#5/9 Mines (17-1, 11-1) at Western Colorado (3-11, 1-9) – Saturday, 7 p.m. – Gunnison, Colo. [Live Stats] [RMAC Network]

---

 
WESTWARD BOUND
Winners of eight in a row, the #5/9 Colorado School of Mines men's basketball team will hit the road for just one game this weekend, wrapping up a four-game road trip Saturday night with the second of two matchups this season against Western Colorado.
 
LIVE COVERAGE
The match this weekend will be available free of charge on the RMAC Network and will have live stats through Sidearm.
 
AT THE HELM
Entering his 22nd season in Golden, head coach Pryor Orser is the winningest coach in program history and on Friday November 25, he reached the 400-win mark in his career with an 82-58 win over Kansas Wesleyan. Heading into RMAC play this weekend, his overall record stands at 412-213 and 293-147 in RMAC play, the second-most wins in conference history. Under Orser, Mines has won five RMAC regular-season championships and two RMAC Tournament titles, and qualified for 11 NCAA Tournaments including two Elite Eight trips. 
 
IN THE POLLS
The Orediggers were tabbed to finish third in the RMAC in the preseason poll, receiving 169 points and a first-place vote. Black Hills State garnered 196 points and the remaining 14 first-place votes while Colorado Mesa was picked second, earning 178 points. Fort Lewis (152) and UCCS (138) rounded out the top five in the poll. On the national stage, the Orediggers climbed in the Top 10 in both national polls this week, gaining a spot in the NABC Division II Coaches Poll to move up to #5 while moving up to in at #9 in the D2SIDA Media Poll. Black Hills State dropped in both polls, falling to eighth in the NABC rankings and fifth in the D2SIDA rankings, while Fort Lewis check in at #12 and #16 this week respectively while Colorado Mesa reentered the coaches poll at #23 and continued to receive votes in the media poll.
 
WEEK 9 RECAP
It was a busy stretch for the Orediggers with three games in five days to open the current four-game road trip against Regis, UCCS and MSU Denver. Mines kicked things off Friday night with a 93-61 win over Regis that saw five players finish in double figures, led by Adam Thistlewood with 17 and Brendan Sullivan with 13 as the Orediggers shot 52% from the field. Saturday night against the Mountain Lions saw Ben Boone spearhead an 85-66 win with 19 points off the bench while Adam Thistlewood recorded a double-double of 15 and 10 as once again five players finished with 10 or more points, including Kai Barr and Reagan Koch. Tuesday Mines was back in the capital city against MSU Denver and scored a 70-55 win over a scrappy Roadrunners squad, again getting 19 from Boone with another 15/10 double-double from Thistlewood with Barr finishing in double-digits for the second game in a row.
 
SULLY'S SUPERLATIVES
Brendan Sullivan accumulated seven more honors following last season, including his second consecutive CoSIDA Academic All-America honor, second consecutive RMAC Academic Player of the Year award, RMAC First Team All-Academic for the third straight year as well as NABC Second Team All-District Laurels. He also wrapped up his undergraduate studies at Mines, completing a Bachelor's Degree in Civil Engineering in May and is now pursuing a Master's in Engineering Technology & Management. Through his first four seasons in a Mines uniform, Sully's earned 25 honors, achievements and accolades; he might want to look into adding a shelf or two in order to have enough room for them all.
 
CLIMBING THE RANKS
Continuing a storyline from last season, Brendan Sullivan continues to make his mark as one of the most prolific scorers in Orediggers history. Through the first 18 games of this season, he now stands at 1,757 career points, good for eighth all-time, and is coming off the second 400-point campaign of his career in 2021-22. A better than 52% shooter in his career, Sully has his eyes on continuing his march up the all-time scoring list. Additionally, he's now just two assists away from 250 for his career and would become the 10th player in program history to hit that milestone. His 146 steals are now fourth all-time in program history, having passed Farris Broussard (2000-05) a few weeks back. He now sets his sights on Raul Varela (1992-96) who ranks third with 206. Additionally, Sullivan is just fiveblocks and just eight three-pointers away from hitting the 200 mark in both categories for his career and needs 25 more rebounds to reach 600.
 
ELITE COMPANY
Ben Boone became the latest Oredigger to join an elite club last Friday at Regis, as with his first three-pointer in the second half, he surpassed 1,000 career points in an Oredigger uniform and enters this weekend with 1,046. Mines now has three active 1,000-point scorers on the roster this season, led by Brendan Sullivan who currently ranks eighth all-time at Mines with 1,757 and Adam Thistlewood, who hit the mark earlier this season against Westminster and has 1,177 points between his time at Colorado State and back home in Golden. Between them, the group has scored almost 4,000 points and is collectively shooting .483 for their career.
 
WATCHLIST SEASON
On Sunday, Sam Beskind and Adam Thistlewood were both named Sunday to the Bevo Francis Award watch list. The award is presented annually by Small College Basketball to the player who has had the finest overall season for a non-NCAA Division I team. The initial watch list consists of 100 players from the NCAA II, NCAA III, NAIA and USCAA ranks.
Beskind, a graduate transfer from Stanford in his first year with the Orediggers, is currently fourth on the club in scoring at 11.5 PPG but regularly fills the stat sheet in just about every other category. He leads the team with 75 assists and 34 steals, both of which rank near the top of the RMAC this season respectively while leading the league in assist/turnover ratio at 2.3 in 28.4 minutes per game.
Thistlewood, a graduate transfer from Colorado State, is also in first season with Mines and leads the team with 16.2 PPG on 50% shooting. He currently ranks seventh and eighth respectively in the league in scoring and rebounding, pulling down nearly seven rebounds per game and is second on the club with 39 assists while also shooting 37.5% from beyond the arc in 31.5 minutes per game, a mark which also ranks among the conference leaders.
BOONE IS BACK
Ben Boone has been a problem for opponents since his return to the rotation on January 6. After missing 11 games with an injury, the fifth-year senior has been on an absolute tear, averaging 14.4 PPG of the bench with four games in double-digits, including back-to-back 19 point performances against UCCS and MSU Denver. As mentioned earlier, he eclipsed 1,000 career points at Regis and has been shooting .543 from the field and .577 from three-point land with seven rebounds, eight assists, three blocks and a steal. Suffice to say, the Centennial native is back.
 
SEEING DOUBLE
After going 129 games to begin his collegiate career between Colorado State and Mines without a double-double, Adam Thistlewood now has two in each of his last two games with mirror images in the stat line. Saturday at UCCS, the Golden native scored 15 points on 5-11 shooting and 5-8 from the line as he pulled down 10 boards with one assists, while Tuesday night at MSU Denver, went 4-10 from the floor and 7-10 from the stripe with 10 rebounds and two assists. While two doubles-doubles is good, that number could be much higher this season; Thistlewood has been one rebound away on four occasions, including his Mines debut, which would have him at six halfway through the schedule.
 
SHARING THE ROCK
18 games into the season, Mines leads the RMAC with 321 assists on the season, which comes out to an average of 17.8 per night and ranks inside the top 30 nationally in Division II. Stanford transfer Sam Beskind has been at the head of that effort of distributing the ball on offense, as he is second in the RMAC also among the top 30 in DII with 75 dimes. Adam Thistlewood is second on the club with 39 assists while redshirt freshmen Reagan Koch and Cade Mankle have 33 and 32 each. Of the 13 players who have seen game action this season for the Orediggers, 12 have recorded an assist and nine have 10 or more including Grant Pressly, who had six assists on December 18 Western Colorado, finishing just one shy of his career high.

PICKPOCKETS
Mines' success on offense this season has been a big result of what they have been able to do on defense, especially when it comes to steals. The Orediggers now lead the RMAC ahead of Colorado Mesa with 144 swipes, which breaks down to an eye-popping 8.0 per game. Again, Beskind leads the team and is tied for RMAC lead with 34, while redshirt freshman Reagan Koch has come off the bench to tally 24, including a career-high five against Western Colorado; he also has a steal in each of 13 of the last 14 games and has five in the last five contests. Brendan Sullivan now has 18 on the season while Trent Dykema has a baker's dozen.
 
STATISTICALLY SPEAKING
The Orediggers rank seventh in all of NCAA D-II this season when it comes to assist/turnover ratio at 1.6. An assist/turnover ratio of 1.0 is considered great, and Mines is the only team in the RMAC with an ATR of higher than 1.2; Fort Lewis is the next closest team in the RMAC at 1.18 and is 53rd nationally, followed by Black Hills State and Chadron State at 1.17. On the season, the Orediggers have 321 assists and have turned the ball over just 203 times. That's usually a recipe that will lead to a great deal of success on the court.
 
SCOUTING WESTERN COLORADO
The Mountaineers snapped a seven-game skid with their first RMAC win of the season over South Dakota Mines on January 7, but were unable to sustain that momentum as they dropped both of their games last weekend on the road to New Mexico Highlands and CSU Pueblo 76-64 and 59-50. Robel Desta and Avery Rembao continue to lead the way for Western Colorado in scoring with 14.7 and 13.8 PPG respectively, with the former leading the team in rebounds at 7.2 per night and blocks with nine while shooting .420 from the field and connecting on a team-leading 23 treys, and the latter leading the team with 40 assists and 59 made free throws. Gino Corridori checks in averaging 8.3 PPG along with 6.6 RPG with a team leading eight steals and is second only to Desta in blocks with eight in that department as well.Kade Juelfs has split time between the starting lineup and the bench in 14 games and is averaging 8.1 PPG with 16 assists and six steals. As a team, WCU is scoring just 64.6 points per night and are -10.6 in scoring margin, both of which are the lowest in the RMAC. The Mountaineers are shooting .373/.299/.718 on the year but do pull down almost 38 rebounds per contest. Unfortunately, turnovers have been an issue for Western as they average 15.4 per game and are almost minus five in turnover margin, and allow over 17 PPG to opponents off those turnovers. Eight times this season Western has turned the ball over at least 15 times, and have coughed it up more than 20 times on three occasions, including the first matchup of the year with Mines back on December 18.
 
CHECKING THE STAT SHEET
Four players are averaging better than 10 points a game for the Orediggers, led by Adam Thistlewood at 16.2 PPG along with 7.1 RPG and 2.2 APG. Brendan Sullivan follows, scoring at a 13.4 clip and shooting .515 from the floor and .455 from three-point land with 29 assists and 18 steals. Ben Boone checks in at 12.9 PPG and is shooting .552/.528/.833 so far this year while Sam Beskind is scoring 11.5 points per night with a team-best 75 assists and 34 steals. Regan Koch is shooting .417 off the bench from beyond the arc this season while Kai Barr has a team-best 18 blocks to rank fourth in the RMAC while scoring 7.6 PPG on .538 shooting. Riley Schroeder (7.4 PPG, 4.3 RPG) has gone for double digits in three of the last five games, while Adam Krasovec (6.4 PPG, 3.5 RPG) has 12 rebounds off the bench over the last the games.
 
SERIES HISTORY
Saturday will be the 188th meeting all-time between Mines and Western Colorado, with the Mountaineers leading the series 99-88 but have only three wins to their credit since 2009, as the Orediggers have won 18 of the last 21 in the series, including the first meeting this season by a score of 101-59 at Lockridge Arena back on December 18. The last three WCU wins in the series have all come in Gunnison, first in 2021 by a score of 83-78 and in 2018 and 2013 by score of 79-76 and 94-63 respectively. When it comes to playing at the highest collegiate gym in the world at 7,723 feet above sea level, Mines is 34-57 all time.
 
LOOKING AHEAD
After playing their last four contests on the road, Mines returns to Lockridge Arena Friday night January 27 for a Top-25 showdown with Fort Lewis before welcoming Adams State to town the following night January 28. Both games are scheduled to start at 7 p.m.
 
Fans can keep up with Mines men's basketball on Twitter and Instagram at @minesmbb. They can also keep up with Colorado School of Mines Athletics all year long on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram using the handle @MinesAthletics.