CALGARY – A six-game homestand draws to the close for the University of Calgary Dinos men's basketball team, and with just six games left on the schedule building for the playoffs becomes of paramount importance. Calgary entertains the Regina Cougars in the Jack Simpson Gym this weekend.

After an overtime win over Victoria last Friday, the Dinos gave up a 15-point halftime lead and fell to No. 1 UBC 79-71 a night later to drop to 11-4 on the year, 2.5 games up on the Saskatchewan Huskies and this week's opponent, the Regina Cougars, for top spot, and a sweep of Regina would go a long way toward grabbing that first seed.

Regina, however, is always a tough opponent for the Dinos and Calgary will have to grind it out to be successful this weekend. The Cougars are led offensively by Jamal Williams' 13.9 points per game while Jeff Lukomski, a converted defensive back who also plays for the Rams football team, puts up 12.9 per night. Calgary counters with the trio of Ross Bekkering (19.0), Robbie Sihota (18.6), and Tyler Fidler (14.3).

Fidler broke out of a slump last weekend to post 49 points in the two-game weekend, none bigger than his put-back with 0.3 seconds left in regulation to send the Victoria game to overtime. His 30 points that night was his top performance of the season, and he provides significant challenges to opposing defences with his six-foot-nine frame.

Saturday night is Enterprise Seniors' Night in the Jack Simpson Gym, presented by Enterprise Rent-A-Car. The Dinos men will bid farewell to four fifth-year players who will play their last regular season home game: guards Jamie McLeod and Lindsay Thouret along with forwards Bekkering and Sihota.

McLeod joined the Dinos last season and has provided a veteran presence on the floor, averaging nearly 27 minutes per game this season and leading the team in assists with 70. A former star at SAIT, McLeod is a graduate student in the first year of a Master of Business Administration program, specializing in finance.

Lindsay Thouret wraps up his second tour of duty with the Dinos after spending the 2006-07 and 2007-08 seasons teaching overseas. He returned to the program last year and averaged 11.4 minutes off the bench, helping Calgary to the Canada West title. Thouret holds the distinction of being the only player in the history of the Calgary men's basketball program to have won two Canada West championships – he was a rookie on the 2004 championship team as well.

Robbie Sihota and Ross Bekkering both joined the Dinos directly from high school in 2005 and have been mainstays of the resurgence of the Calgary program during their time with the team.

Sihota enters this weekend in fifth place on the Dinos' all-time scoring list with 1,345 points behind past stars Richard Bohne, Karl Tilleman, John Riad, and Ian Minnifee. He trails Minnifee by 97 points with five games left and has an outside shot at moving into fourth place on that list.

An underrated player for much of his career, Sihota has quietly become one of the all-time greats to ever wear a Dinos uniform. He scored perhaps the biggest hoop of his career in the late stages of the Dinos' Canada West championship win last season, hitting a clutch three to take away any hopes of a UBC comeback on their own floor in Vancouver.

The weekend also marks the end of a more than decade-long dominance of Calgary basketball on both the men's and women's sides by the Bekkering family. Four siblings have all made huge contributions to the program – Anna and Cory for the women's team, Henry and Ross for the men. Ross sits just 13 points back of Sihota in seventh spot on the all-time scoring list, and he will go down as the school's all-time rebounding king, with 888 total boards heading into the weekend. He leads second-place Chris Wright by more than 200 rebounds on the career list. He was a second-team All-Canadian last season and has represented Canada at the last two World University Games.

The Dinos will hold 50/50 draws at all four basketball games on the weekend, with the proceeds going to the Jenny Vincent Endowment for Women's Rugby in honour of Jenny Vincent, the head coach of the Dinos rugby team, who passed away on Sunday, Jan. 24.

-UC-