Bowling Green's Keyozdon Jones (left) steals the ball from Glasgow's Amanda Lee Monday, March 4, 2019, during Bowling Green's 65-56 win in the Region 4 Girls' Tournament at E.A. Diddle Arena. (Bac Totrong/photo@bgdailynews.com)

The quest for a three-peat is still alive for the Bowling Green girls’ basketball team, which advanced past Glasgow 65-56 in Monday’s Girls’ Region 4 Tournament semifinals at E.A. Diddle Arena.

Bowling Green built a double-digit lead early and cruised from there to advance to Tuesday’s region title game against Barren County. The Lady Purples will look to become the first team to win three straight Region 4 titles since Allen County-Scottsville won three straight from 1999-2001.

“Hats off to Glasgow, they are tough,” Bowling Green coach Calvin Head said. “He had a great game plan … but our philosophy tonight was to really try to get after it defensively and try to keep the tempo up. I thought we did a really good job of that.”

Bowling Green (26-7) won the two regular-season meetings by a combined 37 points. Monday’s third meeting was a little closer late, but the result was still in favor of the Lady Purples.

After Glasgow (21-10) scored the first point of the night, T’Alla Brown scored five straight to give the Lady Purples the lead for good.

Anzley Adwell’s putback midway through the first quarter made the score 7-3, but BG used a 10-0 run to push the advantage to 12 points seven minutes in.

“We tried to put it away early so we could take over the game,” Brown said.

Bowling Green led by as much as 16 points in the first half, taking advantage of nine turnovers that led to 14 points, but Glasgow was able to trim the deficit to 32-21 by halftime.

The Lady Purples scored the first eight points of the second half to push the lead to 19 points, but Glasgow answered with eight straight to get the deficit back down to 11.

Amanda Lee’s 3 at the end of the third made the score 48-38 to start the final period and Glasgow got as close as eight in the final seconds, but was unable to get any closer.

Brown led the Lady Purples with 21 points. Taylor Ragland added 17 points and Saniyah Shelton finished with 10 points. Bowling Green forced 21 turnovers that led to 26 points.

Adwell had 16 points to lead Glasgow. KJ Hughes added 13 points and 15 rebounds, while Ashanti Gore had 10 points and 12 rebounds.

“It’s just hard to simulate that type of pressure in practice,” Glasgow coach Justin Stinson said. “We are begging our (junior varsity) kids to come and pressure, pressure, pressure because we know what we are going to face. It’s just hard to simulate it.

“I’m proud of my kids. They fought really, really hard for 32 minutes. It just wasn’t in the cards for us tonight.”

The Lady Purples advance to face Barren County at 6 p.m. Tuesday at E.A. Diddle Arena. The Trojanettes beat Bowling Green 59-53 on Feb. 4.

“It’s a big challenge,” Head said. “They’ve been predicted to win the region all season and rightfully so. They are a really good basketball team. They are well-balanced. They have three perimeter scorers and (senior forward McKenzie) England is on a tear right now.

“Hopefully the gym is full tomorrow watching two really good basketball teams go at it.”

GHS 5 16 17 18 – 56

BGHS 18 14 16 17 – 65

GHS – Adwell 16, Hughes 13, Gore 10, Lee 7, Page 7, Bradley 3.

BG – Brown 21, Ragland 17, Shelton 10, Jones 7, Tisdale 4, Jones 4, K. Gray 2.