Lady Royals beat Puxico to tip off 2025

BROSELEY — The Twin Rivers Lady Royals ran away with an easy 62-29 home victory over the Puxico Lady Indians at their varsity girls basketball game on Friday night.

Twin Rivers built an early lead thanks to an opportunistic defense and effective scoring that grew to more than 20 points at halftime. More of the same in the second half gave the Lady Royals an insurmountable lead as they earned a victory that was never in doubt.

“I thought we played pretty hard,” said Lady Royals coach Michael Snider. “We had a long layover since our Lady Royals Christmas Classic, so I wanted to see us come out with a lot of energy and effort.”

The Lady Royals were led in scoring by 6-1 sophomore Lilly Oliver with 16 points.

Puxico’s leading scorer was senior Laney Porter with a game-high 20 points.

Twin Rivers was the more physical team from the outset, relying on the speed of its guards and the size of Oliver and 5-11 freshman Ivy Benson to dominate the first quarter 20-7.

The Lady Royals’ defense generated turnovers and steals in the second quarter that led to fastbreaks into the offensive end, which caused the Lady Indians to commit enough fouls to put Twin Rivers into the two-shot bonus with almost five minutes left in the half.

Twin Rivers took advantage of the foul bonus, scoring on either a field goal or a foul shot on enough possessions to give the Lady Royals a 36-13 lead at halftime.

Twin Rivers outscored Puxico 16-6 in the second quarter.

“I thought we had some rust, and we were able to knock that off and do some good things,” Snider said. “I’m happy with the energy and effort that we had.”

Puxico came out shooting in the third quarter, benefiting from 10 points— including two 3-pointers — from Porter to more than double their halftime score in one period.

However, Twin Rivers kept pace in the third, outscoring Puxico 20-14 to hold a 56-27 advantage at the end of the period.

With a 30-point Lady Royals’ lead in the fourth quarter, the teams played with a continuous clock for the rest of the game as Twin Rivers outscored Puxico 6-2 in the accelerated final frame.

Twin Rivers improved to 10-3 on the season, while Puxico fell to 2-9.