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NEWARK, NJ--NJIT hosts Houston Baptist Thursday, as both teams begin the third season of Great West Conference men's basketball competition at 7 pm in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
 
NJIT brings a 7-9 overall record into the game, including a 6-1 mark in the Fleisher Athletic Center, most recently taking a 95-57 win tune up win last Saturday afternoon against SUNY Cobleskill, the last non-Division I opponent on this season's schedule.
 
HBU, 6-10, prepped for the conference opener in similar fashion, routing non-Division I opponent Crowley's Ridge College, 123-43, last Thursday in Houston. The Huskies will come to Newark looking for their first road win of the season (0-7).
 
Houston Baptist, under veteran coach Ron Cottrell (21st season at HBU), features a young squad with just four returnees from last year's team that finished 5-26 overall and 2-10 in the Great West, but which also eliminated NJIT from GWC postseason tournament for the second time in as many years. Senior Terry Bembry (8.9 points per game, team-leading 6.7 rebounds per game last year) is the most prominent returnee. He is averaging 4.6 points and 3.4 rebounds in a reduced role (17 minutes per game) this season.
 
Newcomers are leading the Huskies, with three averaging double-figure scoring, topped by Marcus Davis (13 ppg). Art Bernardi averages 12.7 points and Tyler Russell is at 11.8 ppg. Not far behind are Joe Latas (9.6 ppg) and Ronald March (8.6 ppg). Davis leads the rebounders at 5.6 rpg, and Latas gets 5.3 rpg.
 
Davis surged into the team scoring lead with a 40-point game in the rout of Crowley's Ridge. He also grabbed 13 rebounds in that game. A 6-foot-5 junior college transfer, he is one of three HBU newcomers from Arizona. Bernardi, 6-foot-9, hails from Brazil and played junior college basketball in New Mexico and Russell is a freshman guard from Arizona. Latas (6-11, 275) previously played at Cleveland State and is using his final year of basketball eligibility while pursuing a master's degree in theology from HBU. March is a 6-5 freshman guard from Phoenix.
 
NJIT, which captured second place in the Great West Conference standings outright last season with a 9-3 conference record, is looking for something like that this season. Last year, NJIT was 3-10 overall when conference play began, but the Highlanders got on track, winning their last pre-conference game and posting a 13-4 regular season record from January 8, 2011 on.
 
Included was a program Division I-best six-game winning streak and the Highlanders never lost consecutive games over the final 18 contests.
 
This season, the Highlanders are 7-9 beginning conference play, but they are still seeking their first pair of back-to-back wins, a feat they can finally accomplish with a win over HBU.
 
Isaiah Wilkerson, the leading scorer in the Great West Conference (15.5 ppg) also tops the Highlanders in rebounding (5.6 rpg). His six rebounds in the last game raised his career total to 493, making him the program's career Division I leader, passing former teammate Jheryl Wilson, who grabbed 492 boards from 2007 to 2011.
 
Junior Chris Flores is NJIT's second double-figure scorer on the season, averaging 12.6 ppg. Flores has an ongoing eight-game streak of double-figure scoring games, during which his average is 16.4 ppg.
 
Ryan Woods (8 ppg), PJ Miller (6.9 ppg), Arjun Ohri (6.8 ppg), and Lamar Kearse (6.3 ppg) are all scoring threats with multiple double-figure games this season.
 
Houston Baptist leads the brief all-time series between the schools, 6-2. The teams began playing in 2008-09, the last season before the start of the Great West and the Huskies took both meetings that year. In 2009-10, HBU won both conference meetings and then knocked NJIT out of the first GWC postseason tournament.
 
Last year, the Highlanders won both regular season games, including on January 15 in Newark, when NJIT scored a program DI-record 96 points in a 96-84 victory. The Highlanders later eked out a six-point win in a game that was tied with less than three minutes left in Houston. But HBU won the third meeting of 2011, edging NJIT, 72-70, in the opening round of the conference tournament.
 
Fans unable to make the game can follow all the action live on www.njithighlanders.com, which will carry a webcast play-by-play and commentary from Matt Provence, as well as an in-game real-time stat feed. Audio coverage begins a few minutes before the 7 pm game.
 
Schedule note: In 2009-10 and 2010-11, the first two seasons of Great West Conference basketball, the games were presented as doubleheaders, usually with a women's game first and a men's game second at the same site.
 
This year (2011-12), the GWC has adopted what is called “mirror scheduling”, with the teams from the two participating schools meeting on the same night, but the men's game at one site and the women's game at the other school's home. For example, when the NJIT men are playing the Houston Baptist men in Newark, their women's counterparts will be squaring off in Houston on the same night.
 
As a result, most GWC games will be presented as single games. The only exception on NJIT's home conference schedule is on March 3, when both Highlander teams will host their Chicago State counterparts in a doubleheader, with the women's game at 2 pm and the men's game at 4 pm.