CALGARY – The curtain falls on another Canada West basketball season in the Jack this weekend as the Winnipeg Wesmen roll in to close out the Dinos' home schedule in 2011-12.

Tip off for the women's games is 6 p.m. MT each night, with the men to follow at 8 p.m. MT. All four games will be broadcast live on CanadaWest.tv.

Saturday night is Seniors' Night, presented by Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Between the two games that night, Dinos head coaches Shawnee Harle and Dan Vanhooren will lead special ceremonies to recognize their fifth-year players. The Dinos women will bid farewell to point guard Jenna Kaye and five-year stalwart Megan Lang, while the men will recognize transfers Keenan Milburn and Boris Bakovic along with five-year Dinos Dustin Reding and Tyler Fidler.

For the men, it will be their last-ever games in the Jack Simpson Gym, while the women still have a possible (although unlikely) first-round playoff series at home, along with the 2012 CIS Women's Basketball Final 8 which is just over a month away, March 17-19. Calgary will play its quarterfinal contest at 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 17.

The Dinos women moved up in the national rankings for the second straight week, slotting in at No. 9 after sweeping the Manitoba Bisons on the road last week. That ran Calgary's win streak to six and their regular season record to 13-5, and they face the 8-10 Wesmen in a bid to improve their season record to 15-5 – which would be the program's best winning percentage in a season since the 1999-2000 season, when they went all the way to the national championship game.

To finish second in the division and host the first playoff round, the Dinos would need to finish ahead of Saskatchewan (13-4) because of the Huskies' sweep of Calgary back in January. Saskatchewan has a game in hand, but that's against first-place, undefeated, No. 1 Regina – so the Dinos will need some help from the 3-15 Manitoba Bisons to earn home court advantage. Otherwise, Calgary will finish third and head to Abbotsford, B.C. to face the Fraser Valley Cascades.

Heading into the weekend to close her five-year career, Lang sits No. 16 on the Dinos' all-time scoring list with 866 career points – just eight points away from the Top 15.

In the Wesmen, the Dinos face a non-playoff team that is still dangerous and looking to end the season on a high note. Winnipeg took Saskatchewan to overtime last Saturday night before falling by 70-66 – but even in that game, offence was not the story. The Wesmen's highest point total on the year is 76, and they're averaging just 60.2 – well back of the Dinos' 74.6-point average, which is second-best in Canada West.

Fifth-year Wesmen star Amy Ogidan will close her career Saturday night and enters the weekend in the top 12 in Canada West scoring at 12.7 points per game. Yael Kaplan is the only other Winnipeg player in the top 30, averaging 10.6.

Calgary has five players in the top 30: Kaye (14.6), Tamara Jarrett (12.6), Alex Cole (11.5), Lang (10.8), and Jessica Franz (10.7).

In men's action, the Dinos will look to cap off the most improbable of late-season comebacks as they aim to clinch a playoff spot against the last-place Wesmen this weekend.

After starting the season 4-10, Calgary has won its last four games and could clinch a playoff berth as early as Friday night, thanks to back-to-back sweeps over Alberta and Manitoba. Last weekend's two wins in Winnipeg pulled the Dinos even with the Bisons, and Vanhooren's crew now controls its own destiny: win both games this weekend, and they make the playoffs. And they can also do it with some help – Manitoba visits first-place Saskatchewan needing to win both, while Brandon has to visit Edmonton to take on the Golden Bears.

The late-season surge is largely thanks to the return of Bakovic and point guard Jarred Ogungbemi-Jackson, who both missed significant portions of the season with injury. Bakovic, whose 2,242 points are the most recorded by any player in Canadian university basketball history, has two more games to lift that bar even higher – but his focus all season has been on getting his team competitive in the playoff hunt, and the Dinos are peaking at the right time.

On the surface, a 10-10 record doesn't seem all that exciting – but three weeks ago, 10-10 seemed like an impossible dream, and the Dinos would be a difficult team to handle for anybody in the post-season.

Winnipeg (4-14) has struggled for most of the season, but they did pick up some quality wins – albeit all of them at home. Lethbridge, Brandon, Victoria, and Alberta all went down to defeat at the Duckworth Centre this year, while UBC was nearly upset before winning 74-73; otherwise,it has been an otherwise difficult season for the Wesmen, who have dropped their last five straight. Only newcomer UBC Okanagan has scored fewer points than the Wesmen's 69.9 per game, and Mark McNee's 12.9 points per game makes him the only Winnipeg player in the top 30 in conference scoring.

After a sensational outing last Saturday night against Manitoba, Tyler Fidler closes out his five-year career with the Dinos just outside the top 10 in Canada West at 16.7 per game this season. He will end his career at No. 4 on the all-time University of Calgary scoring list, entering the weekend with 1,495 points and looking to break that 1,500-point barrier. He trails only Dinos legends Richard Bohne (2,171), Karl Tilleman (2,050), and John Riad (1,686) on the all-time scoring list for the Dinos. Saturday night, the former Canada West rookie of the year will also set a new record for most games played in a Dinos uniform with 106.

-UC-