The South Dakota men's basketball team begins a three-game road trip on the West Coast Thursday at Northern Arizona. Tip-off is at 7:30 p.m. (CST) inside the Rolle Activity Center in Flagstaff, Arizona.
 
The Game
South Dakota has won four of its last five games and is off to its best start in the Division I era at 9-3. Northern Arizona, members of the Big Sky Conference, enters with a 2-8 record. The Lumberjacks have won two of their last three games with victories over Cal State Bakersfield and San Diego Christian.
 
The Lumberjacks
JoJo Anderson leads the team with 10.4 points per game while Chris Bowling averages 9.7 points per contest. In NAU's last game, at San Diego, Gino Littles, Torry Johnson and Anderson each scored 11 points.
 
The Lumberjacks rank 33^rd in the nation with 254 free throw attempts, led by Anderson who has 67 free throw attempts, ranking 47^th in NCAA Division I individually. NAU leads the Big Sky Conference with 179 made free throws.
 
The Coyotes
South Dakota went 2-0 last week, picking up victories over Drake and Eastern Washington. Over those two games, Trey Burch-Manning averaged 18 points and 8.5 rebounds while shooting the ball at 71.4 percent from the field.
 
Matt Mooney collected his 1,000^th collegiate point against Eastern Washington, combining his season at Air Force and 45 games at South Dakota. The junior is now 184 points away from joining the 1,000-point club at South Dakota. Mooney leads the team 16.5 points
 
The Series
The two teams have just met just once, an NAU 85-76 victory on Dec. 3, 1979. In that game, Jeff Nannen tallied 17 points while Barry Glanzer had 15 points and nine assists for South Dakota.
 
One Last Thing
Over his last four games, Nick Fuller is averaging 12.8 points per game, a mark that ranks second on the team over that same span. Fuller is making 63.3 percent of his field goal attempts over those same four games.