It’s seven up, and seven down for the LaGrange Grangers.

With Saturday’s 74-66 victory over visiting Hiram, LaGrange finds itself with an unblemished 7-0 record.

Kwame Brown led a balanced scoring effort with 21 points, and Justyn Olson added 15 points.

Dee Smith and Joe Sanders contributed 12 points apiece, and Rudra Kissun scored nine points on a trio of 3-pointers.

“We’re 7-0, and I feel like now the kids are making the progression and getting better,” LaGrange head coach Mike Pauley said. “We feel like we improved some, so that was a real blessing.”

Although the Grangers led most of the way, they were never comfortable.

Whenever it looked like LaGrange was about to put the game out of reach, Hiram made a run to get back in it.

The Grangers led by 10 points early in the fourth quarter, but a 13-6 run by Hiram trimmed the lead to 62-59 with 1:30 left.

The Grangers went on to build the lead to eight in the final minute, but Hiram got as close as four with 22 seconds left on a 3-pointer.

The Hornets didn’t score again, though, and Olson made four straight free throws in the closing moments to seal it.

“Everytime they made a push, we made a basket,” Pauley said.

The game was tied 18-18 after the first quarter, and the Grangers led 33-28 at the half after leading by as many as nine points in the second period.

In the third quarter, LaGrange extended its lead to as many as 10 points before settling for a 49-43 lead heading into the final period.

Smith scored on an offensive rebound with 6:40 left to again put the Grangers up by 10 before Hiram made its push.

Pauley was happy with the contributions made by a number of different players, including Brown, who scored 16 of his 21 points in the first half.

“One thing that happened was, Kwame got kind of hot,” Pauley said. “Then what happened was, some other guys got going and we fed off of that and hit a couple of shots.”

“Dee Smith contributed some shots, and Rudra Kissun made some shots, and Justyn made some free throws, and all the sudden we’re balanced.”

And although Drew Moody only scored five points, Pauley said he made a huge contribution on the boards.

“Drew Moody got 1,000 rebounds. He was everywhere,” Pauley said. “He grabbed so many balls and got them to the next guy. He really gets the job done.”

LaGrange will try to make it eight in a row when it hosts Callaway on Tuesday.