Irvine Valley's women's basketball team earned a hard-fought 77-70 win at Fullerton on Wednesday to stay tied at the top of the Orange Empire Conference standings.
The Lasers, ranked No. 17 in the state, improved their record to 18-4 overall and 8-1 in conference.
Irvine Valley is tied at the top of the conference standings with Cypress, which edged Riverside, 62-58, at Cypress Wednesday.
The Lasers jumped out to a 7-3 lead, but Fullerton came back and took a 16-11 advantage at the end of the first quarter.
And Fullerton led, 33-28, heading into halftime. The Hornets were up, 36-28, early in the third quarter when the Lasers got going.
Irvine Valley went up, 45-43, with 4:28 left in the third quarter on a three-pointer by freshman guard Emma Vasquez.
From there, the Lasers controlled the third quarter. IVC took a 52-48 lead into the fourth period.
Fullerton got within 52-50 early in the final quarter, but Irvine Valley went on a 10-2 run to push its lead to 62-52 with 6:55 to play and never looked back.
The Hornets didn't get close than three points the rest of the way. And Irvine Valley scored eight of the final 10 points of the game to close it out.
Sophomore guard Lexi Vail finished with 20 points, seven rebounds and five assists for the Lasers. Freshman guard Anai Washington added 16 points off the bench and freshman center Zoe Stachowski ended with 14 points and 18 rebounds.
Vasquez contributed nine points and sophomore forward Ryane Bradbury chipped in eight points and eight rebounds for the Lasers.
Tristian Johns had a big night for the Hornets, scoring a game-high 32 points.
Irvine Valley plays again on Friday, traveling to Saddleback for a conference game at 7 p.m.
