Sweet 16 frontrunner Ballard fends off Bowling Green for semifinal berth
The state’s top-ranked team briefly looked vulnerable.
Ballard revealed some jitters in relinquishing a big lead early, but the Bruins recovered well enough for a 61-53 victory over Bowling Green in the KHSAA Boys’ Sweet 16 quarterfinals Friday in Rupp Arena.
BOX SCORE: Ballard 61, Bowling Green 53
Gabe Sisk scored 16 of his game-high 22 points in the first half to lead Ballard to its first semifinals berth since 2013. The Bruins reached the championship game that season, falling to Madison Central on a three-pointer with 11 seconds left.
Maker Bar, a 6-foot-10 junior, had six of Ballard’s nine blocked shots. The South Sudan native added seven rebounds, five points, two steals and several drawn charges.
Bar’s second block in a 19-second span led to Ballard’s first bucket about a minute into the bout, and the Bruins went up 7-0 before Jordan Dingle — a University of Kentucky football signee — put Bowling Green on the scoreboard.
The Purples started 1-for-10 and trailed 14-2, but capitalized on a streak of Ballard misses — five straight — and turnovers (three) to fuel a 9-0 run to pull within three on a Turner Buttry triple at the first-quarter buzzer.
“Just like in life, people don’t make the right decisions all the time, and that’s what happened,” Ballard Coach Chris Renner said. “We went through a stretch, whether it’s nerves, confidence, whatever it was, we didn’t make the right plays.”
Keno Hayden stopped the run with a layup but Bowling Green scored the next eight points and took their first lead, 17-16, on a Buttry layup with 4:17 left in the first half. The teams played to a standstill for the next couple minutes before a Sisk triple put Ballard back in front at the 2:01 mark, from which the Bruins led to the break. They went into the locker room up 30-26.
Ballard swelled its advantage to nine a minute into the third quarter on back-to-back jumpers from Bar. Bowling Green clawed back to within three on a pair of free throws by Buttry, who a couple trips later failed to draw a foul against contact from two Ballard defenders under the rim; Sisk leaked out for a hoop off the rebound that put the Bruins ahead by five, 43-38, near the quarter’s end.
The Purples got to within four points down the stretch but a series of unforced errors — a bad inbound pass, a charge call and an errant pass — each resulted in points for Ballard, affording it a 54-45 lead at the 1:43 mark and allowing it a comfortable finish at the free-throw line through the remainder.
“The mental toughness that our team has showed is the mental toughness you need to win a state championship,” Renner said.
Bowling Green was in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2017, the last of four straight appearances and one that ended in the school’s first championship. D.G. Sherrill, the head coach of that squad, reclaimed the Purples’ reins ahead of this season; he resigned following the 2016-17 season for an administrative position in the Bowling Green school district.
Ballard gets Elizabethtown, a 65-44 winner over Clark County earlier Friday, in Saturday’s first semifinal. The championship game is scheduled for later that night.
