Long Beach, CA—The UC Riverside Men's Basketball Team enters Thursday's 7 pm game at Long Beach State in a three-way tie for fourth place in the Big West. A win over the 49ers would lift the Highlanders back to the .500 mark in conference play, and snap a 10-game losing streak against the Beach.
Taylor Johns led UC Riverside's offensive charge in its lone game of the week last week—a 66-62 victory over visiting CSUN—as he scored a game-high 27 points (
box score/
recap). Nearly half of those points came from three free throw line where Johns set a program record for most free throw attempts in a game with a miss by going 13 for 13.
A 59.9 percent shooter from the charity stripe last season, Johns is up to 68.8 percent this year. He leads the Highlanders in scoring with 16.5 points and 7.9 rebounds per game.
Jaylen Bland continues his assault on UC Riverside's single-season made three-pointers chart, and needs just four to best the program Division I era record of 70 set by current Highlanders Assistant Coach Justin Bell, and later tied by Javon Borum. Bland is on pace to drain 99 shots from long distance in 31 games this season, which would leave him one shy of the overall team record of 100 set by Maurice Pullum in the 1988-89 campaign.
Long Beach State has won seven of its last eight games to move a game over .500 overall on the year. Six of those seven wins are in conference play, and the 49ers are now tied with UC Davis and UC Irvine atop the Big West standings.
Mike Caffey leads the squad offensively averaging 17.7 points per game. He is a dual threat making 48.1 percent of his shots from the field and 41.8 percent from three-point range.
The Highlanders are 10-32 all-time against Long Beach State (
view results).
