Mexico

Mexico girls place fourth in Warrenton Winter Shootout

By Kelly Bowen, Warren County Record
Posted 1/22/25

‘How can we put together a full game?’ was the message Mexico head coach Makenzie Mudd left her team with after a 69-64 loss to Francis Howell North in the third-place title game of the …

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Mexico

Mexico girls place fourth in Warrenton Winter Shootout

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‘How can we put together a full game?’ was the message Mexico head coach Makenzie Mudd left her team with after a 69-64 loss to Francis Howell North in the third-place title game of the Warrenton Winter Shootout on Jan. 17. 

The Mexico girls basketball team found success early on in the tournament with a 52-39 win over Moberly on Jan. 13 to send them to the championship bracket. On Jan. 15, the Lady Bulldogs (6-6) faced Liberty (Wentzville) and fell 65-54. 

In the third-place matchup, Mexico trailed Francis Howell North (3-6) closely (25-17, 38-33, 48-46) at the end of each quarter. 

After the game, the Lady Bulldogs discussed what needs to happen to sustain a consistent level of play throughout the entirety of a game. 

“[We had] great pieces, great moments but not a full collective game that could have gotten us that win,” Mudd said. 

Putting on pressure and amping the energy were two things Mudd noticed were keys to their great moments of play. 

“We had too many moments of kind of sitting back and being comfortable and not putting pressure on them,” Mudd said. “Everytime we put pressure on them, we forced turnovers and got a lot of opportunities.” 

Mudd is hoping to elongate these great spurts of play by watching film and making sure the players understand what specifically works and what does not. 

“In practice, just talking about ‘why did this work, how can we continue to make it work…what mistakes did we make that we can eliminate and how can we eliminate them?’” Mudd said. 

Before the game, the Lady Bulldogs knew the Knights would play a man-to-man system and put more pressure on them, so going into the game, Mexico wanted to hone in on purposeful movement opportunities and backdoor cuts. 

“I think that’s somewhere that we kind of did not do efficiently because we did not move on the backside of the ball and that’s what we needed to do,” Mudd said. 

The Bulldogs recorded 40 rebounds compared to Francis Howell North’s 28, while the Knights tallied 21 steals as to Mexico’s 10. Sophomore Grace Hudson led the team in points with 29, while Claire Hudson tallied 14. 

Mudd also individually touted junior Hannah Loyd and freshman Scottie Smith as two players who stood out to her throughout the week. 

“I think Hannah did a great job of bringing the energy and forcing some steals throughout the whole week,” Mudd said. “Scotty has done a great job of getting rebounds and kind of bringing some of that floor energy.”  

As a whole, the Bulldogs were able to use all their players on the bench and try different combinations to see who works well together. Mudd noted this should help them find success later in the season. 

Against North Central Missouri Conference rival Moberly (3-11), Claire Hudson led with 19 points, Grace Hudson followed with 10 points and Smith had seven points and seven rebounds.

“This was our first game of 2025 due to score cancellations and we had a few moments that showed we have gone 25 days without a game, but overall, we did a great job of working as a team to get the win,” Mudd said. “We did a good job early of creating scoring opportunities and controlling the tempo on the defensive end.”

In the loss against Liberty (Wentzville) (5-5), Claire Hudson led again and matched Alyssa Miller’s total of 13 points. Grace Hudson had 10 points, and Smith had nine points.

“We made a lot of silly mistakes early and dug ourselves in a hole in the first half,” Mudd said. “I was proud of the effort and comeback in the second half to improve on a lot of different aspects of the game.”

Mexico (6-6) will host Hallsville (3-8) today at 7:30 p.m. 


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