Sporting a pair of matching undefeated district records, the Lometa Hornets and Lady Hornets took to the road and began play at the Richland Springs basketball tournament Monday.

After a 57-36 pounding of Cranfills Gap prior to the holiday break, the Hornets earned an easy first-round victory over Loop to continue their winning ways.

Behind a balanced scoring attack, Lometa built a lead of 20 points before settling for a 60-47 victory.

Senior David Cruz led the squad in scoring with 17 points, while classmate Brandon Faubion tallied 16. Against Cranfills Gap, the duo combined for 20 points - 10 apiece - to complement wing Dalton Parsons'' team-high 16 points.

On Tuesday, Lometa went back to work facing Lingleville in the second round.

The Hornets rushed out to an early 19-3 lead in the first quarter, but could not hold on the advantage as Lingleville whittled it away to six points before halftime. After the break, the Hornets found themselves in a dog fight, needing clutch freethrow shooting in the fourth quarter to secure a 56-45 victory.

Leading scorer Parsons (20 pts.) and Cruz (11 pts.) combined to hit nine free throws down the stretch to account for almost all the team's fourth-quarter production (13 pts.).

Lometa did not score a field goal until the two-minute mark of the final period.

"[Lingleville] came out and just started playing real hard man-toman [defense], and we had already kind of cooled off and relaxed a little bit," head coach Wendell Bradley said. "The intensity was gone, and it was hard to turn it back on.

"When we're in a situation like that, we tend to panic. We had that deer-in-the-headlights look."

But when the game was in doubt, the Hornets turned to Faubion down low and let him go to work. He set an aggressive tone that led to numerous free-throw attempts for Lometa.

Faubion tallied 16 points in the contest.

Despite the slow finish, the Hornets' win put them in the championship round of a tournament for the third time this season.

"Even if we get beat, we should bring home a second-place trophy, so that will give us hardware in all three tournaments," Bradley said. "That's the kind of stuff you look for going into the spring semester."

On the girls' side, after a pair of district victories, including a 48-27 victory over Cranfills Gap, the Lady Hornets ran into their first speed bump since losing to the host team in the championship round of the Cherokee tournament three weeks ago.

On Monday, the Lady Indians topped Lometa again, winning 52- 41 in the first round of play despite a team-high 16 points from senior point guard Maria Jaso.

In their next game, the Lady Hornets' poor free-throw shooting cost them dearly as they fell by four points, 50-46, after missing 13 of 17 attempts from the line.

"They were ahead by 11 points, so we did come back," head coach Brandy Eckermann said. "We fought but letting that easy stuff pass you by, you can't do that."

Marissa Nichols led the Lady Hornets with 14 points, and Kylie Bradley chipped in 10.

Eckermann partly contributed the losses to the holiday break, as her players were slow to get back into their normal routines.

The coach saw noticeable improvement, however, from the first round to the second.

"We were definitely better," Eckermann said.

The loss pits the Lady Hornets against Panther Creek in their final contest of the tournament.

"[I expect to see] better shooting and just less mental mistakes," Eckermann said. "We were just making silly mistakes, too many

silly mistakes.

"We were expecting things to happen instead of making them happen."

The boys and girls get back into district play Tuesday with road contests against Jonesboro before hosting Priddy on the following Friday.