Crestview rally comes up short

Crestview's Arianna Simms works her way around Kiana Yangson of Mosley on Tuesday during the first half of play of the District 2-6A girls basketball game between the Bulldogs and Dolphins.

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CRESTVIEW — Trailing Mosley by 21 points at the start of the fourth quarter Tuesday, the Crestview girls basketball team mounted a fast and furious comeback attempt outscoring the Dolphins 16-4 down the stretch.

But it wasn’t enough as Mosley took the District 2-6A game 52-43.

Molly Woodward and Jensis Coleman were the engines that powered the Bulldog rally in the fourth quarter. Woodward, who led the Bulldogs with 14 points, did her damage from long range hitting a pair of 3-point baskets and a 2-pointer.

Coleman, who had 12 points on the night, scored all of her points at the free throw line as she hit 8-of-12 from the stripe in closing eight minutes of play.

Bulldog coach Kathy Combest clearly upset with the play of some of her starters that enabled the Dolphins to take the big lead.

“It says that more girls on the bench want to play more than the girls that are playing (starting),” she said. “My smallest girls are the ones that want to play. The biggest kids, I don’t know what they want to do.

“They come out with no intensity. There is no way we should be down like that after the third quarter.”

In reality the game was close for the first half.

Mosley (14-4) led 15-12 after one and 27-19 at the half. Alexis Ware, who led all scorers with 18 points, had 11 at the break.

Kiana Yangson set the tone for Mosley in the third quarter scoring all 10 of her points as her team extended the lead to 48-26 with 52 seconds left in the third.

A Crestview free throw by Allison Drummer made it 48-27 after three.

Crestview (9-10, 1-5) opened the fourth quarter with a 9-0 run that ended with a pair of free throws by Ware.

The Bulldogs cut the Dolphin lead to 50-43 with 16 seconds left in the game, but that would be the end of the rally. Fittingly, Ware hit a pair of free throws to close out the win for Mosley.

Randy Dickson is the Crestview News Bulletin’s sports editor. Email him at randyd@crestviewbulletin.com, tweet him @BigRandle, or call 682-6524

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Crestview rally comes up short