Down nine points at the half to visiting Glasgow on Tuesday night, the Bowling Green’s girls’ basketball team trudged to its locker room gloomily contemplating the strong possibility of a second straight loss.

Keely Morrow wasn’t having it.

Morrow, the Lady Purples’ leading scorer who has signed with Division I Lipscomb, shook off a slow first half to score 23 of her game-high 30 points over the final two quarters to boost Bowling Green to a 66-59 victory.

“We were coming off a loss from last night (a 39-32 defeat at McLean County), so I think we really had a chip on our shoulder and we were ready to come in and win tonight,” Morrow said.

Maybe the Lady Purples left those chips in the locker room, because Glasgow (2-1) looked on its way to a win in the first half. Led by sophomore forward Ashanti Gore, the Lady Scotties largely survived Bowling Green’s constant pressure and punished the Lady Purples in the paint. Gore, who finished with 23 points and 14 rebounds, tallied nine points in the second quarter as Glasgow built a 30-21 halftime lead.

Glasgow finished with a sizable 36-22 rebounding edge.

“That is definitely our Achilles’ heel,” Bowling Green first-year coach Calvin Head said. “We’ve got to shore up the rebounding part and doing the fundamental things such (as) blocking out and catching the ball with extension. Once we can do those things with some consistency, we’ll be tough.”

Bowling Green (2-1) might have been in even worse shape at the break if not for a big first half from junior guard Taylor Ragland, who scored 14 of her 18 points in the first two quarters.

Morrow then took control in the second half. As Bowling Green ramped up the pressure on the Lady Scotties’ inexperienced backcourt to force eight third-quarter turnovers, Morrow began to heat up. She scored nine points in a less than two-minute stretch as Bowling Green turned a 10-point deficit into a 34-31 lead with a 13-0 run.

The Lady Scotties kept it close for a while, but Bowling Green started getting contributions from throughout the lineup in the fourth quarter. Leading 50-47 with 5:20, the Lady Purples put together a decisive 11-4 spurt that featured four points from Shalyn Whitson and a big 3-pointer from T’Alla Brown.

“We started playing our style instead of playing theirs,” Ragland said. “And we started getting up and down the court, getting deflections on defense and actually start to run our sets.”

Morrow was particularly lethal at the free-throw line, nailing 10 of 11 attempts in the final two quarters.

“Keely and Taylor have just been an excellent 1-2 punch early,” Head said. “(Morrow) really, really stepped up, got in transition, was very aggressive and got to the free-throw line. She’s a great free-throw shooter, and that’s what we want from Keely.”

K.J. Hughes added 10 points and seven rebounds for the Lady Scotties.

“Our effort was really good,” Glasgow coach Justin Stinson said. “I thought we played really, really hard. We got out of control a little bit at times. We have young guards and we’re replacing our two primary ballhandlers and it’s hard for us to simulate the type of ball pressure and things that Bowling Green throws at you.”

The Lady Purples host Allen County-Scottsville in a 6 p.m. game Thursday, while Glasgow will be at Russell County on Friday for a 6 p.m. game.

Glasgow 10 20 12 17 – 59

Bowling Green 9 12 23 22 – 66

GHS — Gore 23, Hughes 10, Bradley 8, Lee 6, Franklin 5, Hale 4, Adwell 3.

BG — Morrow 30, Ragland 18, Brown 9, Whitson 5, Gray 2, Martin 2.{&end}