The victory moves Azusa Pacific to 22-8 overall but more importantly to 14-5 in GSAC play, atop the conference standings, a half-game ahead of Biola and Cal Baptist with 1 game left for the Cougars. A victory over Vanguard in next week's regular season finale will give Azusa Pacific its third straight GSAC championship and its 12th in the past 13 years.

Tonight, Hornbuckle, who has scored 80 points over the past 4 games, drained 7-of-15 shots, including 4 from beyond the 3-point arc. He hit a game-opening trey to ignite the Cougars, who led wire-to-wire this time against a team that took Azusa Pacific into overtime a month ago in Azusa. Hornbuckle added another bomb moments later to move the Cougars out to 10-4, and the runaway was set in place.

"I think we've finally got through to Mike that we need him to score in order for us to be successful," said Azusa Pacific coach Bill Odell. "I think he thought that as a freshman his role was to play defense and not necessarily score, but we're not strong enough to not have everyone shoot the ball."

Junior Lance Soderberg added 15 points by converting 5-of-6 shots and grabbed a team-high 6 rebounds all in just 24 minutes of play.

Despite shooting a less-than-stellar 33% (11-for-33) in the first half, the Cougars still led 31-19 at halftime after holding the Sunbirds to just a .286 clip (8-for-28). Azusa Pacific went on to hold a GSAC foe to less than 60 points for the fourth time this season. At one point tonight, the Cougars led by as much as 29 after stifling the Sunbirds to just 34 points through 33 minutes of the game.

"We did a great job defensively again," said Odell, "and had Fresno Pacific not wrestled away somewhere from 3 to 5 offensive rebounds that they scored on, we could have had an even bigger lead at halftime."

Early in the second-half, Hornbuckle nailed another 3 and followed with a lay-up to cap a sprint out of the second-half gate that put Azusa Pacific up 46-26. From there the Cougars cruised to their 28th straight victory over Fresno Pacific.

"We're still not shooting as well as I know we can," said Odell, "but we did a good job moving the ball through most of the game. It's a pretty easy game to play, but we're young and sometimes forget to just keep doing the simple things. We're a team that needs to learn something in every game, and hopefully we did tonight."

Fresno Pacific, which falls to 8-19 overall, 5-13 in the GSAC, was paced by Albert Jones' 14 points and game-high 12 rebounds.

For Azusa Pacific, the victory clinches a home game for the first-round of the GSAC Postseason Tournament on Thursday, March 3, at 7:30 p.m.