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Jayden Jones and Ja’Corian Oes combined for 51 points as Tyler Legacy picked up its first District 10-6A win with a 75-61 victory over Royse City on Friday night inside Tyler Legacy Varsity Gym.

“This was a huge one,” Tyler Legacy head basketball coach Kyle Smith said. “This was make or break for us tonight, and we knew that coming in. We knew we had to get this one.”

Gage Nuckolls (10) and JP Rainer (9) combined for another 19 points, joining Jones and Oes to get 70 of the Red Raiders’ total on Friday.

Oes made his first three shots and had six points in the first half before scoring 16 points in the third quarter. Jones had 17 in the first half, Nuckolls 8 and Rainer 7.

“(Ja’Corian) demands so much attention, and he’s such a good and willing passer,” Smith said. “If he’s patient like that and he finds shooters, it forces them to stop doubling so hard. When he’s got a one-one-one, I don’t know if there’s many people that can cover him. It’s such a luxury to have a kid like that that is so unselfish and gets the team involved early, and it came back to him in the second half, so it was good to see.

“We haven’t been shooting the ball very well. A lot of that is we haven’t been practicing a lot. We’ve been playing so many games in tournaments, so it was good to get back in the gym and get a couple of days of prep. Gage hitting shots early was huge for us. Him and JP just give us more weapons and makes us tougher to cover.”

Legacy scored 19 points in the first quarter with 17 of those points coming from Jones, Nuckolls and Rainer as the Red Raiders led 19-14.

Nuckolls went the distributing route in the second quarter with four assists as Jones continued to score whenever he wanted, but Nuckolls and Rainer both hit triples as Legacy built its lead to 29-14 at one point before holding a 40-31 advantage at halftime.

“This was really big,” Jones said. “We just wanted to show the district that we’re here and it’s not last year. We were getting the ball in the paint. They really don’t have any rim protection so we really just wanted to push it to the paint. We wanted to take the ball to the rim and just share the ball.

The Red Raiders had 19 assists in the game.

Legacy (12-11) is now 1-2 in district after opening league play with losses to the top two teams, Rockwall-Heath and Mesquite Horn. The Red Raiders were 6-25 overall and 2-10 in district last season, including being defeated by 19 and 18 points.

On Friday, it was the Red Raiders who were looking to win by a large margin. They came out of halftime on an 11-2 run to stretch the lead to 18, 51-33, and led 62-39 after three quarters. Oes had 16 points and six rebounds in that quarter.

“We’ve been struggling for a few games in district, and it felt great today getting this win,” Oes said. Early on, I just wanted to get my teammates active and get them the ball because I knew they were going to double-team me. Once I saw it and adjusted in the second half, I got going and felt hot. I felt liked that opened things up more and just got me open shots.”

The Bulldogs, who were 1 of 8 from 3-point range the first three quarters were 3 of 10 from deep in the fourth quarter and were able to cut the final margin to 14 despite trailing by 24 with 2:36 to play.

“They forced us to play maybe a little faster speed than we wanted to in the first half the way they were pressing us,” Smith said. “So we wanted to go to the basket and get easy layups. We were able to do that. And then we got that big lead, and going through a coach’s head, a lead is never too big. Realistically, it was probably over, but you never really feel like that, so you want to keep fighting toward the end.”

Jones finished with 28 points, six rebounds, four assists and three steals. Oes had 23 points, 10 rebounds and five assists. Nuckolls had 10 opoints, seven rebounds and five assists. Rainer had 9 points, Jaylon Miles 3 and Jadin Hambrick 2.

Jammel Ward led Royse City (10-11, 0-3) with 17 points, and Jacob Lane had 16. Cade Buckner scored 10 — all in the fourth quarter.

Legacy will play at North Forney on Tuesday before hosting Rockwall on Jan. 12.