ROLLA, Mo. – After dropping its first two road contests in Great Lakes Valley Conference play last week, Missouri S&T's men's basketball team will return home for three straight non-conference games before breaking for the holidays starting with a game Wednesday against Webster at Gibson Arena.

The Miners will host the Gorloks at 7 p.m. Wednesday evening before taking on Westminster, another team from the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, in a 3 p.m. contest Saturday.  The Miners' third game to be played prior to the break will take place Dec. 20 against Culver-Stockton before they resume their conference schedule in January.

Missouri S&T picked up a home victory over Drury to open its GLVC season last Monday, but lost road games at William Jewell and Southwest Baptist to bring a 2-5 overall record into Wednesday's game.  Even in defeat, the Miners continue to get big scoring outings from Julien Smith (Fort Worth, TX/Northwest), who averaged 18.7 points per game in last week's three contests and currently ranks fifth in the GLVC with an average of 18.6 per game.

Smith also ranks among the league leaders in three-point shooting, as he is making 38.9 percent of his attempts which ranks sixth in the GLVC, while also ranking fourth with three treys per game.

The Miners still have five players averaging in double figures, as Smith is joined by Alex Strating (Wassenaar, Netherlands/American School of the Hague) at 11.1 points per game, Kevin Legardy (Las Vegas, NV/Canyon Springs) and Kaden Froebe (Lincoln, IL/Lincoln) at 11 points apiece and Ryan Parker (Bloomington, IN/Bloomington South) at 10.1 per game.  Froebe, who had a season-high 12 rebounds on Saturday at SBU, is leading S&T with 6.4 rebounds per game and also leads the team with 19 assists.  Legardy, meanwhile, leads S&T with 14 steals and Strating is shooting 64.6 percent from the field.

S&T comes into the week ranked fourth in the GLVC in both overall field goal percentage (46.2 percent) and three-point shooting (35.3 percent) and is also fourth with 3.6 blocked shots per game, led by Mahamadou Kaba-Camera's (Conakry, Guinea/Balboa City (San Diego, CA)) eight.

ABOUT WEBSTER: The Gorloks dropped their fourth straight game Monday when they lost 81-79 at home to Baptist Bible, despite getting 21 points from Wynne Brown.  Webster had two shots to tie the game in the final seconds but missed both as it fell to 1-6 on the year.  The one victory for the Gorloks came against Washington University – currently ranked 20^th in NCAA Division III -- in mid-November, but the Bears avenged that loss during the course of Webster's current skid.

Brown leads the Gorloks in scoring with an average of 14 points per game and is the team's only double figure scorer through play on Monday.  Karl Moore is scoring 9.6 points a game and leads the team in rebounding with 10.6 per contest; he has reached double figures in the rebounding column in five of the team's seven games with a high of 18 in the win over WashU.

Webster has struggled with its shooting thus far, connecting on just 40.9 percent of its field goal attempts, 27 percent of its tries from three-point range and is making only 48.9 percent of its shots from the free throw line.

ABOUT WESTMINSTER: The Blue Jays are 4-5 on the campaign, but won their most recent game on Saturday when they knocked off Central Christian on the road 77-55.  Westminster led by 10 at the half, then outscored Central Christian 40-28 over the final 20 minutes.

Landon Harrison leads the Blue Jays with an average of 14.9 points per game and Jaxon Althaus is averaging 14.6 per contest for a team that is scoring 75.9 points per game.  Westminster has a third double figure scorer in Tre Kempker at 11.3 points a game, while Ethan Thompson has been the team's top three-point shooter as he has connected 18 times and is hitting 40.9 percent of his long-range tries.

Kempker leads the team in rebounding with 5.6 per game, while Harrison has a team-high 31 assists.

At 4-5 through Monday, Westminster owns the second-best record in the SLIAC behind Principia, a team the Miners defeated in late November.