The UC Riverside Highlanders men's basketball team represents the

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Riverside, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of Cali ...

Riverside, California Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. As of the 2020 census, the city has a population of 314,998. It is the most populous city in th ...

, United States. The school's team currently competes in the

Big West Conference The Big West Conference (BWC) is an American collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference whose member institutions participate in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's NCAA Division I, Division I. The conference was origina ...

and their head coach is Gus Argenal, who is in his first year with the program. The Highlanders play their home games at the Student Recreation Center Arena. The program had its greatest success as a Division II program, making it to three Final Fours and the national title game in 1995. In 2020, the future of the program was placed into doubt, as UC Riverside's leadership reportedly began considering cutting the university's entire athletics department in response to financial strain caused by the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. However, in May 2021, the university announced that they had decided against eliminating athletics and will continue competing at the

NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest division of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athlet ...

level in all sports, thus saving the men's basketball program from extinction.

Postseason

NIT results

The Highlanders have appeared in the

National Invitation Tournament The National Invitation Tournament (NIT) is an annual men's college basketball tournament operated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Since 2023, all rounds of the tournament are played at various sites across the country whi ...

(NIT) one time. Their record is 0–1.

NCAA Division II Tournament results

The Highlanders appeared in the NCAA Division II Tournament 17 times (named the College Division Tournament until 1973). Their combined record was 29–18.

Season-by-season results

References

External links

* Long stubs with short prose {{California-basketball-team-stub