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Lady Royals Christmas: Twin Rivers secure fifth place
BROSELEY, Mo. - It was the final night for Twin River’s Lady Royal Christmas Classic.
The second game of the evening featured the Kennett Indians and host team Twin Rivers fighting for fifth place.
The Royal fought off Kennett for a 67-42 victory.
According to Twin River’s head coach Michael Snider, their number one goal was to stop Kennett’s elite point guard Alyce Edwards.
“I thought we did a really good job on Alyce,” Snider said. “We tried to make things really hard for her. She’s a great player. She had a ton of points, I felt like, but I also felt like we forced her to shoot some tough shots and we did a good job of rebounding the misses she did have.”
Even with the Twin Rivers defense honing in on Edwards, she managed to keep her team in the game with 24 total points.
Throughout the Holiday tournament, she averaged 25.5 points per game. She dropped 22 against New Madrid County Central on the first night in a 56-43 victory, advancing to the quarter finals.
Two days later, she put up 20 points in Kennett’s 72-35 loss to the No. 1 seeded Doniphan Donettes.
With a little extra motivation to avoid elimination, Edwards then scored a tournament-high 36 points en route to a four-point victory over East Carter. Kennett beat the Redbird 60-56 behind Alyce Edward's best performance of the Lady Royals Christmas Tournament.
Snider knew they would have to limit her as best as they could if they wanted a fighting chance at securing fifth place in their own holiday tournament.
Closing out the first quarter, the Indians were down by two with Edwards bringing the ball up the floor.
“Help,” Snider instructed his player from the bench as time winded down. “She’s the best player on the court!”
Edwards would cross over to her left, back to her right then pull up from ‘downtown’, draining the three-pointer. She ended the opening quarter with 10 of Kennett’s 14 points, while Twin Rivers trailed by one with 13 points.
Despite her efforts, the Royals came back in the second quarter and limited Edwards to only five points. In doing so, they outscored Kennett 17-5 which gave them a comfortable 30-19 lead at halftime. Kennett never recovered from this 11-point deficit.
Even in the fourth quarter, when Kennett outscored the Royals 20-12, Twin River’s lead never flailed.
“Kennett is a well-coached team,” Snider said. “I’m just happy that we were lucky enough to get out of there with a win.”
This victory for Twin Rivers marked the first time Twin Rivers has placed in the Lady Royals Classic in seven years. The last time was in 2017 when they beat Chaffee 48-41 for third place.
Along with this feat, the last time the Royals won a game on the final day was in 2021 when they beat Holcomb 50-42 in the consolation championship game.
This was also the first time since 2009 Twin Rivers beat Kennett in this tournament.
“This is really exciting,” Snider said. “Just getting out of here with a 3-1 record with the level of competition in this tournament is pretty awesome for us. That’s pretty big for our girls and I’m excited for them.”
Sophomore Lilly Oliver put out the best performance of the night with 34 points. She shot 80% from the free-throw line, making eight out of 10 shots.
Along with her, freshman Reagan Bader had a 12-point game as the Royals' second-leading scorer.
“They’ve been working really hard and doing a lot of things right,” Snider said. “I think I can be hard to play for sometimes but they do a good job putting up with me and they are finally starting to see things go well for them.”
This win bumps the Royal’s record up to 9-3. Their next competition will be in the new year, on Jan. 3 against Puxico.
For Kennett, they will travel to Kelly for their next game on Jan. 7.