completed 70 percent of his pass attempts (144-205) for 2,025 yards and 24 touchdowns.

In two of his last three games, he’s thrown for more than 300 yards and five touchdown passes. The game in the middle of that was a muddy slop-fest at Bullitt Central in the last week of the regular season where no one in the state could throw the football.

Purples coach Kevin Wallace knew the raw talent was there in Buchanan’s rocket arm and 6-foot-2 frame, but to have a first season like this?

“Heck nah,” Wallace said. “The game really moved fast for him early on and it just seemed like he struggled with his decision making. Struggled on pre-snap reads, which includes getting us in the right protection and includes having an idea before the ball is snapped that you can’t hang on to your first read very long because it looks like it’s going to be taken away. We didn’t protect him very well, but he didn’t do the things necessary sometimes to get the ball out.

“If the ball comes out on time, he’s pretty good. I think that he will continue to get better because all of those factors haven’t meshed yet. It has been pretty good the last month. The last month has been very encouraging for him.”

Buchanan hasn’t been without his turnovers this season, but it was just two fumbles when he was running for his life against St. Xavier on Sept. 2. He was sacked six times in that game alone and sacked 14 times in the first four games.

Since then, Bowling Green’s offensive line has improved and Buchanan has learned to avoid pressure and when to get rid of the ball instead of holding on too long. Since the first four games, he’s been sacked nine times.

It really started to click in the first game against Greenwood, his best game at the time with 12-of-14 passing for 320 yards and four touchdowns in the first half. He averaged 22.9 yards per attempt that night and has averaged 13 yards per attempt in the last five games.

“We’ve just started playing like Bowling Green,” Buchanan said. “We started having fun and loosening up. Those first couple of games, we seemed really tight and nervous. Now we’re playing our game and doing what we do best.”

Even Buchanan didn’t envision a first season going nearly this well. For years, Bowling Green has developed an identity as a high-flying offense with a pair of Mr. Football winners (Nacarius Fant 2013, Jamale Carothers 2016) in a run of five of the last six state championships.

Wallace compared Buchanan’s adjustment as a first-year quarterback when Clark Payne took over as a junior in 2015. Payne also took sacks early in the year, but also took chances throwing the ball and ended up with seven interceptions, but threw for 2,560 yards and 32 touchdown passes.

As a senior, Payne was even better with 3,840 yards for 44 touchdowns against just four interceptions.

“Clark might have had a little more Brett Favre in him when he was starting out,” Wallace said. “He was going to run around a little bit, throw it late and take some chances. Beau was the opposite and held on to the ball too long, didn’t want to take a chance and draw the wrath of me. Really, more often than not what we were telling Clark on film on Saturdays was he shouldn’t have thrown that late and we were saying to Beau, ‘You should’ve thrown it here and you can’t take that sack.’

“The problems aren’t exactly the same, but we’re still working on their mind as much as anything else.”

Buchanan credits the receivers around him for making him better. Five receivers have caught at least 13 passes from Buchanan with seniors Ziyon Kenner and Nash Hightower owning 48 and 30 receptions, respectively. The option of checking down to running back Dazhon Blakey has been a growth of maturity Wallace has noticed as of late, showing that instead of holding on to the ball too long, Buchanan is reading through progressions and optioning to his running back.

He did it three times in last week’s 48-14 win over Owensboro, and Blakey finished with four receptions for 73 yards and a pair of touchdowns.

“It’s felt great to hit every receiver and get a lot of people going,” Buchanan said. “It’s not that I’m hitting one receiver or two receivers every game, we’re hitting everybody. I’m even dumping it off to Dazhon some and the offensive line is playing really great and they’re giving me a lot of time. … The defense can’t key on one person and we have so many weapons like Ziyon, Nash and Austin (Brown) and Dazhon. It’s hard to key on all of them.”

Buchanan hopes the streak continues against Greenwood, a team the Purples have beaten in all 26 meetings. It’ll be a weird feeling when he looks at the defense and sees his cousin Jackson Adams playing strong safety for the Gators.

Adams doesn’t have the arm of Buchanan, but has already sealed a record career as the Gators quarterback running the veer offense. His 237 yards and five touchdowns on the ground and 85 passing yards in a win over Apollo last week gave him 5,000 rushing yards and over 1,000 passing yards for his career.

Adams got his first interception on defense in that game, too. He’s recorded 44 tackles since he started playing defense against Barren County on Sept. 15.

“It’s pretty fun,” Buchanan said about playing against his cousin. “Brings me back to Warren County (Youth) Football League days back when he played on the Rams and I played on the Bengals in the Toy Bowl and stuff. He got his first pick the other night and that’s pretty cool.”

Bowling Green defeated Greenwood 49-19 in regular season Sept. 22, but it was one of the better rushing performances the Gators have had against the Purples with 290 yards.

But the Gators were going through roster turnover defensively, and Buchanan made them pay the game that basically kick-started his impressive run.

Greenwood coach Chris Seabolt thinks his team will be much more prepared this time.

“We were very inexperienced in the secondary and our linebackers had just had a lot of turnover,” Seabolt said. “I feel like those guys are much more comfortable in the position they have to play now. I think that our defense at least has a better opportunity this go around to slow those guys down. Having said that, they’re unbelievable from a talent standpoint. We’re definitely going to have our work cut out for us.”{&end}