With just two starters gone to graduation, Bowling Green’s girls basketball team still expects to be
competitive within the Northern Lakes League.
The Bobcats graduated point guard Hanna Williford, who led them with 14 points per game, and Reagan
Morman, but they return six letter winners.
Highlighted in that group of returning letter winners are seniors Tyanna Smith, Livvy Dill and sophomore
Kendal Glandorff, who all started on last year’s team that went 13-12 and 6-8 in the NLL.
"Our expectations are fairly high," said Bowling Green coach Jeff Nichols. "We would like
to finish in the top four in the league. We know Northview is really, really good and then you always
have consistency out of Perrysburg and Anthony Wayne."
Smith returns after earning first-team All-District honors in Division II. She averaged 11.4 points per
game last season. Dill averaged 10.2 points per game and Glandorff provided 8.3 points per game.
"We’re athletic and we have size. That’s a benefit," Nichols said. "The biggest thing is
we have to develop some substitutes from the bench.
"We have to find some consistent scoring," he added. "Hanna was able to do that for us
last year. I think we have people that can do it, it’s just a matter of making them comfortable to do
it."
Nichols added that five players will make the transition from junior varsity to varsity this season and
the biggest challenge the team will go through this season is developing a point guard.
"We have to get some kids good experience," Nichols said. "It’ll take playing in a couple
of games to get game-level experience. It’s good to have kids back that have played in games but we need
them to have different roles than they had last year. They have to step up and score a little bit more,
perform a little bit more consistently than just as a role player last year."
Nichols is expecting his team to rely heavily on the experience of his three returning starters
especially in times of need when some of the inexperienced players are on the floor.
"That’s the big struggle when you move up from (junior varsity) to varsity is just the speed of the
game and the experience of the way the game is played," Nichols said. "It’s a little different
than it is at the JV level."