Bowling Green 61 - Warren Central 54

Bowling Green High School, Bowling Green, Kentucky

By J. Trace Kirkwood

"The Ice Bowl"

Yeah, yeah, I know "Bowl" is a football term, but I had to come up with some sort of label for this big game. Bowling Green -- the city and not the school -- wasn't heavily effected by the recent ice storm that has laid ruin to the rest of this great Commonwealth. We are one of the few islands of electricity, fuel, and food in an otherwise battered landscape. So, we're able to tip-up a high school basketball game while many other people are just hoping to get some electricity back in their house or while others stand in long lines waiting for kerosene.

It was a sort of odd night. My house is destroyed. I had to rescue my parents from a Red Cross shelter in Mayfield, Kentucky, so I've dealt with a lot of issues this week. Folks outside of the disaster area cannot imagine what kind of destruction has been done to the western end of the state unless they've seen the destruction from a hurricane. A lot of people might think that a high school basketball game was too trivial or unnecessary in such a desperate time. All day I wondered if they would play the game on Friday night. I hoped they would. Every minute of every day since that tree fell on my house I've had to deal with a hundred different issues coming at me in a hundred different ways. I needed a good night of basketball to wash away some of my worries, at least for a couple of hours.

The game did not disappoint.

I didn't take a lot of notes during this game because I was worn out, and I wanted to sit back and watch a game that promised to set the hardwood at Bowling Green's Purple Palace on fire. I knew that if they burned up the court, there's about 1,000 board feet of tree laying in my yard (some in the house) that they could use to replace the hardwood.

Warren Central and Bowling Green are good basketball teams. They play great defense, and both have a potent offense. They play physical. I sense that there's bad blood between the players. I know there's some bad blood between some of the fans. Disclaimer: Readers must remember that I don't have a dog in this fight. I like both teams, and I'm an outsider to this rivalry. I love the rivalry, though.

In a hard fought first half, Bowling Green took a 31-25 lead to the break. The Purples attacked the basket, led largely by some heady play from Charlie Williams, Tevin Barksdale, and Eric Smith.

A six point lead in a Central-Bowling Green game is nothing. It can be erased in seconds, especially when a team like Warren Central finds their afterburners and starts hitting baskets. Central's sticky defense held the Purple's to just nine points in the third quarter while the Dragons put up 18 in the third frame.

Bowling Green is a good rebounding team, but they never have an answer for George Fant. He knows how to rebound, and there's times when he looks like he's playing volleyball with the Purples. Purples fans get frustrated with their players, but I want to tell you: George Fant is good. He knows how to rebound. He's bigger and stronger than your players. Forget Fant and keep Scooter Lightfoot, Pete Winn, Brett Jackson, and the other host of Dragon rebounders off the boards.

If I had to pick a player I most wanted on my team, I wold pick Pete Winn. The Central students call him "Pistol Pete." That's probably a pretty good nickname for him, but I know none of them ever saw Pete Maravich play basketball. There's only one "Pistol Pete," but because I like Winn so much I'll let him borrow the "nom de hardwood" (if I wasn't writing this in a hotel room and with my office in order I would find the French translation for "hardwood").

I always think that Winn is who makes the Central squad. I'm not taking anything away from any of the others because teams that play like Warren Central have to have contributions from everyone. Winn makes them better. That's why when he fouled out of Friday's game I thought the Purples would win.

I don't know if you could call the way Bowling Green won the game dramatic, but I think it was dramatic. The Purples are a bad free throw shooting team. So, when they got a lead late in the fourth quarter, Central started fouling in an attempt to get the ball back and to capitalize on BG's misery at the charity stripe.

Enter the "King of the Ice Bowl." How would one be the king of such a big bowl of "chilly"? He would have to have ice in his veins. Friday night, Tommy "Rolls" Boyce filled his several pints of ice water into his bloodstream because he hit six critical free throws in the waning seconds of this game to give his Purples squad a big 14th district win over a huge rival. The Purps defend their home turf with a 61-54 victory.

These teams probably have two more encounters this season. They won't disappoint.

OBSERVATIONS

Rail Birds: The crush of exuberant Warren Central students broke the front rail of Bowling Green's bleachers. They fell out into the floor a few minutes before the start of the game. Thankfully, no one was hurt. I'm wondering what's up with the Joker faces, though. Honestly, it's a little bit weird.

Gone Fishin': At halftime, National City Bank sponsored a dance contest between three students from each high school. Central sent three boys out there. Bowling Green sent a boy and two really cute girls out onto the court. Warren Central needs to learn a thing or two about contests -- always go for the eye candy. The Central students started some sort of frenetic dance, but the Bowling Green students did a quick impromptu of the guy reeling the girls in with an imaginary fishing pole. That's funny. The crowd loved it, and Warren Central lost the contest at that moment.

Bureaucratic Stupidity: The City of Louisville, like most of the state, has massive power outages and tons of other problems. Male High's basketball team was supposed to play in the State Farm Shootout on Saturday at Bowling Green High School. The coach and administrators at Male High thought this was a good opportunity to get their players out of cold, dark houses for a nice stay at the Plaza Hotel in Bowling Green, the one city in the state that isn't in jeopardy. Some administrative wonk in the Metro School System pulled the plug on Male's trip, actually made the bus turn around on I-65 to head back into the city. The roads are clear. They weren't in any danger heading down the interstate. The administrator also pulled the plug on Eastern High School coming to the tournament. Fans will notice that Louisville Trinity will be here.

So, the Pick and Roll will give its first "Pinhead Award" to the anonymous dipstick in some Board of Education cubical farm that kept the teams from coming down here because it's always better to keep kids in houses without electricity than to let them mooch some rooms and some meals off State Farm's dime. Wait, I found the guys name. It's spelled S-T-U-P-I-D.