The Bowie Lady Rabbits continued to struggle as they lost to Henrietta at home on Friday night.
The Lady Cats won 35-27 as they held off a furious second half comeback attempt by the Lady Rabbits.
Both teams were coming into the game seeking its first district win. Bowie nearly upset first place Jacksboro earlier in the week.
The Lady Rabbits have struggled scoring during district play with their top scorer, Ziba Robbins, out with an injury. Bowie knew the best chance was to play lights out defense and hope it could gut out some wins by having points come from somewhere.
Unfortunately, despite playing a struggling and young Henrietta team, the points did not show up in the first half.
The Lady Rabbits scored only four points in both the first and second quarter, as they just could not crack the Lady Cats 2-3 zone.
To make things worse, Henrietta was taking advantage of any crack it could find in Bowie’s defense and made four 3-pointers and scored 12 points in both the first and second quarters. Even with the Lady Rabbits switching their defense up to a full-court press, the Lady Cats seemed to be able to quickly break it and score during several sequences.
It upped Bowie’s energy a bit more than in the first quarter as the girl’s started crashing the offensive glass with ferocity and got second, third and fourth chances at the baskets in some cases.
Unfortunately, the lid on the basket seemed to remain shut even with extra chances. The Lady Rabbits went into halftime down 24-8.
Coach Matthew Miller implored his team that just playing with more energy and want to would get better results in the second half.
Thanks to back-to-back possessions where Maycie Metzler knocked in a pair of 3-pointers, Bowie cut the lead down to single-digits at one point in the third quarter. Henrietta went on a 6-1 run to close the quarter as it led 32-18.
The Lady Rabbits offense had more than doubled their first half total, but would need to pick it up on defense even more for a chance to come back.
Bowie did play almost lock-down defense all of the fourth quarter.
The press-defense was tightened up and the Lady Rabbits forced some turnovers and created some scoring chances with their energy and pressure.
The Lady Cats scored only three points in the final period, which gave Bowie a chance if they could put together a really good offensive quarter.
While the Lady Rabbits again scored more than they did in the first half combined in the fourth quarter, the nine points was not enough to come all the way back.
Henrietta ran the clock out and survived Bowie’s second half onslaught to win 35-27.

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