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The University of Regina's women's basketball team starts the postseason this weekend with a best-of-three Canada West play-in series against Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, B.C.

Game 1 and Game 2 will be played on Friday and Saturday with 6 p.m. (PST) start times on both nights at UFV's Envision Athletic Centre, while Game 3 – if it's needed – will tip off on Sunday at 2 p.m. (PST).

Though the teams didn't meet in Canada West play this season, they did meet in October in a non-conference game and the Cougars and Cascades are certainly no strangers when it comes to the postseason. This will mark the third time in the last four seasons that Regina and Fraser Valley have met in the playoffs, with the other meetings both standing as Cougar wins in Canada West Final Four semifinal games. This weekend's series will mark the first time they've played a best-of-three against each other since UFV joined the CIS prior to the 2006-07 season.

The Cougars (12-8) will need to put the brakes on the four-game losing skid they finished the conference schedule with. They absorbed a pair of home losses two weekends ago to a UBC team that would go on to finish first in the Pioneer Division, and last weekend were defeated twice on the road by fourth-place Winnipeg.

Regina's balanced scoring attack features three players averaging over 12 points per game, including perimeter threat Katie Polischuk. The third-year guard tied her own U of R record with seven three-pointers last Saturday at Winnipeg, breaking Michelle Clark's school single-season triples mark in style. Clark had 57 back in 2011-12, but Polischuk finished with a Canada West-leading 59 this year to set the new mark. She averages a team-leading 13.3 points per game this season, closely followed by Charlotte Kot's average of 13.2 per game. Kot also finished as Canada West's leader in field goal percentage this season, shooting 58.2% from the field for the season.

Alyssia Kajati averaged 12.6 points per game for the Cougars and also shot 58.2% from the field, finishing just a fraction of a percentage point behind Kot for the league lead. Point guard Kehlsie Crone scored 9.9 points per game during the conference schedule while shooting a team-leading 39.7% from the three-point line, while Jennilea Coppola averaged 8.8 points per game and finished with a Pioneer Division-leading 36 blocks on the season.

Christina McCusker, Caitlin Zacharias, Sara Hubenig, and Taylor Pelletier all get heavy minutes off the bench for the Cougars, while rookie Britton Belyk appeared in 15 of the team's 20 conference games this season.

Fraser Valley – which lost 76-50 to the Cougars in Regina earlier this season at the U of R's non-conference tournament – is led by veteran Sarah Wierks, who posted ridiculous averages of 19.2 points and 15.4 rebounds per game this season in Explorer Division play. Three other Cascades also averaged in double figures, including Kaitlyn Brink (14.8 points per game), Nataliia Gavryliuk (13.1), and Celeste Dyck (10.9), while Hailey Kendall rounds out the starting five for UFV. Shayna Litman and Kaitlyn McDonald come off the bench for Fraser Valley, which often uses just a seven-player rotation in tight games.

The winner of this weekend's series will move on to play UBC in a best-of-three Canada West quarterfinal series beginning Feb. 27. The winner of that will move on to the Canada West Final Four.