The men’s basketball team returns to Friel Court following its road trip against the Arizona schools. The Cougars face a very talented California Golden Bear squad (10-5, 2-1). What the Cougars have in youth, the Golden Bears have in experience with their four leading scorers being all seniors.

Golden Bear guard Jerome Randle leads the team with 19.1 points per game while fellow guard Patrick Christopher and forward Theo Robertson average right around 15 points apiece.

WSU will certainly have its hands full with the three playmakers. Head Coach Ken Bone believes these three players have a great chance of playing professionally once their college tenures have come to fruition.

“I think at least one of them is going to be in the NBA,” Bone said. “It’s a situation where we have to take a lot of pride in our defense.” On top of Robertson, the Golden Bears also have a dangerous post presence with 6’8’’ senior Jamal Boykin. He is averaging 11 points and leads the team with nearly seven rebounds per game.

Sophomore DeAngelo Casto along with redshirt freshman James Watson and redshirt sophomore Charlie Enquist, all forwards, will have their work cut out for them if they want to stop the Golden Bears’ post attack.

After starting the season off slow with a 6-5 record, California has been hot as of late by winning four of their last five contests. The team’s sole loss came in a thrilling overtime game where UCLA pulled off the upset, 76-75.

Meanwhile, WSU is 3-2 in its last five games with conferences losses to Oregon and Arizona State.

“One of the situations is that we haven’t been very consistent,” Bone said.

Last season, California dominated the Cougars and swept the season series. In the last matchup, the Cougars traveled down to Berkeley and lost 71-63.

This game will be the Golden Bears’ first conference road game of the season, and Bone said he understands the importance of protecting Friel Court.

“I think it’s important in every league, at every level, to protect your home court,” he said.

Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m.

Following the showdown with California, the Cougars will then get ready to take on the Stanford Cardinal 2 p.m. Saturday at Friel Court. Stanford is 8-7 overall on the season and are coming off a 70-59 win over UCLA last Saturday.

During his weekly tele-conference on Tuesday, Bone explained that the thought of the Pac-10 conference being weak is simply not true. He referenced cross-state rival, the University of Washington, as an example of how competitive the conference is this season.

“I think there’s a lot of parity in the conference this year,” he said. “Even though Washington is at the bottom of the conference at 1-3, I still think they have a lot of talent.”