Could this be the year for UC Riverside men’s basketball?

RIVERSIDE — This is how it works: Good teams, faced with assignments against teams far behind them in the standings, take care of business.

The UC Riverside men’s basketball Highlanders are a good team. Maybe a really good team. And as they got into an early 14-4 hole Thursday night at home against Long Beach State, a team that hadn’t won a game since Jan. 11, UCR athletic director Wes Mallette walked by the baseline media table, nodded and said there was nothing to worry about.

And there wasn’t. A 21-2 run later in the first half flipped the script, starting the Highlanders toward an 87-66 victory that enabled them to keep pace in the top four of the Big West Conference standings at 11-5 (18-10 overall).

And, for those who haven’t been out to the Rec Center for a game in a while – yeah, you know who you are – showing up Thursday night would have demonstrated that some things have changed in the shadow of the Box Springs Mountains.

For one thing, the student section was completely full, band and all. The word hasn’t totally gotten out to the community at large, but the students seem to understand there’s something good going on here. (Yes, they get in for free. But student admission has been free for years, a reward for the student fees that help support athletics, and for years most of those freebies have gone unused.)

That loud, enthusiastic student crowd isn’t a new phenomenon this season, as Coach Mike Magpayo pointed out.

“Two years ago this was close, but not as consistent as it is right now,” he said. “This might have been a Senior Night crowd (then). … It helps. It absolutely gives us juice, helps with the officials. I mean, I think it all matters.”

UCR’s best player, guard and conference Player of the Year candidate Barrington Hargress, agrees that the student involvement makes a difference. Let’s just say the Highlanders’ 13-1 home record, including seven wins in a row and victories over first-place UC San Diego and second-place UC Irvine, isn’t a coincidence.

“It’s sometimes just those little swings, the energy that the crowd gives us,” he said. “It can’t be replicated when there’s nobody here. And it’s irreplaceable when it’s here. So I know that we feel it at away games, and to have that feeling for us at home, it’s definitely a big push for these type of games.”

Fellow guard Nate Pickens, who is normally assigned to defend the opponent’s best offensive player – and who added a career-high 27 points against Long Beach – added this:

“I honestly don’t think the crowd knows how important they are to us. Like, they really bring the energy. When we get down, the crowd picks us up. So having that crowd, winning games and (having) more and more people come support us, (it’s) just a good feeling.”

So to those students who happen to pick up the paper or (more likely) read the website, your presence matters. And the one remaining home game, March 6 against Cal State Northridge, figures to be huge. CSUN, which knocked off UCI at the Bren Events Center on Thursday night, is 11-4 and a half-game ahead of UCR in third place, in the jockeying for seeding at the eight-team conference tournament in Henderson, Nevada, in three weeks.

Then again, given the Highlanders’ 5-9 road record, those games coming up at Cal Poly (Saturday night), at Hawaii (next Thursday) and at last-place Cal State Fullerton (March 8) are just as vital.

But this isn’t an out-of-nowhere emergence for UCR. In Magpayo’s six seasons since replacing David Patrick, his teams are 103-75, and his 2022-23 team set the program record for victories in the Division I era, going 22-12. Last season the Highlanders finished 16-18 overall and were 3-8 in conference at one point, but came back to win seven of their last nine Big West games and beat Cal State Bakersfield in the first round of the conference tournament before losing to Long Beach, 86-67, in a quarterfinal.

(Given that Long Beach won that Big West Tournament as the No. 4 seed and reached the 2024 NCAA tourney after it had been announced that Dan Monson would not be retained as coach, and then seeing the current state of LBSU in replacement Chris Acker’s first season … from here, that move still seems kind of a head-scratcher.)

The current Highlanders have three scorers averaging double-figures in Hargress (19.8 average, and 18 points away from 1,000 in his two seasons at UCR), guard Isaiah Moses (11.3) and forward Kaleb Smith (10.8 and 4.5 rebounds). But depth might be the Highlanders’ superpower, with nine players averaging double figures in minutes and particular depth among the bigs, contributing to a season-long 37.6-34.2 rebounding margin.

“I think we have the most depth in the Big West … nine or 10 guys that can play and help us at any given time,” Magpayo said, and an example is in the frontcourt with 6-foot-10 senior center Joel Armotrading, a senior from London; Jack Whitbourn, a 6-10 freshman from Melbourne, and 6-9 Rikus Schulte, a sophomore from Munster, Germany.

Offensively, Magpayo said, “what we’ve been encouraging the guys to do is move the ball from side to side. When we do get it to a second side, we’re the best offense in the country, one of the best offenses in the country, because now you’ve got Barrington and Isaiah. It’s like, how do you plan for both? And then you have Pickens who can show up, and Kaleb’s not even there yet. I’m looking forward to what Kaleb does over the next three weeks. He’s getting close. I can feel it.

“… We’re deep and we have a multitude of weapons.”

And then there’s this: When asked the defining characteristic of his team, Hargress began with one word: “Family.”

“This is about the closest team I’ve ever played on,” he continued. “I feel like these guys are willing to go to bat for anything. It doesn’t matter if I’m having a good night. Doesn’t matter if Nate’s having a good night. I feel like everybody knows to pick each other up and to pick each other up when we need it. So I think that characteristic right there of just having 15 guys that are willing to fill in wherever the next person isn’t, is the key part for us. I think that’s what a lot of teams don’t have.”