VALLEY — After suffering a 63-52 loss at Beauregard on Jan. 10, the Valley Rams boys basketball team left no room for doubt in a 73-38 win against the Hornets on Thursday night. Valley sits atop its area with a 3-2 record.

“We had a bad taste in our mouth about how we performed on the road at Beauregard,” Valley boys head basketball coach Marshon Harper said. “It was a great win right here. The guys were upbeat the whole night. They played great defense and good offense. They played team ball.”

Beauregard stayed in the game offensively and only trailed by five after the first quarter, but Valley continued to turn up the heat and simply ran the Hornets out of the gym.

The young backcourt of freshman K.D. Hutchinson and Kintavious Dozier scored a combined 41 points in the victory, with seven other Rams getting on the board as well. Jacquez Trammell, T.J. Winston, Markavious Atkinson, Kalen Sherrell, Justis Burton, Davontrez Daniel and Jaden Hamlin were the other contributors in the scoring department on Thursday.

Only one week remains in the regular season before the area tournament.

“We need to improve on playing defense,” Harper said. “Playing team ball, being under control. We have to run the fast break when we have it, and when we don’t, we’ll come out and run a play. They did a great job of doing that tonight. The tempo from the beginning to the end, we played smother defense, we got some steals and fast break points. That was huge for us tonight.”

Beauregard wasn’t pleased with the result of their loss. Throughout the game, the traveling Hornet fans voiced their disagreements with the matchup’s officials and there was some extra talking after the postgame handshake line.

“I was telling the team to not say anything to them, just beat them on the scoreboard,” Harper said. “Let’s play better defense than they are, let’s play better offense than they’re doing, we did a great job. Our team held it together well.”

Coming into the season as a young team with low expectations, Harper said that he can envision a positive conclusion to the year.

“I see great potential in them,” he said. “We’re trying to host the area tournament here. If we can host the tournament, play the fourth seed, win the area, play here and make it to Montgomery, anything else is a bonus. I tell the team that we’re going to build on it. We’ve got a young team. We only have three seniors. We’ve got a young team. To get that playoff experience, you never know, you take a team that has a lot of freshmen and sophomores, you can go to Birmingham.”

The Rams return to the court to host Callaway on Friday night.