Men's Hoops Jumps Back Into Big West Play With Wednesday Game At CSUN

Riverside—After taking a one-game respite from conference play to participate in the Sears BracketBusters series, the UC Riverside Men’s Basketball Team jumps back into the thick of the Big West race this Wednesday with a 7:05 pm PT tip at the Matadome to take on Cal State Northridge.

The Matadors handed the Highlanders a 63-52 loss at the Student Rec Center to open conference play back on January 2. Phil Martin scored a game-high 22 for UCR that night, and Robert Smith added 16, but the rest of the squad combined to score just 14 points on five of 22 shooting from the field.

UC Riverside followed that defeat with a four-game Big West winning streak—the longest such streak in program history—but have more recently dropped seven of eight in conference.

CSUN has been on a similar slide dropping 10 of 13 games since their win over the Highlanders. Stephan Hicks leads the Matadors offensive attack averaging 15.4 points per game followed by Josh Greene’s 12.4 points. Defense has been the team’s problem in 2011-12 as they are allowing opponents to score an average of 74.3 points per game on 45.8 percent shooting from the field and 36.6 percent from long distance.

By contrast, UC Riverside’s defense has been its calling card all season long as their opponents average 62.7 points per game while connecting on just 39.3 percent of their shots from the floor and 32.6 percent from three-point range.

Offensively, however, the Highlanders have struggled of late as their scoring average has dipped below 60 points per game at 59.7, and they have failed to score at least 60 points in six of their last seven games.

Men's Hoops Jumps Back Into Big West Play With Wednesday Game At CSUN

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