LA MIRADA, Calif. --- After a long time away Biola Men's Basketball finally returns to Chase Gymnasium this week for a trio of games to start a four-game home stand that closes out the non-conference season. Tuesday night marks the home opener for Head Coach Dr. Dave Holmquist's squad as they host NAIA school La Sierra at 7:30 p.m. 

THIS WEEK: vs La Sierra (2-4) - Tuesday Nov. 19 at 7:30 p.m.; vs Pomona-Pitzer (0-1) - Thursday Nov. 21 at 7:30 p.m.; vs Fort Kent (3-2) - Saturday Nov. 23 at 7:30 p.m.

MULTIMEDIA: Biola offers free live video of all home events at portal.stretchinternet.com/biola. Live statistics will be available at that link and also at https://athletics.biola.edu/sidearmstats/mbball/summary. See the links with the previews below to find live coverage for all road contests.

BIOLA VS LA SIERRA (3-4): Tuesday, Nov. 19 at 7:30 p.m. \\ Live Stats \\ Live Video
Biola Men's Basketball has never once lost to La Sierra. The Eagles are a perfect 15-0 all-time against the Golden Eagles, with the last matchup between the two sides coming the preseason of 2017-18. That was an 81-72 Biola victory. The closest LSU has come to earning a win was in a 62-59 game in 2012, part of a 16-15 Biola Men's Basketball season. The next closest contest was a nine-point differential, which occurred last year and also back in 2013. La Sierra is off to a 3-4 start to the 2019-20 season. They're most recent time out was a 96-82 win at West Coast Baptist on Saturday night. The team's averaged 81.8 points-per-game over its first seven games, but it's also allowed an average of 88.1 points-per-game including 105 points to Westmont College just over one week ago. Uriel Lejtman leads their team by averaging 20 points-per-game this season. He dropped 30 on Golden State Athletic Conference power Vanguard earlier in the year. He's a 6-foot-7-inch freshman from Argentina. Not too far behind Lejtman is DJ Everage, who is a junior guard averaging 19.6 points-per-game this year. Everage has topped 20 two times this season, with 29 against Life Pacific and 20 even against Caltech. Everage scored 21 points against Biola the last time these two teams met (2017). He and senior post player Saladine Ganda (4) are the only players on the current roster to score points in that game. After Lejtman and Everage there's not much in terms of scoring from this La Sierra team. The Golden Eagles are playing for first-year head coach John Janssen.  

BIOLA VS POMONA PITZER (0-1): Thursday, Nov. 21 at 7:30 p.m. \\ Live Stats \\ Live Video
This game has been circled on the calendar for quite some time as Biola looks to answer back to a tough non-conference loss to these Sagehens (NCAA DIII / SCIAC) at the start of last season. The Sagehens came into Chase Gymnasium and dropped in 53 first-half points and 14 total made three-point shots to hand the Eagles' an embarrassing 92-67 defeat. Pomona Pitzer went on to have a fantastic season, going 26-3 overall and 15-1 in SCIAC play, leading to a NCAA Division III National Championship second round appearance. The Sagehens scored over 81 points-per-game on average and gave up just 67 points-per-game to help power that fantastic year. Biola will bank on the fact that the team's top scorer and rebounder is no longer on the roster and that three of their top-5 in minutes are no longer on the team to hopefully find a different result in this year's matchup. Biola is 26-15 all-time against the Sagehens. The Eagles and Pomona-Pitzer have played against each other in the preseason every season since 1995-96. Head Coach Dr. Dave Holmquist and P-P head coach Charles Katsiaficas have a combined 2,209 games coached and over 1,470 career coaching wins. If you're at the game - they are really the ones to watch on this night. Pomona-Pitzer enters Thursday's matchup with an 0-1 record to start the season. They began the year with an 84-76 loss at Westmont. Westmont is off to a 5-0 start to the season. Micah Elan, who was second on the Sagehens in scoring last season, led the effort in the opener with 26 points. Elan shot 6-of-9 (3-3 3pt) against Biola last season to score 18 points. The 14 made three-pointers in that game is the most Biola allowed any opponent in a single game last year.

BIOLA VS FORT KENT (3-2): Saturday, Nov. 23 at 7:30 p.m. \\ Live Stats \\ Live Video
This is the first all-time meeting between Biola and the University of Maine-Fort Kent. The Bengals are not NCAA, NAIA or NCCAA but rather they compete in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association. The USCAA features 79 degree-granting institutions ranging from technical schools to community colleges to four-year schools that are satellite campuses of major universities, similar to Maine-Fort Kent. Fourteen of the 79 schools are satellite campuses of Penn State. Fort Kent comes to Biola as game two of a seven-game West Coast road trip. The Bengals begin at Westmont on Friday before making the trip down the coast to Biola for Saturday's matchup. They'll then trek up to Oregon and Washington for five games against a mix of NAIA, NCAA Division III and NCCAA competition. Fort Kent is 3-2 to begin the year, coming into this week with wins over St. Thomas, Husson and Maine-Machias. They score 63.6 points-per-game on average, with their most interesting game being a 43-41 win over Maine-Machias. Their opponents average 65 points-per-game, but the Bengals allowed 90 to NCAA Division III Thomas Terriers last time out. The Bengals' offense is led by Zeke McMurtry who averages 17.6 points-per-game this season and has had 24 and 25 in his last two outings, accounting for almost half of the team's total points in both of those losses. He's followed by Julian Hymes' 9.2 points-per-game.

NOT ON THE RIGHT FOOT: Biola Men's Basketball comes into this week still seeking its first win of the new season. The Eagles had that win all but in the bag in the season-opener as they stormed out of the gates to lead CSU San Marcos by 14 points with just seven-and-a-half minutes to play. CSUSM ended regulation on an 18-4 run to tie the game at the buzzer and send things into overtime. The Eagles mustered just two points in the overtime period and suffered an absolutely heartbreaking 86-75 defeat. Head Coach Dr. Dave Holmquist talked to his team the next day and focused a bit on some of the breakdowns that caused the unfortunate ending, but he also saw positive in that the loss gave the team more of an opportunity to notice and work on areas of weakness, because "after a win everyone is happy." The team didn't have much time to make adjustments having to face a good CSU Los Angeles team later that night. Biola got off to a slow start offensively and just couldn't quite recover in a 78-69 loss on night two of the season. Marquise Mosley scored exactly 22 points in each of the team's first two games to lead the way in that category. After him comes Michael Bagatourian (18.5ppg) and Jesse Elrod (9ppg). The Eagles have been out-shot 53 percent to 46 percent and have been just 33 percent from distance to start the year, making it harder to keep up in high-scoring affairs. The 6-foot-9-inch Elrod has been the team's most consistent 3-point man to this point in the year, making 50 percent (2-of-4) of his attempts from deep. Biola would've loved to get wins in those first two outings, especially the first one, but will now turn its effort to closing out the preseason on a high note with at least three home wins.

MINUTE MEN: Biola's team makeup is immediately evident after its first two countable contests, with Michael Bagatourian, Marquise Mosley and Alex Wright all three set to carry heavy, heavy loads for this team throughout the season. Mosley and Bagatourian lead the way for the Eagles as the top point-scorers, but also the top minute men through the first two games. Both guys average 38.5 minutes-per-game after two contests, with Mosley playing each and every minute in Biola's season opening overtime contest against CSU San Marcos. Alex Wright is third on the squad with a minutes average of 35.0 per game. Those three will form the core on both offense and defense on this team with others like Jesse Elrod, Solomon Ruddell and Chris Rossow also playing important minutes and roles. Biola typically is known for being a stingy defensive-minded team. To this point in the year their opponents have averaged 82 points-per-game, so something's going to have to shift and it's got to start with the efforts of those top three.

MEET THE TEAM: There's going to be a lot of time to get to know this team in the preseason with four of the Eagles' six non-conference games at home and zero of those six located more than 17 miles from the Biola campus. That time will be necessary with just five returning players on Holmquist's 12-man roster for 2019-20. Alex Wright and Michael Bagatourian are the only returning starters, with Whitten Dominiguez, Tyus Dennis and Will Shannon all returning after filling role positions last year. Of the seven newcomers two are freshman and the five others are transfers. One of the freshman will sit out this season, giving this Eagles' team 10 of 11 players with bushels of collegiate experience. Four of the five Biola transfers have NCAA Basketball experience, ranging from NCAA Division I UC Irvine (Solomon Ruddell) and California Baptist (Marquise Mosley) to out-of-region NCAA Division II foes Colorado State-Pueblo (Cade Carroll) and Southwest Baptist (Chris Rossow). The non-NCAA transfer, Jesse Elrod, played a stellar two seasons at nearby Citrus College, earning all-conference honors and helping the Owls to 52-12 overall record during his time with the team. His teammate and conference player of the year, Josh Caston, is headed to Point Loma this year, which will be an interesting storyline to follow. Mosley is here for just one season after exhausting three years of eligibility in four years at CBU. Ruddell and Carroll each have three seasons left and Rossow and Elrod will have two. Mosley is the only senior on the 2019-20 roster for Holmquist, meaning a sustainable future of success is within grasp for this group.

HOLM-QUEST FOR 1,000: Head Coach Dr. Dave Holmquist enters his 40th season as the head coach at Biola this season. He's coached at BU since the 1978-79 season, but took a few years off here and there along the way. The legendary coach has 937 wins at Biola and 973 wins overall to sit on the doorstep to history. Holmquist's side would need quite the remarkable year to get him to 1,000 this season, but chances are he could grasp 1,000 total victories before the end of 2020. He would be just the fifth coach in four-year college men's basketball to reach the 1,000-win plateau. The most recent to cross the threshold was Jefferson University's Herb Magee. Magee, who's coached the NCAA Division II Rams (formerly Philadelphia University) since 1967, eclipsed the 1,000-win total on February 7, 2015. Others with 1,000 officially recognized coaching victories are Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, McKendree's Harry Statham (NCAA III) and Oregon Tech's Danny Miles (NAIA). Holmquist or Syracuse Head Coach Jim Boeheim should be the next to hit 1,000. Entering 2019-20, Boeheim has 946 officially recognized wins in his coaching career, which began back in 1976. He had 101 wins vacated by the NCAA, so when he reaches 1,000 he will technically be doing so for the second time. His Orange have averaged right at 20 wins-per-year over the last five seasons.

IT'S REAL STARTING NOW: The 2019-20 Biola Men's Basketball season has added significance in that it's the Eagles' first as full members in NCAA Division II. Back on July 12 the Biola campus received a call from the NCAA Division II Membership Committee notifying BU of its successful completion of the membership transition process. The change became official as of September 1 and now Biola is officially eligible for NCAA postseason play, national and regional rankings and official NCAA postseason honors for the first time. The Eagles are also now eligible to compete in the PacWest Conference tournament for the first time. The top-6 teams after the regular season qualify for the conference tournament. Biola finished in a tie for fifth last season and would have been into the postseason tournament had the Eagles been eligible. Azusa Pacific will host this year's tournament between March 5-7. This year Biola will also hope to finish top-8 in the NCAA Division II West Region and earn a spot in the NCAA West Regional and ultimately the national tournament. Last season, Point Loma made a postseason run all the way to the NCAA Division II title game, setting the precedent for a PacWest team to make a deep journey through the upper echelon of NCAA Division II. The Sea Lions lost in the title game to Northwest Missouri State, which went a perfect 38-0 last season to earn their second title in the last three years. The Bearcats are already 5-0 this season to boast a remarkable 43-game winning streak. The PacWest had three teams (PLNU, Concordia Irvine, Chaminade) make the eight-team west regional.

HEADING HOME: The Eagles play four home games between Nov. 19-25 to prepare for the first two games of its conference schedule to come on the road. Those last four non-conference contests come against non-NCAA Division II teams (La Sierra, Pomona-Pitzer, Saint Katherine, Maine-Ft. Kent). Last season Biola managed a 10-6 home record. The team has 15 true home contests scheduled for the 2019-20 season.

UPCOMING MILESTONES:
Michael Bagatourian - 75 games played (58)
Michael Bagatourian - 300 field goals made (244)
Michael Bagatourian - 200 free throws made (104)
Michael Bagatourian - 300 rebounds (253)
Michael Bagatourian - 200 assists (113)
Michael Bagatourian - 100 steals (59)
Michael Bagatourian - 2,000 minutes (1,693)
Cade Carroll - 1,000 minutes (510)
Cade Carroll - 100 field goals made (61)
Cade Carroll - 200 rebounds (105)
Tyus Dennis - 50 games played (33)
Marquise Mosley - 100 games played (97)
Marquise Mosley - 1,500 minutes (1,408)
Marquise Mosley - 150 field goals made (131)
Marquise Mosley - 100 free throws made (99)
Marquise Mosley - 100 rebounds (96)
Marquise Mosley - 200 assists (152)
Marquise Mosley - 75 steals (45)
Chris Rossow - 2,000 minutes (1,753)
Chris Rossow - 300 field goals made (202)
Chris Rossow - 100 3-point field goals made (59)
Chris Rossow - 200 free throws made (167)
Chris Rossow - 300 rebounds (227)
Chris Rossow - 300 assists (270)
Chris Rossow - 100 steals (85)
Alex Wright - 1,000 minutes (966)
Alex Wright - 100 field goals made (92)
Alex Wright - 200 rebounds (129)
Alex Wright - 100 assists (62)
*Transfer student-athletes include numbers from other NCAA institutions

NEXT WEEK: vs Saint Katherine (2-4) - Monday, November 25 at 7 p.m.