GLASGOW – It seemed inevitable ever since Bowling Green held off Greenwood’s furious comeback in last week’s District 14 Girls’ Soccer Tournament that the two longtime rivals weren’t through with each other yet.

Turns out, they aren’t.

Both the Lady Purples and Lady Gators made quick work of their opponents in Wednesday’s Region 4 Tournament semifinals at the Glasgow-Barren County Soccer Complex, outscoring Glasgow and Logan County by a combined 17-0 – outshooting them 82-1, in fact – to secure one more winner-take-all meeting in Thursday’s 6 p.m. regional championship.

Bowling Green (17-3-2), which won both meetings with the Lady Gators this season, held up its end of the deal by dispatching District 15 runner-up Glasgow 8-0 in Wednesday’s first game. Greenwood (15-2-3) followed suit by eliminating District 13 champion Logan County 9-0 in the late game.

While the Lady Purples aim to keep their winning trend against the Lady Gators intact – Bowling Green won the regular-season matchup 3-1 and then took the district tournament championship with a 3-2 win – Greenwood coach Zach Salchli hopes his team’s second-half surge in that second meeting continues Thursday night.

Greenwood trailed that game 3-0 in the second half before amping up the pressure considerably over the last 30 minutes, getting two Anna Haddock goals to get close and nearly getting the equalizer on several other occasions.

Big difference, though – Haddock, Greenwood’s talented junior midfielder who has committed to Auburn, broke her foot in practice Saturday and is out for the season.

That left Salchli the problem of shuffling his lineup to try and make up for Haddock’s lost production, and in two regional tournament games the Lady Gators didn’t miss a beat in topping Barren County 10-0 before piling up nine goals against the Lady Cougars on Wednesday.

“It’ll be a battle as every game is between Bowling Green and Greenwood,” Salchli said. “It’ll be a fun night tomorrow. I think we have worked out a lot of stuff. Missing Anna obviously was a blow early, but I think this week we’ve worked through some stuff and found some people to step up. I’m really excited to kind of see how that looks tomorrow night.”

The Lady Purples emerged through their own tournament preparations unscathed by injuries, and Bowling Green sophomore Whitaker Buchanan showed once again Thursday why she’s such a dangerous option in the penalty area.

Buchanan finished with a hat trick, tallying three goals against Glasgow. Her first came on a header off Riley Thompson’s cross just eight minutes into the match, but the scoring slowed down after that in large part due to a stellar effort from Lady Scotties goalkeeper Paige Burd.

The Lady Purples pummeled Burd with 24 first-half shots, but Glasgow’s junior keeper answered with 16 first-half saves. Despite Burd’s determined efforts, Bowling Green finally created a bit more breathing room late in the first half. Ella Farley connected on a header for a goal off Caroline Buchanan’s corner kick with 2:54 left in the half, then Catherine Walker tallied another goal in stoppage time to give the Lady Purples a 3-0 halftime lead.

“I thought Paige did a really nice job for them in the goal, made a lot of really nice saves,” Bowling Green coach Lisa Correa said. “This field played a little slower as well, so we had to adjust to that. We were knocking it around, we just didn’t seem to have our A-game on our finishes tonight.”

Whitaker Buchanan took care of that, tallying her second goal on a header off sister Caroline Buchanan’s corner just three minutes into the second half. Just more than a minute later, Whitaker Buchanan struck again for her third goal on Erica Smith’s assist to boost her team’s lead to 5-0.

“Their keeper came out and she made some great saves and their defensive line also came out tight,” Whitaker Buchanan said. “So we kind of had a slow start and once halftime hit, we just talked about spreading out and getting everybody wide and getting the crosses in.”

Reagan Fields added a goal off another Caroline Buchanan assist, then Caroline Buchanan got a goal of her own before Molly Manley capped the scoring with a goal off Ella Farley’s assist.

Greenwood 9, Logan County 0

Greenwood’s Alexa Ketchem netted a pair of goals as the Lady Gators’ balanced attack overwhelmed Logan County.

Elizabeth Carter and Kylie Tisdale each added a goal and an assist, and Greenwood also got goals from Ellie Belcher, Elise Fenno, Annabel Justice, Anne Logan Perkins and Sarah Scott in the win. Hallie Adams, Maddy McCorkle and Autumn Wiles chipped in with assists as the Lady Gators outshot Logan 39-1.

Logan County senior goalkeeper Carlie Alvis kept her team on the field with a strong night in the box, finishing with 14 saves.

“One of the things was we wanted to find scorers and for the second night in a row we found multiple scorers and multiple girls taking attempts at goal,” Salchli said. “That’s really important to us. We did some different rotations up top to see some different combinations and they were working.”{&end}