By FRED CONLEY
T-H Sports Editor
Forrest City and Blytheville will play a lot of basketball today at Mustang Arena.
The two AAAAA-East Conference schools are scheduled to play four games beginning at 4 p.m. when the junior varsity girls take the floor. The JV boys will follow and the senior girls and senior boys will close out the night.
For the Forrest City Mustangs, who picked up their first conference win of the year Friday at Searcy, tonight's game is huge.
Blytheville owns the best overall record in the conference at 13-2 and are tied for the league lead with West Memphis. Both teams are 3-0.
The Mustangs are 9-6 and 1-2 and resting in a four-way tie for fourth with Cabot, Mountain Home and Jonesboro.
At Searcy Friday, the Lions rallied twice against Forrest City before falling short and losing by four points, 58-54. In the third, the Lions erased a 13-point Forrest City lead to trail by just a single point to begin the fourth period.
Forrest City coach Dwight Lofton took a gamble by resting his starting five late in the third quarter as Searcy was making a run.
"Searcy's players recognized that and got more aggressive. That mass substitution, though, paid off dividends," said Lofton, as the Mustangs clearly had the fresher legs in final period. "You have to play to win, not to lose."
The Mustangs used four big free throws and two buckets in the final 2:41 to hang on for the win.
All-conference returnee Lorenzo Spearmon led the Mustangs with 20 points while sophomore Cameron Henderson tossed in 14 and Chris Williams added 10.
Blytheville comes to Mustang Arena tonight coming off a big 53-47 road win over Jacksonville Friday night.
Since the 1991-92 season, Blytheville owns 25 straight conference wins over the Red Devils.
Since Lofton took over at Forrest City, the Mustangs are 5-9 in the past seven conference seasons against Blytheville.
"We just have to go after them hard tonight," Lofton said. "There aren't any gimme's from here on out."
*The Blytheville Lady Chicks won their first conference game of the season Friday by defeating Jacksonville. Forrest City's Lady Mustangs are still searching for their first East victory.
"You take them one at a time," said Lady Mustang Coach Sue Jayroe. "We're playing as hard as we can play."
Jayroe's starting five will have a little different look tonight with Teela Lee, Nicole Parker and Crystal Seawood starting with regulars Sequoria Grady and Shari Rogers.
"We had some regulars miss practice Monday," Jayroe said. "The ones who were there will start."
Blytheville defeated Jacksonville 62-47 Friday in a game in which both teams combined for 57 turnovers, 32 of those by Blytheville.
The Lady Chicks (8-7, 1-2) had 10 of the turnovers in the fourth quarter.
Kenya Moore had a game-high 24 points to lead the Lady Chicks.
The Palestine-Wheatley Patriots and Lady Patriots will try to get back on the conference winning track tonight when they host Elaine at Patriot Gym.
The three-game set tips at 5 p.m. with the Junior Patriots.
The Patriots lost to Altheimer on Friday to slip to 3-1 in the 6AA Conference while the Lady Patriots lost to the Lady Red Devils.
The P-W Junior Lady Patriots got 15 points from Keisha Stovall in a 38-28 win over Altheimer's junior girls Friday.