ROLLA, Mo. – With five games remaining on the regular season schedule and needing wins to fend off teams trying to take the spot it currently holds in the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament field, Missouri S&T's men's basketball team will return to its home court to face a pair of nationally-ranked teams in the upcoming week.

The Miners will open their quick two-game homestand Thursday when they host No. 19-ranked Lewis University in a 7:30 p.m. game at Billy Key Court. On Saturday, S&T will contend with No. 16-ranked Wisconsin-Parkside, the current leader in the GLVC's East Division, at 3 p.m.

Missouri S&T currently sits in tenth place in the overall GLVC standings with the five games left on the schedule, three of them at home. However, all three home games are against teams that are ranked in the current NABC/Division II poll – the two the Miners face this weekend and second-ranked Drury, whom the Miners host Feb. 27 in their regular season finale.

The first of those opponents, Lewis, enters Thursday's game at 18-3 overall and 10-3 in the GLVC and has one of the league's top players in junior guard Ryan Jackson. He is the league's sixth-leading scorer with an average of 18.3 points per game, while connecting on a team-high 31 three-point shots and leading the Flyers in steals with 24. Jackson is shooting 82.5 percent at the free throw line as well for a team that ranks 11^th in NCAA Division II at 77.2 percent>

Lewis, who as a team is shooting just below 50 percent from the field and committed the second-fewest turnovers of any team in the nation, has two other double figure scorers in Julian Lewis at 15.1 points per game – he is third in the league in rebounding with 8.4 a game – and Jeff Jarosz with 14.2 points a game.

The Miners will counter with two of the top seven scorers in the conference from the league's top scoring team, as Bryce Foster (Florissant, Mo./Hazelwood Central) is second in the league with an average of 22 points a game and Mudiaga Eruteya (Chicago, Ill./Notre Dame) is seventh at 17.8 a game. S&T is averaging 90.6 points per game which ranks fifth in Division II entering play this week and has also forced the tenth-most steals of any team in the country with 9.4 per game.

Individually, Eruteya leads the GLVC in steals with 2.5 per game and Nusrath Khan (Morton Grove, Ill./Maine East), who averages 14.2 points a game, is second with 2.2 steals a contest.

Saturday's opponent, Wisconsin-Parkside, has dropped just one of its 13 conference games heading into Thursday's clash at Drury and is 19-3 overall. The Rangers are the top field goal shooting team in the nation at 52.8 percent with top scorer Zygimantas Riauka hitting on 64.3 percent of his tries from the floor, the 12^th-best mark nationally. Riauka is also second in the conference in rebounding with 9.2 a game and in blocked shots with just over two per contest.

UW-Parkside has five players who are scoring in double figures, a group that includes Jimmy Gavin, one of the top sixth men in the GLVC. Gavin, a transfer from Bradley who has started in only three of the Rangers' 22 games but is playing nearly 27 minutes a contest, is averaging 15.7 points a game while shooting 54 percent from the field and 42.7 percent from beyond the arc.

Colt Grandstaff and Jordan Mach are both averaging better than 13 points a game and have combined to make 104 three-pointers this season. Grandstaff, Mach and Gavin have made almost 88 percent of the Rangers' three-point shots this season.

Game Notes: Miners vs. #19 Lewis

Game Notes: Miners vs. #16 Wisconsin-Parkside

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