The Logan County Lady Cougars have won 10 of their last 12 games, including four in a row. One of those two losses was to Coach Justin Stinson’s Glasgow Lady Scotties, who are in the regional semifinals tonight, on a 63-61 nail-biter.
It’s the other loss which is cause for concern for Logan coaches Finley Baird, Brenda Coursey and Erica Gordian as they prepare for their own regional semifinal battle at 6 tonight at Diddle Arena.
On Feb. 13, just a little over two weeks ago, the Lady Cougars lost at home 69-47 to Bowling Green, their opponent in tonight’s regional Final Four.
BGH (18-12) doesn’t have quite as good a record as LCHS (22-9), but Coach Calvin Head’s Lady Purples are 9-4 in their last 13 starts, including 7-3 in the region. One of those losses came in the 13th District finals to a
South Warren team that has been consistently ranked in the top five in the state. That loss came by a slim 68-62 margin.
The key to improving enough to beat BGH this time is slowing down Lady Purple all-state candidate Keely Morrow, who has signed to play for Lipscomb University. Morrow was already a prolific scorer for Franklin-Simpson as a middle school player before transferring to BGH for her high school years.
At Logan, Morrow scored 26 points and pulled down 11 points. T’Alla Brown scored 12 and Keyozdon Jones 11 for the winners. Brown also grabbed 9 boards.
Baird tried a number of defensive schemes to stop Morrow, as shown in Greg Hale’s pictures.
LCHS center Kennedy Nichols had a good game against the Lady Purples. She hit 7 of 8 field goal attempts on the way to 17 points and pulled down a game-high 13 rebounds. Peyton Vanzant scored 11 points while Blayke Bingham and Paige Vanzant each had 5 rebounds.
The two coaches know each other well, since Head served as the Russellville girls basketball coach in recent years.
For more information on the game, see Athletic Director Greg Howard’s Guest Article on The LoJo at http://www.theloganjournal.com/Stories.aspx?Article=guests531.