GOLDEN, Colo. --- Following its thrilling 76-74 round one win over Fresno Pacific, Biola Men's Basketball continues its journey at the NCAA Division II West Region Championship with a matchup against the hosts, No. 6/No. 9 Colorado School of Mines.

The Eagles (10-3) and Orediggers (16-2) will come together at 4 p.m. PT at Lockridge Arena in Golden, Colo. It's the first-ever meeting between Biola and Mines.

While no spectators are allowed at Lockridge, the game will be live streamed for free at https://portal.stretchinternet.com/csm/ and live statistics are available at https://www.ncaa.com/game/5801154.

This matchup will be the third time this season Biola faces a team ranked inside the top-10 in NCAA Division II. Biola went 1-1 in the first two such matchups, both coming against Point Loma back in late-February.

For the Eagles, this is game two of their introduction to the NCAA Division II postseason. For the Orediggers, its the first game of the tournament as they had a first-round bye on the merit of being the no. 2 seed in the six-team pool. It's the Orediggers' eighth-consecutive NCAA tournament berth and 11th time dancing in their program history. Mines made the Elite Eight back in 2016-17, which was also a year they hosted the regional.

This season, Mines finished second to No. 1/No. 2 Colorado Mesa (21-1) in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference to make the tournament as an at-large bid. Mines' last contest was Saturday, March 6 when they lost an overtime thriller to the Mavericks, 75-74, in the RMAC final.

Mesa is the only team to beat Colorado Mines this season, doing so twice in the aforementioned one-point affair and in an earlier six-point game. In its wins, the Orediggers scored 76 points-per-game while giving up just 60 points-per-game.

These two teams have no common opponents this season. Colorado School of Mines played 18 games coming into this tournament, which was six more than BU came in with. That's even with the Orediggers seeing 10 of their scheduled regular season games get canceled for COVID-19 protocol.

Colorado School of Mines is a deep team, seeing every member of its starting five named all-conference in 2020-21. This includes their leading scorer Brendan Sullivan (18.5), who earned RMAC Player of the Year recognition. 

Sullivan is averaging 18.5 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per game while shooting .548 overall. He's also one of the RMAC's premier defensive players averaging 1.4 steals and 0.9 blocks per game; he is the only player in the conference to rank in the top 10 in scoring, steals, and blocks.  He scored 22 points in 38 minutes, shooting 7-for-15 while attempting to will his Orediggers to an RMAC Tournament Championship last week.

He was joined on the All-RMAC first team by senior guard Kobi Betts. Betts was the wingman to Sullivan all season long, averaging 12.8 points-per-game, 3.4 rebounds-per-game and shooting nearly 50 percent from the field. Betts had three 20-point efforts this season, including last time out against Colorado Mesa.

Michael Glen, Ben Boone and Austin Means were also selected all-league for the Orediggers. That starting five remained the same for Mines in all but one of their 18 games to this point. The group accounts for 77 percent of all scoring for Colorado School of Mines. That profiles similarly to Biola's starting five, which accounts for 84 percent of the Eagles' overall scoring.

Biola has the advantage at sixth-man, though. Maximo Milovich showed that last night as he scored 11 and pulled down 12 boards for his first-career double-double.

See below for a statistical comparison of the two teams.

NCAA	RMAC	Stat	Category	Stat	PacWest	NCAA
110	8	74.8	Scoring	77.4	4	72
3	1	61.4	Defense	71.8	3	66
17	3	.493	FG PCT	.493	1	19
54	5	.374	3-PT FG PCT	.410	1	7
68	7	.737	FT PCT	.744	2	58
148	6	33.6	REBOUNDING	37	5	63
161	8	11.7	ASSISTS	16.2	1	24
72	3	6.9	STEALS	5.9	7	139
13	2	4.5	BLOCKS	3.4	2	45
61	4	12.1	TURNOVERS	11.7	4	37
195	14	6.1	3-PTM/GM	6.7	8	179
43	5	+4.1	REBOUND MARGIN	+5.1	1	21
11	1	+13.4	SCORING MARGIN	+5.6	2	46
43	2	.531	OPP WINNING PCT	.541	1	28

The winner of this game has a date with the winner of the other regional semifinal (Colorado Mesa/Northwest Nazarene) on Monday, March 15 at 6 p.m. PT.