However the stingy sting of the Hornets defense shut down the top-scoring duo in southern Illinois Saturday night in the finale of the Nashville Booster Club Shootout.

Holding Ray Nelson and Josh Tabb to a combined 18-points, coach Darin Lee's club romped to a relatively easy 69-39 win over the tenth-ranked Century Centurions.

Nashville, now 21-3 and ranked seventh in the recent AP poll, blew the game open with a big second quarter surge to hand the Centurions their fourth loss of the season.

Coach Andy Palmer was not pleased with his team on Saturday night.

"We knew that they (Nashville) would come out and guard you and we didn't execute our offense at all," said Century coach Andy Palmer. "And in the second half we just got behind and dropped our heads and didn't compete. I don't mind getting beat but we had a bad effort tonight."

In the opening minutes, Century looked the part of a highly regarded club.

Josh Tabb opened the game with a 3-pointer from the top of the arc to give his team an early lead.

But then Nashville scored the next eight points to take an 8-3 lead.

Six of those eight came from Andrew Wilson.

He hit a 3-point shot from left corner and then scored banking home a pull up jump shot while being fouled by Century's Isaiah Massie.

Nashville had a game plan to go inside to freshman Lucas O'Rear and the plan worked to near perfection.

He scored six first quarter points on a pair of outstanding inside moves and two free throws.

His fall away bank shot from the left block gave the Hornets a 14-9 lead with 1:43 left in the quarter.

Tabb scored ten of the Centurions' 12 opening quarter points.

His running fall away jump shot in the lane made it 14-12 Nashville.

O'Rear hit two free throws with :04 left to finish the frame at 16-12.

J.R. Nicholson hit a 3-pointer to open the second quarter scoring for Century.

However Nashville at this point began to exploit the Century defensive problems.

Known in deep southern Illinois as a fast breaking club, the Centurions got a taste of it delivered to them in the second quarter as Nashville scored 15-points in transition.

Ben Boehne scored on a driving bank shot on a fast break which was followed by Josh Maschoff's first of two 3-pointers in the period.

A conventional 3-point play by Boehne while being fouled by Nicholson produced a 24-19 lead.

After Tabb hit another shot in the lane to cut the margin to three, Nashville scored 15 of the next 19 points before intermission.

The first five points came from an O'Rear bucket in the paint and a 3-pointer from the right wing by Wilson.

Brendan Morris got in the act with a 3-pointer with 1:26 to go to make it 34-23.

Maschoff then polished off the first half with a fast break lay up and his second 3-point bomb just before the buzzer to make it 39-25.

"I thought maybe we would wake up a bit in the second half but that didn't happen and it got worse," added Palmer. "And the opening play of the second half summed up our entire effort tonight."

The play he was referring to was Nashville's inbounds play that scored just two seconds into the third quarter.

Maschoff took the pass underneath the basket and his lay up extended the Hornets strangle hold to 41-25.

The game at this point got out of hand for Century.

Nicholson and C.J. Williams scored a pair of early quarter baskets and Tabb hit the back end of a two-shot free throw opportunity to cut the Nashville lead down to 45-30.

But as it turned out, those points represented all of Century's offense in the third quarter.

Nashville put the game out of reach by finishing the quarter with nine-straight points.

Boehne scored the last six on two fast break lay ups and a short jumper in the lane to make it 54-30 Nashville.

Wilson scored a pair of baskets in the final eight minutes while O'Rear, Morris and Maschoff padded their stats.

Wilson and O'Rear's back-to-back baskets extended the lead to 67-34 with 2:22 left.

Tabb scored the final three Centurion points on a free throw and a baseline drive.

Two free throws by Morris closed the book on the unexpected blowout.

All five Hornet starters scored in double-figures with Wilson and Maschoff sharing high honors with 16-apiece.

Boehne and O'Rear chipped in 13 and 12 respectively while Morris finished with 10.

Tabb topped Century (18-4) with 14-points while Williams added 10.

Ray Nelson, the Centurions leading scorer this season averaging nearly 25-points a game, finished with just four points on 4-of-4 free throws.

"It is hard to beat good teams playing one-on-one basketball and I think Ray found out tonight that you can score more points running the offense than you can trying to do too much individually," added Palmer.