Smith takes control inside to lift Lady Purples to win

Published 11:53 pm Friday, January 31, 2025

by Jeff Nations

Bowling Green’s Aniyah Smith set clear boundaries Friday night.

That painted area on the basketball floor between the base line and the free-throw line? That belonged to Smith.

The 6-foot-2 junior asserted her claim with regularity against South Warren, dominating inside with 22 points and seven blocks to go along with seven rebounds as the Lady Purples claimed a 44-28 win against their District 14 rivals.

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“I’ve been practicing to use my body and use my strength to push people out of the way and I feel like that kind of helped me and kind of disrupted their defense, as far as my scoring and all that,” Smith said.

Smith’s seven blocks were part of nine total for Bowling Green (9-9 overall, 5-0 District 14), which never trailed in sweeping the regular-season series against the Spartans.

The Lady Purples surged ahead early in the first quarter with a 9-0 run to lead 11-2 and were up 13-4 at the end of the quarter after Emma Macy’s buzzer-beating layup.

South Warren (7-13, 2-3 District 13) was just 1-of-8 shooting in the first quarter and didn’t improve much in the second, going 3-for-13 from the field as the Spartans insisted on trying to work inside.

McLaine Hudson’s 3-pointer cut the deficit to seven, but Bowling Green answered with back-back-scores and led 22-13 at halftime.

Smith, who was up to nine points and a trio of blocks at the break, nearly put the game away in the third quarter by scoring seven straight points for the Lady Purples, all on high-percentage shots under the goal. Teammate Kori Ware drained a pair of free throws to cap that 9-3 run that pushed BG’s lead to 31-16 with 4:13 left in the third.

The Spartans clawed back to within 10 at 35-25 on Jenna Lindsey’s 3-pointer early in the fourth quarter, but Smith struck again with an offensive putback and Katy Smiley connected on a 3-pointer to stretch the lead back out for good.

Smith ended up making more field goals — 10 — than South Warren’s entire team (nine).

“We’ve missed that interior scoring, consistently, that interior scoring,” Bowling Green coach Calvin Head said of Smith. “She can do that. We just need more consistency from her, so hopefully this is a confidence booster for her and she understands that she’s capable of doing that on a night-to-night basis — impacting the game on both ends of the floor.”

South Warren finished shooting just 9-of-45 (20%) from the field. Bowling Green outrebounded the Spartans 29-16.

“They do a great job of not letting you score inside,” Spartans coach Lane Embry said. “They’re going to force you to move the basketball and get shots outside the 3-point line. I didn’t feel like we did a bad job of that. Some of the shots just didn’t fall, but credit to them — they’re just really, really good defensively and it was too much for us tonight.”

Bowling Green was set to visit Franklin-Simpson on Saturday, while South Warren is back in action Monday at home against Monroe County.

SWHS 4 9 9 6 — 28

BGHS 13 9 11 11 — 44

SWHS — Hudson 8, Fugate 7, Lindsey 6, Overbay 3, Gatewood 2, Strow 2.

BGHS — Smith 22, Macy 6, Smiley 6, Ware 6, Brown 2, Davenport 2.

BOYS

Bowling Green 68, South Warren 53 

Host Bowling Green got off to a hot start with four first-quarter 3-pointers, then dropped in four more in the second quarter to take a commanding lead en route to a 68-53 win against District 14 rival South Warren on Friday.

Up 16-11 after the first quarter, Bowling Green (17-4, 4-1 District 14) got even more separation in the second as senior Luke Idlett drilled a trio of 3s as part of a 13-point scoring outburst in that eight-minute span.

The Purples led 37-20 at halftime, but South Warren (13-7, 1-4 District 14) kept battling in the second half. The Spartans got a third-quarter boost from junior Jaxen Decker, who hit a pair of 3-pointers and scored eight points as South outscored BG 16-10 over that span.

It might have been worse for the Purples if not for senior Joseph Hurt, who scored eight of his game-high 26 points in the third to keep providing answers for his team.

“We do have so many different guys that can score the ball,” Bowling Green coach D.G. Sherrill said. “We’ve been led in scoring by six different guys this year. Tonight Joe seemed to be in a good spot. They were playing a lot of zone, so he was getting a lot of stuff around that bucket and we were screening a lot for him. He seemed to be the guy with the ball in his hands close to the bucket. And he did a good job of finding some guys, kicking it out and moving the basketball.”

The Purples opened the fourth on a 7-0 run to push the lead back out to 18 and the Spartans never got closer than 11 the rest of the way as Bowling Green swept the regular-season series.

“We had seven turnovers in the fourth quarter and then we had shots that we normally make and we weren’t making shots,” South Warren coach Carlos Quarles said. “We’d miss a layup, they’d go down and hit a layup — four-point swing when we’re trying to get back into the game.”

Hurt said the quick start helped the Purples pick up the win.

“We were able to hit all our shots, look for an open man and swing the ball,” Hurt said.

Idlett added 18 points and Braylon Banks had 10 for the Purples, who were set to face Ashland Blazer in the Ed Stepp Classic on Saturday at Woodford County.

Decker had 14 points, all in the second half, to pace the Spartans. Griffin Rardin added 10 points for South Warren, which is back in action Tuesday at home against Russellville.

SWHS 11 9 16 17 — 53

BGHS 16 21 10 21 — 68

SWHS –– Decker 14, Rardin 10, Hall 7, Button 6, Perkins 6, Shively 5, Page 4, Jarvis 1.

BGHS — Hurt 26, Idlett 18, Banks 10, Bailey 6, Carpenter 6, Wardlow 2.

About Jeff Nations

Sports Editor, Bowling Green Daily News

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