Jan. 15, 2016
CHICAGO -- UIC is looking to secure its first Horizon League victory of the season Saturday when it hosts the Milwaukee Panthers at 3 p.m. to conclude a brief two-game homestand.
After playing three Horizon League foes away from home to start conference play, and with another three-game trip set to begin on Monday, Jan. 18, the Flames will enjoy the comforts of home this weekend. In the first contest, UIC dropped a two-point thriller to the Green Bay Phoenix on Thursday night. Thursday's game also began what is perhaps the busiest stretch of the season for the Flames with five games scheduled in an 11-day span.
For the second time this season UIC will appear on Comcast SportsNet Chicago Plus on Saturday afternoon. Two familiar voices to Flames fans, Jordan Bernfield and David Kaplan, will call all the action from inside the UIC Pavilion. To locate CSN Plus on your cable provider, please CLICK HERE.
Below are a few headlines and notes as UIC looks to get back into the win column against the Panthers on Saturday afternoon:
BLOCK PARTY
Tai Odiase has established himself as one of the Horizon League's leading shot blockers. Odiase, who ranks second in the conference, and 27th nationally, with 2.3 blocks per game, sent back a career-high eight shots against Green Bay Thursday night. It marked only the fifth time in program history that a player collected as many rejections in one night, and the first since Scott VanderMeer equaled that amount on Feb. 5, 2009, vs. Cleveland State. The UIC single-game record for blocks is nine with VanderMeer (1/27/07) and Sherrell Ford (2/28/94) both accomplishing the feat. The Flames lead the Horizon League with 4.9 blocks per game, while Saturday's opponent, Milwaukee, is seventh with an average of 2.7 blocks per contest.
MOTOR CITY MADMAN
With all due respect to Ted Nugent, UIC freshman Dikembe Dixson was a bit of a Motor City Madman during his team's games at Detroit and Oakland last weekend. For a conference-best fourth time in nine weeks, Dixson was named the Horizon League Freshman of the Week on Monday, Jan. 11. The Freeport, Ill., native averaged 25.0 ppg, 6.5 rpg and 2.0 spg against the Titans and Golden Grizzlies. He matched a career high, for the second time in four games, with 28 points at Oakland, and he scored 38 of his 50 points (76 percent) in the second halves of those contests. Dixson is the first Flame to win the HL Freshman of the Week award four times, and he is the first player in program history to win at least four weekly recognitions of any kind since Mark Miller won the conference's Player of the Week award four times during the 1997-98 campaign.
Dixson is the team's leading scorer and top rebounder with 15.5 points per game and 6.4 rebounds per game, ranking in the top nine among all players in the Horizon League in both categories. The newcomer is currently fourth in the conference in scoring in league games only with 19.0 ppg.
THESE KIDS CAN PLAY
UIC's roster features eight underclassmen, including six freshmen, one sophomore and one redshirt sophomore. That group, which comprises 57 percent of the roster has combined to play 1,993 minutes through 15 games, or 66.4 percent of the entire team's total. Underclassmen have scored 657 of 998 points (65.8 percent) for the Flames, while grabbing 350 of 609 rebounds (57.4 percent). Freshman Dikembe Dixson leads UIC in all three categories in his first collegiate season.
SHARING THE ROCK
UIC has registered double-digit assists in 11 of its 15 games, reaching 15-plus helpers seven times. The Flames notched 20-plus assists in a single game for the third time this season when they hit the mark vs. Green Bay on Thursday. Lance Whitaker had a career-high nine assists against the Phoenix, which is the best single-game total for any UIC distributor this season. He's led the squad in assists eight times in 15 games, while Paris Burns has paced the bunch five times.
LINEUP SHUFFLE
UIC head coach Steve McClain has used 12 different starting lineup combinations in 15 games after repeating a lineup for just the second time Thursday against Green Bay. McClain opened with Paris Burns, Dikembe Dixson, Jake Wiegand, Tai Odiase and Lance Whitaker against the Phoenix, and against Drake on Nov. 28. In total, 11 different Flames have received a starting nod this year after Michael Kolawole made his first collegiate start last Sunday at Oakland. Only Odiase and Dixson have opened all 15 games.
MILESTONE WATCH
UIC, which began NCAA Division I play in 1981, needs only one win to reach No. 500 at this level. The very first win of the Division I era came on Dec. 4, 1981 at Wisconsin (74-66). The school's first basketball team was fielded in 1947, and the program owns 808 all-time victories since that season.
For more information about Saturday's game, please click the Game Notes PDFs above.
The squad will be begin its second three-game road trip of the season on Monday night against the Cleveland State Vikings at the Wolstein Center in the Rock and Roll Capital of the World. The game will commence at 6 p.m. CST, and fans can catch all the action on ESPN3 and ESPN1000 Chicago. The trip resumes with a visit to Horizon League newcomer Northern Kentucky on Jan. 22 before wrapping up on Jan. 24 at Wright State.
