6 p.m. Saturday – SOU vs. Corban – Live Stream | Live Stats
6 p.m. Sunday – SOU vs. Northwest Christian – Live Stream | Live Stats

ASHLAND – A mess has been made of the Cascade Conference men's basketball standings, as is usually the case this time of year, and Southern Oregon is one of the guilty parties.

Behind first-place College of Idaho – which, at 15-1 in the CCC, has won 14 straight since its opening-weekend loss at SOU and needs just one more to clinch a title – the next four teams all have four or five losses. The Raiders (17-9 overall, 11-5 CCC) are one of them and enter the penultimate weekend of the regular season desperate for a sweep, hosting Corban (14-11, 8-9) on Saturday and Northwest Christian (11-11, 7-8) on Sunday at Mountain Avenue Gym. Both games are scheduled for 6 p.m. starts.

Last Week in Review: Things went south in a hurry for the Raiders after they raced out to a 13-point lead early in the second half last Wednesday against Oregon Tech. Victimized by Mitchell Fink's 42-point outburst, they went on to lose, 86-79, and less than 48 hours later they were on the wrong end of a 73-70 afternoon upset at Walla Walla. They bounced back for a 90-68 win Saturday at WWU, riding Ben DeSaulnier's 26 points and Jordan Hunt's 18-and-12 double-double, but the setbacks dropped them to into a fourth-place tie with OIT – one game behind Eastern Oregon and Warner Pacific.

Coming Up: SOU has reserved a spot in the eight-team CCC tournament field for the eighth year in a row, but its seed is still far from decided. If the Raiders can secure a top-four spot, they'd get a home quarterfinal game Feb. 21 at 7 p.m. The semifinals are set for Feb. 24 and the championship for Feb. 27. The highest remaining seeds in each round will host.

Senior Moments: Prior to Saturday night's game, the Raiders will honor their two seniors – guards Ben DeSaulnier and Kenny Meyer, who are seeking to join former teammates Joel Spear and Jordan West as the only players in team history to make three appearances in the national tournament. Last week DeSaulnier moved into the No. 2 spot on SOU's career scoring list, having now amassed a total of 1,940 points. The Philomath product has been one of the most efficient scorers in team history – needing 1,218 field-goal attempts while shooting 52 percent from the field, 41 from 3-point range and 80 from the free-throw line to reach that number – and also ranks sixth on the Raider steals list with 126 and 11th on the assists list with 260. Meyer, working on the best season of his career, is just 42 points away from joining DeSaulnier and 17 other Raiders in the program's 1,000-point club and has logged the sixth-most assists (329) in SOU history. In conference play this year, Meyer ranks 18th in points (13.1), fifth in assists (4.3), sixth in steals (1.6) and first in assist-to-turnover ratio (3-to-1).

Briefly:
– In Tuesday's 95-63 nonleague win at New Hope, Tate Hoffman recorded career-highs of 24 points and 10 rebounds while shooting 10-of-14 from the field. He's scored in double figures four times in SOU's last five games – a span in which fellow sophomore forward Jordan Hunt has also averaged 18 points on 57-percent shooting and 8.4 rebounds.
– The Raiders have committed 15 or more turnovers six times in conference play and are 1-5 in those games.
– Aaron Borich has started for injured point guard Tristen Holmes in SOU's last two games and has averaged 11.3 points over the last four. He's shooting 43-percent from 3-point range (34-of-79) during his sophomore season after going 2-of-18 as a freshman.

About Corban:
– The Warriors enter the weekend having lost five of their last seven games, but each of those losses were decided by two or three points. In their last eight matchups with SOU, the Raiders have won two overtime games and five that were decided by two or three in regulation.
– Corban features one of the toughest posts in the league in Joel Johnson, who averages 14.6 points on 68-percent shooting, tops the CCC at 2.2 blocks per game and pulls down 7.4 rebounds. Two seniors guards, Chris Martin (14.1 points) and AJ Monterossi (12.6 points, 4.3 assists), carried the Warriors to the CCC tournament title last year.
– The Raiders are 45-42 all-time against Corban. They won the first matchup, 86-83 on Jan. 13, as Hoffman and Hunt combined for 34 points.

About Northwest Christian:
– The Beacons won't win a third straight CCC title, but they have turned dangerous since an 0-4 start in conference play and are the circuit's highest-scoring team at 90.3 points per game.
– Senior forward Michael Loomis is the man to watch: He's averaging 20.5 points and 9.5 rebounds, shooting 51 percent from the field and 40 from 3, and coming off a 48-point, 18-rebound explosion against Multnomah in which he hit 12 3-pointers. His 3-point total was the second-highest in CCC history and his point total the fifth-highest. In the first matchup with SOU – a 97-91 NCU win in which the Raiders lost a 10-point second-half lead – he totaled 29 points and 12 boards.
– SOU leads the head-to-head series, 27-25, but the Beacons have won four straight meetings.