Irvine Valley's men's basketball team won its 20th game of the season Friday night, handling Cypress for the second time this season, 64-41, at Cypress.
It was the first game of the second round of Orange Empire Conference play.
Irvine Valley stayed in third place in the conference standings with the win.
The Lasers improved their record to 20-3 overall and 5-2 in conference.
Irvine Valley trails first-place Saddleback and Santa Ana by one game in the standings.
Irvine Valley got 12 points each from sophomore guard Shaquille Hunter and freshman guard/forward Jimmy Golden in the win. Hunter also had seven rebounds.
Freshman forward Chris Porter added 11 points and five rebounds.
But the key to the Lasers' win was defense.
The team limited Cypress to 21 points in the first half and 20 points in the second half.
Irvine Valley helped hold Cypress to just 25.5 percent (12 of 47) shooting from the field and 16.7 percent (4 of 24) from three-point range.
The Lasers held one of the conference's leading scorers, David Gonzalez, to just 3 of 16 shooting from the field and 0 of 8 from three-point range.
Golden and Hunter were assigned to Gonzalez most of the night.
Irvine Valley plays again on Wednesday, traveling to Orange Coast for a 7:30 p.m. conference game.
