POPLAR BLUFF - Veronica Amos made the most of her return to southeast Missouri.

Playing just an hour from her home in Kennett, Amos scored 25 points and pulled down 13 rebounds to lead the Crowder Lady Riders to an 86-70 win over the Three Rivers Lady Raiders in a Region XVI contest Saturday afternoon at the Bess Activity Center.

“She’s a good kid,” Three Rivers coach Jeff Walk said. “I think the Kennett kids were sitting behind her bench cheering her on and she was wanting to do well for her (hometown) kids. She had a good ballgame and you can’t take nothing away from a kid when they have good ballgames.”

Despite the big game from Amos, the Lady Raiders (9-19, XVI) still made a run at pulling the upset and avenging a 37-point loss from weeks ago, trailing just 75-70 after Alex Hower drained a 3-pointer with two minutes left in the game. However, Three Rivers did not score again and the Lady Riders closed the game on an 11-0 run.

“I don’t know if you’d call it run out of gas,” said Walk. “It was such an uphill battle that it was too big of an uphill battle to overcome. We’d make runs at them and make runs at them, then we’d shoot ourselves in the foot. We’ve got to stop having those turnovers at those key times and get to where we can get through that.”

The Lady Raiders played a strong first half, taking a 35-33 lead on Tara Porter’s basket near the 2:11 mark of the first half, but Amos scored 21 seconds later to tie the score at 35, then four straight free throws from Jordan Ritter and Amos put Crowder ahead for good at 39-35 with less than a minute left in the half.

Amos’ field goal with less than three and a half minutes left in the game gave the Lady Riders a 75-65 lead, but Three Rivers answered one last time as Tazonda Gibbs hit a pair of free throws and Hower drained her trey to make it a 75-70 game before the tank ran out.

“We played with them and we battled with them,” Walk said. “We’ve got to just dig in a little bit deeper, get through those hard times and stop making those mental mistakes.”

Whitney Mills led the Lady Raiders with 23 points, while Gibbs added 14 and Porter finished with 13.

Joining Amos in double figures for Crowder were Tarai Sadler with 14 points, while Caprese Marshall tossed in 11 and Jordan Hunter chipped in 10.

Three Rivers concludes the regular season next week with road trips to Jefferson (Wednesday) and Iowa Western (next Saturday) before starting Region XVI Tournament play March 8 at Jefferson City.

“Anything can happen,” said Walk. “You just never know with the group of kids we have.”