The Nocona Lady Indians were able to bounce back in the second half to beat rival Bowie on Saturday afternoon.
The Lady Indians won 41-33 against the Lady Rabbits to stay first place in the district heading into their final regular season game.
Nocona came into the game as the favorites as the undefeated district leader as well as being ranked 12th in the state. Bowie showed in the first game it had no fear, pushing the Lady Indians at home and making the game closer than the final score 60-52 would have people believe.
The Lady Rabbits were playing in their final regular season game before heading into the playoffs. Outside of school pride, a win would give Bowie the slight chance to possibly move up to second in the district standings if City View would have upset Holliday.
The first quarter was low scoring and competitive. The Lady Indians took a page from their adjustment late in the first game and were denying Bowie’s Maddie Mandela the ball when she did not have it. They also tried to do it to Taygon Jones, but were less successful since she usually brought the ball up.
They both scored a basket in the first quarter along with Neely Price and Ziba Robbins off the bench.
The Lady Indians also got their own taste of it with Bowie trying to deny Megyn Meekins. She scored four points as four different players scored a basket for Nocona as the team led 11-9 after the first quarter.
Bowie’s defense did a better job in the second quarter, allowing only an early basket from Stephany Gutierrez and a long 3-pointer at the buzzer from Raylee Sparkman the entire quarter.
The Lady Rabbits did not have much luck scoring themselves, getting 3-pointers from Mandela and Price while also getting Kayleigh Crow off the bench to score on a 3-point play.
This allowed Bowie to take the lead 18-16 heading into halftime against a bewildered Nocona team.
The Lady Indians started to be more team friendly on offense in the third quarter as the ball moved more. This allowed Nocona to score off of off the ball movement as opposed to isolations.
Bowie was still making the Lady Indians work for every basket, but unfortunately for the Lady Rabbits their own offense was stuck in the mud.
Jones was able to brute force her way into a layup and free throw attempts to score four points and Addie Farris made both of her free throw attempts, but nothing else happened offensively for Bowie.
Nocona retook the lead, but it was still close 27-24 heading into the fourth quarter.
Early in the final period saw the Lady Indians offense showed flashes of what they did to opponents. Back-to-back sequence saw Nocona’s Reagan Phipps leak out early and score on uncontested layups in transition following a miss.
With a couple of more baskets from Raylee Sparkman and Karlee Brown, Nocona opened up its lead to 36-26 with 5:30 left to play. Not long after the Lady Indians started to stall.
With out a lot of fouls called in the half this meant Bowie had to foul several times before it started to send Nocona to the free throw line. While also trying to steal the ball, this took a lot of time off the clock.
During this time, Mandela fouled out for Bowie with three minutes still to play.
The Lady Rabbits made a late 3-pointer and Nocona did not do a great job of making its free throws late in the game, but it was enough to close out the game with little drama.
The Lady Indians won 41-33.

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