LA MIRADA, Calif. --- Biola Men's Basketball closes out its 2019-20 regular season with a three-game swing over the next week. The Eagles host Holy Names on Saturday before playing at Fresno Pacific on Monday and closing out the regular year with Senior Night vs. Concordia Irvine on Thursday, Feb. 27. The Eagles come into this final stretch in control of their own destiny, but needing at least one win to lock up their spot in the PacWest Conference tournament.

THIS WEEK: vs. Holy Names (8-17, 6-13 PacWest) - Saturday Feb. 22 at 2:00 p.m.; at Fresno Pacific (10-16, 8-12 PacWest) - Monday Feb. 24 at 7:30 p.m.;  vs. Concordia Irvine (19-8, 13-5 PacWest) - Thursday Feb. 27 at 7:30 p.m.

MULTIMEDIA: Live video and live statistics will be available for all games. See the links below for the direct link for each game. Biola offers free live video of all home events at portal.stretchinternet.com/biola.

BIOLA (14-11, 10-9 PacWest) VS HOLY NAMES (8-17, 6-13 PacWest): Saturday Feb. 22 at 2:00 p.m. \\ Live Stats \\ Live Video \\ Last Meeting: Holy Names wins 76-72
Holy Names earned the upset victory over Biola in the first meeting of the season between these two teams. The Hawks took advantage of their home court to beat Biola 76-72 for their second-consecutive victory over Biola. The Hawks won their home game against the Eagles in 2018-19 and repeated earlier this month to follow up Biola's three-consecutive wins to begin the PacWest Conference era. Biola is 14-4 all-time against Holy Names. The Hawks outscored the Eagles by two points in each half (38-36) in the first meeting between these two sides to equate to the 4-point overall victory. Biola led the game for the first 10 minutes and had a small advantage as late as 19 minutes into the game, but a strong start to the second half helped the Hawks do just enough to keep ahead and steal a win. The Eagles made 42 percent of their shots, but were just 3-for-20 from beyond the arc in a game where the lack of three-point shooting made a difference. HNU made eight threes, including four from breakout sophomore forward Cameron Fini. Fini led the Hawks with 16 points that day. He is fifth on the team in scoring this year with a 10.6 points-per-game average. That's what you'll find out of this HNU team. Their five starters will all contribute to the scoring fairly evenly. No player has scored more than 25 in a game for HNU this season, but six players all hover right around 10-12 points-per-game. Sophomore guard Zamaria Odom has been the biggest scorer in PacWest Conference competition, averaging 12.8 points-per-game. He's also been one of the more consistent shooters, making 40.4 percent of his shots on a team with an average FG% of 39 percent in conference games. The Hawks come into Saturday's matchup on a four-game losing streak against Concordia Irvine, Hawaii Hilo, Academy of Art and Point Loma. The last win for HNU was against Biola. Two of those four losses were nailbiters, dropping a 94-91 result at home vs. CUI and a 63-62 game in Tobin Gymnasium against Hilo. 

BIOLA (14-11, 10-9) AT FRESNO PACIFIC (10-16, 8-12 PacWest): Monday Feb. 24 at 7:30 p.m. \\ Live Stats \\ Live Video \\ Last Meeting: Biola wins 77-67
Biola is looking for the season sweep of Fresno Pacific in the final road contest of the 2019-20 season. The Eagles beat FPU by double digits in their earlier matchup, benefitting from a 19-point, 11-rebound double-double from Jesse Elrod and a 20-point effort from Chris Rossow. The Eagles came out cold, but shot 50 percent in the second half to win that one and improve to 64-28 all-time against the Sunbirds. The Eagles are 2-2 against FPU in the PacWest Conference era and have yet to beat the Sunbirds inside of the FPU Special Event Center. Fresno Pacific is surging at the right time. They still have an outside chance at a PacWest Tournament berth thanks to back-to-back wins last week. FPU penciled in a pair of major upsets with a 16-point win over No. 17 Point Loma and a one-point win over Chaminade. The win over the Sea Lions was enough to knock PLNU from No. 17 to just receiving votes in the latest NCAA Division II Men's Basketball poll. Adrian Antunez led the scoring for FPU in the game at Biola (19). He's also the one who keyed the Sunbirds' win over Point Loma last week with  28-point game on 9-of-15 shooting. The junior point guard has scored 14 or more points in six of the last seven contests and eight of the last 10. Antunez and Aamondae Coleman are the undisputed scorers for this team. Coleman leads the pace with 17.9 points-per-game and is shooting .531 on the season. Antunez has had a special shooting season, pointing a .566 shooting percentage as a guard with 15.4 points-per-game.
BIOLA (14-11, 10-9 PacWest) VS CONCORDIA IRVINE (19-8, 13-5 PacWest): Thursday Feb. 27 at 7:30 p.m. \\ Live Stats \\ Live Video \\ Last Meeting: CUI wins 69-61
Turning defense into offense has been a strong suit for Concordia Irvine this season, helping them to a fantastic start to the PacWest Conference schedule. The Eagles lead the conference in steals with 238. They are 12th nationally and just about 30 behind the NCAA Division II leaders Bridgeport (CT). Concordia is disciplined and also leads the conference in turnover margin at +3.1. That puts them top-30 nationally as well. Finally, the team is second in the conference and 13th in the nation in blocks-per-game at 4.6. All of this results in a scoring margin of just 4.0. This explains how close the last meeting between these two teams was (a 69-61 CUI win) despite Biola playing arguably its worst start of the 2019-20 season in the opening stanza. BU was held to zero points for the first six minutes of the game, spotting CUI a 9-0 lead before Chris Rossow finally hit a bucket with 14:16 remaining in the first half. Concordia extended the lead to as many as 19 points throughout the game, but a really slow-going second-half fro CUI allowed Biola back within five points in the final minute of the game. Biola out-rebounded Concordia 50-35 in the game, but shot just 33 percent on their 69 field goal chances making it hard to compete. CUI saw a four-game winning streak snapped in their last outing as they came up short against Dominican (86-78) inside of CU Arena. Dominican shot 72 percent in the second half to put that game to bed and earn an upset victory. Forty-two of DUC's 86 points came from Jaelen Ragsdale and Lazar Djurovic who combined to go 15-for-22 from the field. CUI shot just 38 percent on the night and could not take advantage of a 25-point effort from Holy Names transfer Andre Green. Before this senior night meeting, Concordia irvine hosts Notre Dame de Namur and Academy of Art this week, teams they've beaten once already this season by an average of 24 points-per-game. CUI has a tough end to the regular season, having to play on the road for the senior night events of both Biola and Azusa Pacific.

ABOUT LAST WEEK: It was about what was expected as Biola hosted two of the three Hawaii schools for rematches. Biola beat Chaminade in a four-overtime thriller on the islands, but dropped this home matchup, 84-72. The Silverswords were led by perennial All-PacWest first team candidate Tyler Cartaino who dropped 23 points and took a third of CUH's field goal chances. Biola followed up that loss with a bounceback win over Hawaii Pacific. It was a convincing win in a game Biola really needed to buy some space in the PacWest Conference standings. The 69-55 win was a strong answer to the surprise loss to HPU earlier this year in a 73-68 decision out in Honolulu.

ROAD TO AZUSA: Biola needs to finish inside of the top-6 in the conference in order to make this season's PacWest Conference tournament, held at the Felix Event Center at Azusa Pacific. The Eagles are in good shape at this point of the season, as they control their own destiny as of right now. Biola sits in fifth place in the conference standings to start off the week. Biola is two-and-a-half games back from Chaminade in fourth-place (13-7) and one game ahead of Hawaii Hilo and one-and-a-half games ahead of Academy of Art. Biola holds the tiebreaker advantage over ART U, but it does not have a tiebreaker advantage over Hawaii Hilo. If Biola can win two of it's last three contests it guarantees berth into the conference tournament. 

FREE AND EASY: Biola is one of the top-21 free throw shooting teams in all of NCAA Division II this season. The Eagles sit 21st overall and tops in the PacWest Conference with a FT percentage of .781. It's the best Biola's shot from the charity stripe in over a decade. The best of the last 10 years was a .729 mark in 2015-16. That season the team went 30-4 overall and made 513 of their 704 free throw attempts. This year, the team is 321-for-409 from the line, led by three starters (Bagatourian, Chris Rossow, Jesse Elrod) making over 80 percent of their chances. Marquise Mosley has the most free throws made overall with 71 in 95 attempts (.747). Biola has made 20+ free throws in four games so far this season. One such game was the Eagles' 4-OT winner over Chaminade (21-for-22).

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 begins the year with 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. The PacWest had three teams (PLNU, Concordia Irvine, Chaminade) make the eight-team west regional.

UPCOMING MILESTONES:
Michael Bagatourian - 75 games played (81)
Michael Bagatourian - 500 field goals made (377)
Michael Bagatourian - 200 free throws made (159)
Michael Bagatourian - 400 rebounds (431)
Michael Bagatourian - 200 assists (169)
Michael Bagatourian - 100 steals (76)
Michael Bagatourian - 2,500 minutes (2,480)
Tyus Dennis - 50 games played (40)
Marquise Mosley - 120 games played (118)
Marquise Mosley - 2,000 minutes (2,109)
Marquise Mosley - 300 field goals made (244)
Marquise Mosley - 200 free throws made (164)
Marquise Mosley - 150 rebounds (145)
Marquise Mosley - 200 assists (236)
Marquise Mosley - 75 steals (65)
Chris Rossow - 2,500 minutes (2,630)
Chris Rossow - 300 field goals made (290)
Chris Rossow - 100 3-point field goals made (92)
Chris Rossow - 250 free throws made (231)
Chris Rossow - 300 rebounds (307)
Chris Rossow - 350 assists (336)
Chris Rossow - 150 steals (116)
Alex Wright - 1,500 minutes (1,763)
Alex Wright - 200 field goals made (183)
Alex Wright - 300 rebounds (314)
Alex Wright - 100 assists (109)
*Transfer student-athletes include numbers from other NCAA institutions

NEXT WEEK: PacWest Championship tournament scheduled for March 5-7, 2020 at Azusa Pacific.