The Bowie Lady Rabbits won on the road Friday night at City View in a game they are happy to escape.
The Lady Rabbits held on to win 69-63 in a game they were usually comfortably ahead until the end.
Bowie came out on fire in the first quarter making six 3-pointers. The last half of the quarter saw the Lady Rabbits end on a 15-2 run, building their lead to 24-8.
Bowie had a tough time trying to corral some of the Lady Mustangs quick guards, but when the team did with full court trapping, some turnovers were converted to points.
The Lady Rabbits offense calmed down a bit in the second quarter. The team scored pretty well and outscored City View 14-10, extending its lead to 20 points at halftime 38-18.
The game changed significantly in the second half. The physical full-court trapping defense from Bowie started getting fouls called at a much more rapid pace than the first half.
Before the third quarter was over the Lady Mustangs were already in the double-bonus, drawing more than 10 fouls and having attempted 14 free throws after only six in the first half.
This made the Lady Rabbits turn away from full-court pressure on defense to try and avoid committing more fouls, but that did not work.
With all of the free throw attempts and no longer having to worry about navigating the press, the Lady Mustangs more than doubled their first half total in the third quarter, scoring 22 points.
Thankfully for Bowie, despite dealing with foul issues, the team’s offense picked back up. Even with younger players playing large chunks, the Lady Rabbits had seven different players score while putting up 25 points.
Bowie still had more than a 20 point lead heading into the fourth quarter up 63-40, with the foul issue seeming like more of an annoyance that extended the game longer delaying the inevitable.
The Lady Rabbits played a lot of the fourth quarter with bench players with the game wrapped up and since most starters were in some sort of foul trouble. Unfortunately, Bowie’s offense went away in the fourth quarter while City View had a head of steam.
Midway through the quarter with the lead on the brink of shrinking to single digits, Lady Rabbit Coach Joe Crabb inserted his starters back into the game, but little changed.
One of the team’s leading scorers, Abbi Gamblin, quickly picked up her fifth and final foul.
At the end Bowie players started getting sent to the line to preserve time. The Lady Rabbits struggled, making only three out of 12 attempts in the quarter.
The Lady Mustangs kept getting closer, cutting the score to 69-63 with 43 seconds left. Fortunately for Bowie, City View ran out of fire power and time as the Lady Rabbits held on to win.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of the mid-week edition of the Bowie News.