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The University of Regina's men's basketball team returns home this weekend to host Calgary in a pair of late-season Canada West games on Friday and Saturday at the Centre for Kinesiology, Health & Sport.
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The Cougars opened the second half of the Canada West schedule with an away win over UBC Okanagan to improve their conference record to 6-3 at that point, but it's been a tough road since that victory. They lost the next night to the Heat, then dropped two games to Manitoba at the CKHS and lost twice at Brandon last weekend.
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But the good news for the Cougars is that at 6-8 on the season, they're still in playoff position as they're tied with Fraser Valley for 11
th in the Canada West standings. Lurking behind the U of R and UFV is Victoria at 5-9, and the Vikes play host to Trinity Western (2-12) this weekend before squaring off with Fraser Valley next Friday and Saturday. MacEwan and UNBC are both one win behind Victoria at 4-10.
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And the Cougars have a tough task ahead of them with a strong Calgary team in town. The Dinos come into the game with an 11-3 record, are ranked fifth in this week's U SPORTS Top Ten, and have gone a perfect 5-0 on the road so far during the Canada West schedule with two wins over Victoria and one win apiece over provincial rivals Lethbridge, Mount Royal, and Alberta.
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Not only has the U of R lost
Stephen Shields for the year to an injury, the Cougars were also without
Alex Igual for most of the Manitoba series and
Aaron McGowan for the majority of the second half of the schedule due to injuries. Head coach
Steve Burrows has gone with four different starting lineups in the six Canada West games since the December break, with
Brandon Tull and
Travis Sylvestre now the only two Cougars to have started all 14 conference games this season. Tull, who's second on the team with an average of 13 points per game, hit a major career milestone last weekend at Brandon after collecting his 1000
th point in a U of R uniform.
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Thomas Cooper, a first-team All-Canadian for Calgary last year, is second in Canada West with an average of 22.9 points per game. Cooper also averages a team-leading 7.3 rebounds for the Dinos, while three other players – Mambi Diawara, David Kapinga, and Lars Schlueter – also average in double figures in scoring. Calgary enters the weekend second in Canada West in both winning percentage (.786) and RPI (.6298).
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Both games this weekend have an 8 p.m. scheduled start time.
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