Busy stretch, then Mountain West, for Fresno State men’s basketball team

Fresno State on Wednesday launches a stretch of three games in seven days. The run begins at home against first-year active NCAA Division II member Holy Names and ends on the road at Oregon of the Pacific-12 Conference before the start of the Mountain West Conference men’s basketball season.

The Bulldogs (6-3) have won four of five, including Saturday’s 73-59 victory over Cal Poly. Tipoff against Holy Names is 7 p.m. at Save Mart Center, with games at Pacific (Saturday) and Oregon (Tuesday) ahead of the conference opener Dec. 28 at New Mexico.

Holy Names (1-9, 0-3 PacWest), which will play this one as an exhibition, has lost three straight to Dominican (62-57), BYU-Hawaii (90-80) and Academy of Art (83-70).

The Hawks completed their transition from NAIA to active NCAA D-II membership in July. They returned six players who saw action a season ago, though 6-foot-1 guard Jason Webster (a junior transfer from The Master’s) leads the team in scoring at 16.2 points per game on 47.2 percent shooting including 15 of 30 from beyond the 3-point line.

Webster scored six points on 3-of-7 shooting in 18 minutes off the bench in the Bulldogs’ 84-72 win over The Master’s in December 2015.

Holy Names is averaging 67.7 points per game while shooting 38.6 percent as a team; opponents are scoring at a 78.3 clip while hitting .47.4 percent of their shots.

Fresno State is averaging 74.2 points per game (49.5 percent shooting; 38.2 percent on 3-pointers) while allowing 69.9 (40.7 percent). Its top five scorers average from 8.6 to junior guard Jahmel Taylor’s team-best 13.9 points.

This story was originally published December 13, 2016 at 6:59 PM with the headline "Busy stretch, then Mountain West, for Fresno State men’s basketball team."