With two games left in the regular season, the Wildcats sit at 13-16 overall and 5-11 in conference play after losing two games on their road trip to Utah against Utah Tech and Utah Valley.

On Thursday, the team lost 85-81 to UTU, and on Saturday, it lost 74-67 to UVU. In Thursday’s game, the Wildcats were led by a pair of twenty-point scorers, Cbo Newton, redshirt sophomore guard from Ruston, Louisiana, with 27 points, and Bradyn Hubbard, senior forward from Tulsa, Oklahoma, with 23 points.

Hubbard missed Saturday’s game due to a funeral but will play in Thursday’s game, head coach Brette Tanner said.

Christian Alston, sophomore guard from Memphis, Tennessee, led the team in scoring with 18 points in 26 minutes off the bench in Saturday’s game.

“It’s no secret Christian’s struggled,” Tanner said. “And me and Christian struggled early in the year. He was slated in our first exhibition game; he started, you know, and I’ve always known that he’s this player.”

Alston has appeared in 26 games this season off the bench, averaging 5 ppg in 11.4 mpg.

After two losses, ACU currently sits at sixth in the Western Athletic Standings, one game ahead of Tarleton State and one game behind Southern Utah.

With the current standings, ACU would be playing Tarleton on the first day of the WAC tournament, March 11.

“Whoever we draw, we draw,” Tanner said. “You’re going to have to beat good teams. We’re all right there, you know, close together. I think that was proven this weekend in all the scores, not just ours.”

If the Wildcats win Thursday’s game on the road against the California Baptist University Lancers, they will have defeated every team in the WAC at least once.

ACU has played the Lancers both at home and on the road, losing 74-58 in Moody Coliseum on Jan. 15 and losing 65-63 in Riverside, California, on Feb. 7.

CBU is second in the WAC standings, one game behind UVU, with a 21-8 overall record and 11-5 conference record.

In the Jan. 15 game, the Wildcats held CBU’s leading scorer, graduate guard Dominque Daniels Jr., who leads the WAC in scoring with 22.3 ppg, to only 10 points. However, they allowed him to score 21 points in the Feb. 7 matchup.

Daniels enters Thursday’s game coming off a 23-point performance against Tarleton State on Saturday.

With it being late in the season and ACU having seen its two final opponents twice before, Tanner said they will shorten some of the drill work and the repetitions they normally do and focus on the opponent.

After the trip to California, the Wildcats will be back at home to play their final regular-season game against the University of Texas at Arlington before going to Las Vegas for the WAC Tournament.