Riverside—With three weeks remaining in the regular season, the UC Riverside Men's Basketball Team finds itself in the thick of the hunt for an upper division finish in the Big West.
The Highlanders enter the week with a 5-6 record in conference, tied with Cal Poly for sixth place and just one-and-a-half games back of UC Santa Barbara in fourth. UCR hosts the Gauchos this Thursday, February 19 at 7 pm PT, and the Mustangs on Saturday, February 21 beginning at 7 pm.
UC Riverside kept pace with both of those clubs Saturday night by upending UC Irvine, 70-63 (
box score/
recap). Jaylen Bland and Taylor Johns each scored 21 points as the Highlanders snapped a five-game losing streak to the Anteaters.
UC Santa Barbara has been without conference player of the year candidate Alan Williams for the last seven games, as the 6-8 center has been sidelined with an injury. The Gauchos have won five of those seven games, however, after starting league play with a 1-2 mark.
Michael Bryson is averaging 14.8 points per game in conference thanks in part to a 39.7 percent shooting percentage from beyond the arc. As a team, the Gauchos are making 47.0 percent of their shots from long distance, but they are also allowing the opposition to connect on 38.6 percent from fown town.
UCSB picked up an 83-75 victory in the first meeting of the season between these two clubs thanks to an offense that made 51.7 percent of its shots from the field and 8 of 13 (61.5%) from three-point range.
The Highlanders are 7-29 all-time against the Gauchos (
view all-time results). All seven of those victories have come on UC Riverside's home floor.
