CHAFFEE, Mo. -- The Kelly girls basketball team barely had enough time to know what hit it.
Puxico opened the game on a 20-0 run, sparked by 6-of-11 shooting on 3-pointers in the first quarter, and breezed to a 63-30 victory over the Hawks in a quarterfinal of the Lady Red Devils Invitational on Wednesday evening at Chaffee High School.
An inexperienced, sixth-seeded Kelly (2-1) side showed some fight but the early hole was a gaping one, and third-seeded Puxico (5-1) pulled away even further in the second half.
The Hawks turned the ball over 32 times and the Indians took advantage, getting 18 more looks at the basket despite getting out-rebounded 26-24.
Puxico was 8 of 17 (47.1 percent) from outside the 3-point arc, knocking down four straight 3s in the contest's first 2 1/2 minutes to leave Kelly in the dust.
"It's always part of the game plan to hit your shots early in. It doesn't always go in, but, yeah, that was a good start," Puxico coach Jordan Hill said.
Puxico will face host Chaffee, the second seed in the bracket, in a semifinal today at 7:30 p.m.
Kayt Haynes finished with 28 points -- going 5 of 9 from 3-point range -- along with four assists for the Indians. Faith Oliver had 18 points, five rebounds and four assists while Sophia Hancock posted a double-double with 10 points, 10 rebounds and four steals.
Kelly was paced by seven points apiece from Alaney Moore and Hailey Noon, the latter of whom added five rebounds and three assists. Marissa Worth led the Hawks with nine rebounds.
"It looked like we were playing scared," Kelly coach Darrin Pruitt said. "I mean, we're real young -- a lot of freshman out there on that team -- and we work on closing out every day. But to sum it up, they just played scared, it looked like. A good bunch of kids, but Puxico, give them credit -- they're tall and they're athletic."
Puxico essentially put the game away from the opening tip, getting multiple offensive rebounds on the first possession of the night before Hancock drew a foul to kick-start a 20-0 run that was capped by a 3-pointer from Haynes.
The Indians had more made 3s (six) than the Hawks had points in the first quarter, as the No. 3 seed took a 26-4 advantage into the second quarter.
"Boxing out's the first thing," Pruitt said of the first-quarter issues. "... We talked about that before, just saying, 'You've got to keep those girls off the boards.' I mean, [Hancock] just comes out of nowhere. She could come out of the concession stand and be out there to rebound the basketball. She's a good player. So we had to box out and we weren't doing that in the first quarter. And we weren't closing out.
"I just attribute that to, a lot of these girls the last games they played were in eighth grade and now have to be placed on varsity. It's a whole different speed and a whole different game."
Kelly settled in for the second period, rebounding better and scrambling less on defense, the byproduct of which was a decline in shooting success for Puxico and a greater number of turnovers. The Indians were 5 of 14 from the field in the second quarter and 0 of 3 from outside the arc after going 9 of 20 from the floor and lighting it up from long range in the opening period; they also had eight turnovers in the second quarter.
The Hawks, meanwhile, shot 5 of 10 in the second quarter.
Worth scored back-to-back buckets for Kelly to spark a 10-2 run that closed the half, capped by Kate Hughes' second straight 3 off the bench to cut Puxico's lead to 37-17 at halftime.
Kelly continued to rebound well and move the ball more effectively on offense in the second half, but also continued to turn the ball over as it watched the Indians extend their advantage.
Oliver turned a steal on an inbounds play into an easy bucket for Puxico with 5 minutes, 15 seconds left in the third quarter, sending Puxico on a 9-2 run the rest of the quarter and a 51-23 lead after three periods of play.
Haynes made it a 30-point differential just 17 seconds into the fourth quarter and Puxico eased to the finish, with a 3 from Noon in the final moments of the game nothing more than a footnote in a game the Indians controlled from the tipoff.
After the game, Hill wasn't satisfied with her team's performance, saying things will need to be better tonight to beat Chaffee.
"They better be ready to play. They're going to have to be much better," Hill said. "We can't have the silly fouls. We lost a couple of possessions just because we didn't know who was in or where to be. You can't do that against good teams, and Chaffee's a team we can't do that against."
Following its first loss of the season, Kelly slides into a consolation semifinal, where it will take on Scott City, which fell to the host Red Devils 77-19 on Monday,
"We'll get better. We'll practice harder now. It's games like this that make you work harder," Pruitt said. "We'll get back in there and push each other more than we ever did now because nobody likes to lose. Hopefully ... we don't just get stuck in a rut."