GREAT FALLS, Mont. – The #13
th ranked University of Providence men's basketball team looks to continue their explosive start to the season this weekend against Rocky Mountain College.
The Argos (4-0, 4-0) will take on the Battlin' Bears (1-3, 1-3) twice this weekend. They'll first play them on Saturday night at 5 p.m., followed by a Sunday tip-off at 2 p.m.
The Argos have had a stellar start to the season, sweeping both Montana Tech and Carroll to start 4-0 on the season. All four games were played over a seven-day span, so the Argos spent a lot of this week recovering.
"We took two days off because we had four games in seven days," head coach
Steve Keller said. "We're going a little over hour every day. My biggest thing is that they recover so that's why we've cut our practice down."
The hot start moved the Argos up one spot in the latest
NAIA National Poll. Individually, senior
Zaccheus Darko-Kelly was named the
Frontier Conference Player of the Week in his first week eligible for the award this season. He is averaging 16.8 points, 11.8 rebounds, 6.5 assists, 2.8 blocks and 1.8 steals per game while shooting 51.1% from the field. Darko-Kelly isn't alone in the production;
Cap Uzan is averaging 16.0 points per game while
Marcus Stephens is averaging 15.0. On the other side of the floor, the Argos have been stifling teams defensively.
"We think we're playing pretty good defense so we've been working on that hard," Keller said. "We're blocking out hard, that's been an issue for us. Then we're just finetuning our offense and getting better at some of that stuff."
Like the Argos, the Battlin' Bears did not play a non-conference schedule. They split games in their home opener against Montana Western before falling twice to Montana Tech last weekend. The Bears are led by Darius Henderson and Maxim Stephans, who average 15.5 and 12.7 respectively.
"Rocky's had a great program for a long time. They have a great coach. We know they're going to guard. They're athletic. They got some new guys that we really haven't seen yet. You have to show up and be ready to play anytime you play them."
