5:30 p.m. Friday – SOU at Corban | Live Stats | Stream
3 p.m. Saturday – SOU at Bushnell | Live Stats | Stream

ASHLAND – The Southern Oregon women's basketball team is sitting on 20 wins and needs one more to lock up third place outright in the Cascade Conference standings while finishing the regular season on a two-game road trip.

The Raiders (20-6 overall, 16-4 CCC) visit Corban (12-14, 9-11) on Friday and Bushnell (17-8, 14-6) on Saturday, attempting to complete head-to-head sweeps of both teams.

PLAYOFF PICTURE: The CCC Tournament presented by U.S. Bank will feature the conference's top-eight teams with quarterfinals on Feb. 22, semifinals on Feb. 25, and the championship on Feb. 28 – all starting at 5:30 p.m. local time. The Raiders have reserved a postseason spot for the 16th consecutive season and, because they can finish no lower than the No. 4 seed, will host at least the first round for the ninth tournament in a row.

Two teams behind the Raiders can still catch them in the standings: Bushnell and Oregon Tech, which both sit at 14-6. A three-way tie is impossible because the teams match up this weekend, and if the Raiders finish tied with OIT, they'd have the advantage thanks to their regular-season sweep. Based on the CCC's tiebreaker criteria, there is only one scenario in which Bushnell could overtake the Raiders for the No. 3 seed: If SOU loses two games and both Corban and Bushnell win two.

Eastern Oregon and Lewis-Clark State (Idaho) remain locked up in first place at 19-1 and are heavy favorites to win each of their remaining games this weekend. The most likely result is a coin flip, which would give one co-champion the CCC's first automatic bid to the NAIA National Tournament and the other the No. 1 seed in the CCC Tournament. In that case, SOU would have to win the CCC Tournament to claim the conference's second automatic bid.

The Raiders are the first team outside of the NAIA Top 25 coaches' poll. A final poll will be released next week, and staying in that mix would put them in good position to receive an at-large bid to the NAIA National Tournament. The 64-team field will be revealed March 2.

LAST WEEK IN REVIEW: SOU secured a split of its final regular season homestand, finishing 9-2 at Lithia Motors Pavilion in CCC play. The Raiders dropped Friday's matchup to No. 10-ranked Lewis-Clark State, 77-67, as the Warriors erased an early 10-point deficit and broke away by keeping SOU scoreless for the first four-plus minutes of the fourth quarter. They shot 51 percent from the field, the second-best mark for a Raider opponent this season, to overcome Brianna Phiakhamngon's 23-point performance. Phiakhamngon was sharp again Saturday against Walla Walla (Wash.), pouring in 19 to complement Kami Walk's 24-point, 10-rebound effort in an 80-53 win. The Raiders outscored the Wolves 48-26 in the second half and shot 51 percent as a team, their second-highest clip of the campaign.

BRIEFLY:

• Kami Walk has recorded five double-doubles over the last three weeks, bringing her career total to 18 in three seasons as a Raider. During the current eight-game stretch, the junior forward has averaged 16.6 points and 8.5 rebounds while shooting 49 percent from the field. She's three rebounds away from becoming the 11th player in team history to accumulate 1,000 points and 600 boards in a career.
• Brianna Phiakhamngon was rewarded for her aggressiveness last weekend, posting her first- and third-highest attempt totals this season. She shot 17-of-36 from the field and 7-of-14 on 3-pointers while averaging 21 points, her highest output in a single weekend this season. She'd averaged 7.4 points in the five games that preceded the output, and now stands at No. 9 in both points (12.7) and assists (2.9) on the conference leaderboard.
• The Raiders have now won 20 or more games in nine of their last 10 seasons. Carlotta Kloppenburg-Pruitt and her predecessor, Alex Carlson, are the only head coaches in team history to win at least 20 in each of their first two seasons.

SOU vs. CORBAN: The Raiders cruised through the first matchup with the Warriors, 71-34 on Jan. 7 in Ashland, behind Clara Robbins' first career double-double (12 points, 13 rebounds, 3 blocks) and a 44-14 advantage in the second half. The win was their 13th in the last 16 games against Corban and made them 46-29 in the all-time series. The Warriors are more competitive than they appeared that night, but they've still yet to defeat a team with a winning record in conference play. Senior forward Holly Golenor (11.5 points, 7.0 rebounds) and junior guard Maddy Godwin (11.8 points) are the keys to an offense managing just under 60 points per game.

SOU vs. BUSHNELL: In what now appears to be one of their best wins of the season, the Raiders defeated the Beacons 50-43 on Jan. 6 in Ashland despite shooting 25 percent from the field – their lowest mark in a victory in at least a decade. They survived on a 21-10 advantage in turnovers forced – an issue that has persisted for a Bushnell team averaging the second-most giveaways (18.1) in the conference. The Beacons remain dangerous behind the solid backcourt play of Bella Pedrojetti (12.4 points) and Aspen Slifka (11.3), their only slip-ups outside of the first-place squads occurring at SOU and OIT. The Raiders are 27-6 in the series but had lost three in a row at Bushnell before last year's 72-66 victory.