Men's Basketball Takes Break From Big West Play To Host Southern Utah

Riverside—The UC Riverside Men’s Basketball Team takes its final break from conference play this Saturday as the Highlanders host Southern Utah in the Sears BracketBusters series. Tip is slated for 7 pm.

The Highlanders are 5-1 since they began playing in the BracketBusters series in 2005-06. The team’s lone loss came a year ago in a 68-49 defeat at Fresno State. Prior to that, UC Riverside ran off five straight wins in the series beating Youngstown State (62-60 on February 20, 2010), San Jose State (53-52 on February 26, 2009), Hawai’i (79-62 on February 23, 2008), Idaho (81-76 on February 17, 2007) and Southeast Missouri (69-61 on February 16, 2006).

UC Riverside and Southern Utah have squared off against one another on eight occasions with the Highlanders owning a 6-2 advantage in the series. Three of those games have come during UCR’s Division I-era. The Thunderbirds won the last meeting between the clubs in a 76-65 decision on December 21, 2009.

Both clubs enter Saturday’s match-up looking to turn things around in time for a final conference push—UCR has dropped seven of its last eight games while the Thunderbirds have lost four of their last five.

UC Riverside’s offense has been its Achilles heal of late as they have held 11 of their last 15 opponents below 70 points and six of them below 60 points, but averaged just 61.8 points themselves over that stretch.

Southern Utah has suffered a similar fate as the Thunderbirds have allowed just three of their past 11 opponents to reach the 70-point plateau while scoring 65 or fewer in nine of those games.
Jackson Stevenett is Southern Utah’s leading scorer at 13.9 points per game followed by Ramell Taylor (12.1) and Damon Heuir (10.4).

Men's Basketball Takes Break From Big West Play To Host Southern Utah

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