FERRIDAY, La. &045; No Tony Hawkins, no problem.

The Vidalia senior guard was attending a football banquet, but the Vikings had no problem extending their winning streak to six games against rival Ferriday and maintaining their District 4-2A first-place jockeying position alongside McCall.

Once again it was the inside play that was the Trojans’ nemesis, as Vidalia post Louis McNulty was nearly automatic with turnaround jumpers from eight feet in.

A great inside-outside game with McNulty’s 18 points and C.J. Williams’ game-high 25 points allowed the Vikings to put things in cruise control with a 72-41 victory.

&uot;That was a shaky first quarter, but we picked it up,&uot; Vikings head coach Robert Sanders said. &uot;Everybody knew they had to step it up because Tony was out. C.J. did a good job for us from the outside, as well as handling the ball.&uot;

The opening eight minutes was as close as the game got, as Ferriday held its only lead of the night when LaKenyon Russ made an acrobatic layup for the game’s first points.

Williams came back with the first of his five 3-pointers in the first half and seconds later McNulty scored off his own miss for an early lead less than two minutes in.

Dominique Myles buried a triple to tie the game, but a Ken Johnson putback sandwiched between a pair of those McNulty dream shakes pushed Vidalia’s lead up to a half dozen, 11-5, with 2:20 remaining.

A Ladrian Davis trey cut the gap in half before Williams answered with a bomb of his own.

&uot;We were hitting our shots. The guards on the perimeter &045; Ladrian, Dominique and LaKenyon &045; were knocking down the shots,&uot; said Trojans head coach James Davis of the early nip and tuck. &uot;Our legs caught up with us. We’re not as deep as they are and that hurts.&uot;

Myles hit a long jumper as the first quarter’s horn sounded to bring Ferriday within a bucket, 14-12, before the Vikings mounted an 8-2 run to begin the second thanks to two more Williams’ 3s.

Davis, who led the Trojans with 16, drained his second trey of the game and followed it up with a pair of free throws to bring his mates within four, 24-20, with 2:25 before the break.

That was as close as Ferriday got the rest of the way, as Williams continued to attack the rack from both long and short distances.

&uot;Knowing in Tony’s absence they were going to sag down on Louis on the inside, I thought (Williams’) outside shooting really helped,&uot; Sanders said. &uot;It ended up opening things up for us offensively.&uot;

Carrying an 11-point lead out of the locker room, Vidalia switched to a box-and-one on defense in an attempt to bottle up Davis, who scored all 11 of his teams’ points in the second period.

It worked magnificently, as none of the Trojans role players found a rhythm except for Jerquin Wooten, who scored all five of his points in the third.

However, even Wooten’s Herculean efforts could not keep pace with the charging Vikings, who scored on reverse layups, baseline pull-up jumpers and in transition.

&uot;The inside game killed us tonight. We couldn’t match up at all,&uot; Davis said. &uot;We’ve got to go over that and learn how to get back in transition. Without Tony, (Williams) stepped up and before you knew it they were up by 30.&uot;

The lead was 17 with 4:07 left in the third, and by quarter’s end it had grown to 18, 48-30, when McNulty drove the baseline and dumped in two with seconds remaining.

Like clockwork, the Vikings persisted down under the hoop in the fourth with Rodney Washington and Michael Randall getting into the act.

Johnson put an exclamation on the evening, as only he could, when he elevated just inside the lane and flushed one through the net, much to the delight of the crowd on both sides.

&uot;This is about the right time,&uot; said Sanders of his team’s peaking. &uot;We just need to keep getting better because we’ll probably have to play McCall next week some time&uot; for the district championship.&uot;