GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. –  At long last, Colorado Mesa gets to return home.

After four road games and three individual road trips, including the longest bus ride of the season, CMU returns to Brownson Arena for a Saturday night game against rivals Western Colorado.

The road trip was an overall success, with wins over then-No. 3 Black Hills State, South Dakota Mines and then-No. 12 Fort Lewis, although it ended on a sour note with a 70-63 loss to Westminster on Tuesday.

RECAPS: Fort Lewis | Westminster

Trevor Baskin had a 17-point, 15-rebound double-double in the game against Fort Lewis, which won him last week's RMAC Defensive Player of the Week award. Blaise Threatt scored 21 points against Fort Lewis and then led all scorers with 24 points against Westminster.

Schedule Alert
Colorado Mesa has a one-game weekend coming up after playing a midweek game last Tuesday.

The first of two meetings with Western Slope rivals Western Colorado will take place in Grand Junction at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday. The Mountaineers will be less rested than the Mavs, as WCU will face Westminster on Thursday before CMU on Saturday.

The game can be streamed live on the RMAC Network or listened to on 1340 AM/101.1 FM The Team radio. 

Standings Check
Tuesday's loss to Westminster dropped CMU back down to fourth place in the RMAC standings. The Mavericks had briefly jumped into third after beating Fort Lewis last Friday. Here's how the top eight of the standings currently sit:  
 

School	RMAC	Pct.	Overall	Pct.	Streak
#5 Colorado School of Mines	12-1	.923	18-1	.947	W9
#6 Black Hills State	11-1	.917	17-1	.944	W4
#17 Fort Lewis	10-2	.833	16-2	.889	W1
#16 Colorado Mesa	10-3	.769	15-4	.789	L1
Chadron State	8-5	.615	11-8	.579	W3
UCCS	7-6	.538	13-7	.650	L3
CSU Pueblo	6-7	.462	10-9	.526	L1
Westminster	6-8	.429	7-13	.350	W1

 
Double Digits
Although it was snapped on Tuesday, Colorado Mesa ran its winning streak to 10 games with the win over Fort Lewis.

The 10-game streak consisted of all conference games and impressively included seven road wins compared to three wins at home. The Mavericks notched wins over two nationally ranked opponents in then-No. 3 Black Hills State and No. 12 Fort Lewis and a regionally ranked team in UCCS.

That run becomes the eighth double-digit win streak in CMU's NCAA history. Frustratingly over time for the Mavs, five of those streaks were stopped at 10 games and the other three were stopped at 11, making the Mavericks 3-8 all-time when entering the game with a double-digit win streak.

Colorado Mesa's 21-2 season in 2020-21 had separate winning streaks of 11 and 10 games. The Mavs also reached 11 straight wins in the 2009-10 and 1998-99 seasons.

The Mavericks have one double-digit winning streak prior to their NCAA membership status, winning 18 straight in 1984-85 when the RMAC was still an NAIA conference. That team started 5-7 before ripping off 18 straight wins, winning a district championship and making it all the way to the NAIA National Tournament, where they lost to Wayland Baptist.

On the Boards
Trevor Baskin was a key force in the road win over Fort Lewis, scoring 17 points and grabbing a career-high 15 rebounds. That performance earned Baskin his first weekly honor of the year and first career defensive award after winning Offensive Player of the Week once in the 2021-22 season.

Last Tuesday, Baskin grabbed another 10 rebounds, making it the fifth time this season he has recorded 10 or more boards. Baskin also added three blocks and ranks second in the RMAC with 1.4 blocks per game (26 total).

Last week marked the third week out of the past four that the Mavs have grabbed one of the two RMAC weekly awards. Blaise Threatt was named the Defensive Player of the Week on January 2 and won the Offensive honor on January 15. He remains the only RMAC player this season to win both awards. Mac Riniker also has an RMAC Defensive Player of the Week honor this season from November 15.

Home Cooking
Colorado Mesa will certainly enjoy the opportunity to finally play in front of the Herd at Brownson Arena again.

The Mavericks have played each of the last four and six of their last eight games on the road. In just the past two weeks, they have taken a 10-hour one-way bus trip for a pair of games in South Dakota and two separate four-hour trips to Fort Lewis and Westminster within the past seven days.

Of course, the flip side of long road trips early in the conference season is that the Mavericks get more time at home down the stretch, with six of CMU's final nine conference games in Grand Junction, including the next three. After this Saturday, Colorado Mesa will host Regis next Friday, February 3 and UCCS on Saturday, February 4. The Saturday game will be the annual Blizzard in Brownson Presented by Coca Cola.

Chase For 1K
A pair of Mavericks are closing in on the 1,000 point milestone for their respective CMU careers.

Entering Saturday's game, Blaise Threatt sits at 941 career points. Threatt has steadily upped his scoring average each season from 8.9 points per game as a freshman to 13.8 in 2021-22 and 17.5 this season. Trevor Baskin has 879 career points. He is averaging 14.6 points per game and shooting over 58 percent from the field.

If both players perform exactly at their scoring averages, Threatt would pass 1,000 points on February 10 at Colorado School of Mines while Baskin would surpass the mark in the regular season finale at Western Colorado on February 24.

About Western Colorado
Western Colorado has been scuffling of late, as the Mountaineers sit at 3-13 overall and are just 1-11 in RMAC play. The Mountaineers got two of their wins in the Thanksgiving Classic, in which they partnered with CMU to host Simon Fraser and Northern New Mexico in each school's respective home gyms.

Western beat Simon Fraser 72-61 and NNMC 75-64 (by comparison, CMU beat those teams by 15 and 24, respectively.) Western Colorado's only conference win came on January 7 at home against South Dakota Mines. Kade Juelfs hit a go-ahead jumper with 2.9 seconds left to clinch an 81-79 victory.

Sophomore forward Robel Desta ranks 10^th in the RMAC with 14.7 points per game and ranks seventh with 7.2 rebounds per game. Senior guard Avery Rembao is also in double figures at 13.9 points per game and leads the team with 2.9 assists per game. Juelfs is the team's third-leading scorer at 8.8 points per game while forward Gino Corridori scores 8.7 per game and pulls down 6.6 rebounds per game.

Western Colorado is scoring 64.9 points per game as a team, currently last in the RMAC. They have the 12^th-ranked defense, giving up 75.6 points per game. The Mountaineers are a strong rebounding club, pulling down the fourth-most rebounds per game in the conference at 37.5, although they allow opponents to grab 39.2 per game.

The Mountaineers are struggling for offense in part because of the departure of their leading scorer, Matthew Ragsdale. In 2021-22, Ragsdale averaged 21.5 points per game, second-most in the RMAC, but Ragsdale left WCU to team up with high school teammate Joel Scott at Black Hills State for the 2022-23 season.

Head Coach Bradd Schafer is in his ninth season as the coach at Western Colorado, his alma mater. Schafer qualified for the RMAC Tournament in 2016-17 and won 14 games in 2019-20, the most since Schafer was a Western Colorado player in 1999. Prior to returning to Western, Schafer spent four years as the head coach at Black Hills State from 2010-2014, compiling a 56-57 record and overseeing BHSU's transition from NAIA to Division II. He also was an assistant coach at Colorado School of Mines.

Series History
Colorado Mesa has a 61-26 historical edge in the rivalry series with Western Colorado. The Mavs have won nine of the past 11 meetings dating back to the 2016-17 season.

Like any rivalry matchup, however, records can be thrown out the window any time the two teams get together. Western's previous win against CMU came on January 30, 2021, handing the 11-0 Mavs their first loss of the season in a year they ended at 21-2. That game was also the first conference loss for CMU since a previous loss to Western in 2020.

The Mavericks should enjoy a definite home field advantage, however. Western Colorado has not won in Brownson Arena since 2011, although they have beaten CMU six times in Gunnison in that time span.

In last year's games, the Mavericks won 81-72 at home behind a 21-point, 13-rebound double-double from Trevor Baskin and then topped the Mountaineers 62-57 on the road.

In the Polls
Colorado Mesa is currently ranked No. 16 in the NABC Coaches Poll, a season high. The Mavs are up to No. 23 in the D2SIDA Media Poll. Both national polls were released this past Tuesday, so they do not factor in CMU's Tuesday night loss to Westminster.

The RMAC has two consensus top-six teams in Colorado School of Mines and Black Hills State. The NABC Coaches Poll has Mines at No. 5 and Black Hills at No. 6, while the media poll reverses it with BHSU at No. 5 and Mines at No. 6.

Thanks to last weekend's win over Fort Lewis, the Mavs moved ahead of the Skyhawks on the national and regional stages. The Coaches Poll has Fort Lewis one spot behind CMU at No. 17 while the Skyhawks are unranked in the media poll.

Colorado Mesa is tied for third in the D2SIDA Regional Rankings, trailing Black Hills State and Mines and tied with Angelo State. The Mavs have beaten the No. 1 (Black Hills State), No. 5 (Fort Lewis), No. 8 (Texas-A&M Kingsville) and No. 9 (St. Edward's) teams in the rankings while only losing to No. 2 (Colorado School of Mines).

Colorado Mesa finished second in the RMAC Preseason Coaches' Poll, trailing only Black Hills State, who received 14 of 15 first-place votes. Colorado School of Mines got the final first-place vote and came third, followed by Fort Lewis and UCCS.

Coach's Corner
Mike DeGeorge has taken the Colorado Mesa program to unprecedented heights since arriving ahead of the 2018-19 season.

He improved the Mavericks from 11 to 19 wins in his first season and crossed the 20-win barrier in 2019-20, leading CMU to an RMAC Tournament Championship from the No. 4 seed. That clinched what would have been the Mavs' first NCAA Tournament Appearance since 2011, but the NCAA Tournament was canceled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2020-21 campaign saw the Mavericks start the season with 14 consecutive wins on the way to the RMAC Regular Season and Tournament Championships and finishing the regular season ranked No. 1 in the nation. DeGeorge was named RMAC and NCAA West Region Coach of the Year.

In 2021-22, DeGeorge led the Mavericks to within half a game of a regular-season conference championship before leading the team to the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 for the first time in program history, a run that included a win over regional No. 1 seed Lubbock Christian.

Prior to CMU, DeGeorge was the head coach at Eureka College in Eureka, Ill. from 2000-04, Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa from 2004-09 and Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. for eight seasons from 2010-2018.