Greenwood girls’ basketball coach Terrance Williams had a simple plan for Monday’s District 14 opening-round matchup with South Warren – let Molly Spidel cook.

It proved to be a winning recipe for Greenwood, which claimed the program’s first postseason win since 2023 with a 58-40 win over the Spartans at Warren Central High School. Spidel exploded for a career-high 35 points as Greenwood overcame first-half foul trouble to pull away and advance to Thursday’s District 14 championship game.

The Lady Gators also earned a spot in the Region 4 Tournament, which begins Sunday at E.A. Diddle Arena.

“I watched so much film and the girls will tell you, I walked into tonight and the first three or four plays were for Molly Spidel because I felt like we had a mismatch,” Williams said. “I would get in that huddle and I would go, ‘They can’t guard her. It’s all about the win. It doesn’t matter who is getting the points, but they can’t guard her so let’s continue to get her the ball.’

“In saying that, what a great team win. I am super proud of them.”

Greenwood (15-15) never trailed, but needed a second-half push to finally put the Spartans away.

A Spidel layup with 2:03 left in the first quarter made the score 13-6, but Greenwood had three starters pick up their second foul over a three-minute span to give the Spartans an opening. South Warren (9-17) used a 7-2 spurt to trim the deficit to 15-13 before Spidel scored eight straight to push the margin back to 23-13. An Anslee Hendrix 3-pointer gave Greenwood its largest lead of the half at 26-14, with South Warren pulling with 28-19 at halftime.

Williams credited the play of his bench in the first half to help Greenwood battle through all the foul trouble.

“In the last nine or 10 games we’ve been getting them more and more minutes and they have been stepping up,” Williams said. “We’ve been able to feel comfortable with putting them in the game. Now, did they make mistakes? Yeah, sure everybody does, but I am so proud of that group.”

Greenwood opened the second half with buckets from Hendrix and Spidel to make the score 32-19. South Warren got as close as 10 – the final time on a 3 from Caroline Calvert with 5:09 left – but the Lady Gators finished it off behind 11 fourth-quarter points from Spidel.

“It was a great feeling to win and know that we get to play for a district championship on Thursday,” Spidel said. “It’s been a while since we’ve done that. I have to say, all my teammates they were on tonight. They are the ones that get me the ball. We have to work together and that is what we did. It doesn’t matter who scores. It just matters that we work together and play as a team.”

Spidel finished 12-for-19 from the field, 8-for-8 from the free-throw line and added a team-high seven rebounds. Hendrix finished with nine points and Molly Tandy had eight points.

Averi Fugate finished with 12 points and 12 rebounds, while JaNya Anderson added 10 points for South Warren.

Greenwood advances to face Bowling Green at 6 p.m. on Thursday at Warren Central High School. With a spot in the region tournament guaranteed, Williams said the focus now is trying to win the program’s first district tournament title since 2004.

“All we are thinking about is this district championship,” Williams said. “We’ve got the chance to do something that hasn’t been done for Lady Gator basketball in a long time. That’s a goal we want to achieve. Ava Morrison and Lily Clark are our two seniors. I want them to be able to walk out of here with something that a lot of seniors haven’t been able to do.”

SWHS 9 10 10 11 – 40

GHS 15 13 17 13 – 58

SW – Fugate 12, Anderson 10, Shively 5, Gatewood 4, Barber 3, Calvert 3, Reynolds 2, Osborne 1.

GHS – Spidel 35, Hendrix 9, Tandy 8, Morrison 4, Buser 2.

Bowling Green 66, Warren Central 21

The Lady Purples went wire-to-wire to earn the win and clinch a spot in Thursday’s district title game and the Region 4 Tournament.

Bowling Green (16-13) opened the game with a 16-0 run and never looked back. The lead grew to as many as 23 in the first half, with the Lady Purples scoring more than a half of dozen points in transition. The lead was 35-14 at halftime.

“That’s been an emphasis of ours over the last month, just trying to get some easy scoring,” BG coach Calvin Head said. “You can see that we got faster when our eighth graders came in – Amaya (Brown) and Kymber (Graves). Our transition points got us going and Jooni (Strow) does a good job of passing the ball. That’s important for us going forward.”

BG continued to pull away in the second half, holding the Lady Dragons to seven points over the final two quarters with the reserves playing most of the final two quarters.

“We had an opportunity to grow our depth,” Head said. “I thought we were able to do that tonight. I thought a lot of kids came in and made contributions. A lot of good stuff.”

Brown led the Lady Purples with 18 points off the bench, while Strow added 14 points.

Myra Mayberry had 11 points and six rebounds to lead Warren Central, which finished the season 5-25.

Bowling Green advances to face Greenwood on Thursday looking for an eighth straight district tournament title. That would equal the program’s run of eight straight district tournaments from 2008-15.

“With a young team that is good, because the pressure is off getting to Diddle,” Head said. “We are going regardless. We also know (Greenwood) is going to be tough. (They) have improved since the last time we’ve seen them. We know Thursday is gonna be tough.”

BGHS 16 19 19 12 – 66

WCHS 2 12 5 2 – 21

BG – Brown 18, Strow 14, C. Smith 8, Logan 6, A. Smith 6, Pratt 4, Graves 4, Ware 4, Davenport 2.

WC – Mayberry 11, Tisdale 8, Bailey 2.