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GAME NOTES: With the regular season winding down, the Northern Colorado Bears try to make a push for the top spot in the Big Sky Conference standings as they welcome the Eastern Washington Eagles to Greeley tonight.

UNC trails only Weber State in the standings at the moment, a team that the Bears just fell to by a score of 81-76 last Saturday. The defeat snapped a three-game win streak for the squad and put it at 9-4 in conference play.

As for the Eagles, who are farther down in the standings at just 4-8, they slipped by Montana last Sunday by a final of 69-68, giving the squad back-to- back wins for the first time since the middle of November when they topped both Whitman and Texas-Arlington.

In terms of the all-time series between these two teams, EWU holds a 5-3 edge over the Bears, but it was UNC that captured a 74-71 win on the road in the first meeting of the season a month ago.

Glen Dean converted the first of his two free-throw attempts on Sunday with just 2.5 seconds remaining in regulation to provide the Eagles with their one- point win over Montana. Dean finished with 23 points on 4-of-5 shooting behind the three-point line and 7-of-9 from the floor overall, while adding seven assists and three rebounds. Jeffrey Forbes tacked on 18 points and Mark Dunn 13 as the duo combined to make 7-of-11 shots from behind the three-point line. Dean, who is the leading candidate for Freshman of the Year honors in the Big Sky, leads his team in scoring with 12.4 ppg overall this season and has dialed up the effort in league action with 15.6 ppg, shooting an impressive 51.7 percent from the floor and 50 percent beyond the arc in those 12 bouts. Dunn and Forbes are responsible for 11.2 and 10.9 ppg, respectively, overall in 2009-10 as the team puts up an average of 69.4 ppg. Unfortunately, the competition is outscoring the Eagles by more than seven points per game at the moment.

Will Figures was the star of the show for the Bears in their recent meeting with Weber State, even though Northern Colorado still fell by five points on the road. Figures not only scored a career-high 33 points for the visitors, but he also set the new Division I standard for the school as he made 5-of-9 shots from behind the three-point line and 10-of-12 at the charity stripe. Mike Proctor added 10 points, hitting a perfect 5-of-5 from the field, but he was the only other player to score in double figures for the squad. Figures is now the leading scorer on the season for the Bears with his 16.5 ppg, even though he has made good on just 42.2 percent of his field goal attempts. Devon Beitzel, who saw limited action against the Wildcats because of a back injury, adds 14.3 ppg to the UNC attack and since Taylor Montgomery (8.7 ppg, 4.5 rpg) is still on the sidelines, Northern Colorado needs Beitzel to bounce back tonight.

Even though the Bears might be a bit short-handed, the talent that they have is still superior to what the Eagles can put on the floor these days, save for the efforts of Dean.