Tough roads lie ahead as both basketball teams look to finish the season strong.

The Sugar Bears hope to maintain their lead in the conference and get the number one seed for the Southland Conference Tournament.

The men’s basketball team, on the other hand, is trying to find a way into the conference championship.

The Sugar Bears are 13-7 overall and 7-2 in the conference.

They look to finish out the season strong with five games at home, including an important three game home stand.

The home stand includes Lamer University, who are second in the conference, Sam Houston State University, currently in eighth place, and Oral Roberts University, sitting in tenth place.

The Sugar Bears defeated Lamar at home last January with former forward Megan Herbert and senior center Courtney Duever both getting double-doubles, but fell to the Cardinals in February on the road 76-53. The loss was the worst loss of the season for UCA.

The Sugar Bears fell victim to Sam Houston State in their first meeting but bounced back at home to take the 71-51 win over the Bearkats.

Sam Houston and Oral Roberts will battle it out to get eight seed of the tournament while Lamar will fight to overtake the Sugar Bears in the final stretch.

Two of UCA’s 14 losses came at the hand of Oral Roberts.

The Sugar Bears are boasting the nation’s No. 21 scoring defense and look to continue locking teams down, holding teams to an average of 57.6 points-per-game.

Senior guard Micah Rice said the team needs to continue play hard to keep its No. 1 seed in the conference.

“When you’re at the top, you take everyone’s best shot,” she said. “You get their best game and we have to continue to play team defense and play together as a team. We can’t relax because we’ve been winning.”

They have also scored an average of 64.8 points-per-game, beating teams by a Southland Conference second best 7.2 points-per-game.

Senior center Courtney Duever was named Southland Conference Player of the Week for the third time for the week of  Jan. 19-25.

Duever is leading the team in points per game with 14.5, 9.2 rebounds and by taking the minumum amount of shots, is leading the team in field goal percentage.

The men’s basketball team is a different story.

The Bears haven’t been able to gain any momentum this season and can’t get on any kind of run.

They are sitting in eleventh place in the conference and need to get the eighth place to make the tournament for the second time in program history.

UCA plays two of the three teams in the way of the eighth seed.

The teams play Oral Roberts University and Southeastern Louisiana University, ninth and tenth place respectively.

The Bears lost their first game against Oral Roberts last season 94-65.

UCA bounced back in the last meeting against the Golden Eagles in a 86-84 overtime win to finish out the regular season.

The Bears were not able to get a win against the Southeastern Louisiana Lions in either meeting last season.

Wins over those two teams would be key in getting into the tournament, but the Bears also need a bit of luck and have a few teams lose some games.

Senior guard DeShone McClure said the team needs to grow and focus on defense.

“Now, it’s just time to start showing maturity as a group, and we will probably have to look at defensive stops down the stretch as being our focal point to get more runs to finish games,” he said.

Increasing the Bears’ free throw percentage would be a huge boost. They have shot 58.5 percent so far this season, which is the worst in the NCAA by .09 percent.

An increase in scoring would be a huge help as well.

Since coming back from an academic suspension, senior guard LaQuentin Miles is leading the team in scoring with 22.1 points per game and leading the team in rebounds with 6.9 rebounds per game.

They are getting outscored 742-666 in the first half this season.

The Bears are increasing their scoring in the second half by 133 points in the second half and have scored 799 points so far this season in the second half.

Unfortunately, they are giving up 52 more points than they score in the second half.

On the season the Bears are being outscored by 135 points overall.

A bright spot is the perimeter defense.

The Bears are holding teams to 33.6 percent from three and they are second in steals in the conference with 8.7 per game.

The team averages 15.15 turnovers-per game.

The Bears average 12.55 assists per game.

The men’s team has a chance to possibly save the season with a late run to get into the conference championship and the women have a chance to get the number one seed in the SLC.

The team doesn’t have the size to compete consistently with other Southland teams, though.

The team has two players who are six feet, seven inches tall in freshman forwards Phabian Glasco and Ethan Lee.

Neither player has a big body size, with Glasco weighing  215 pounds and Lee weighs 190 pounds.

Other SLC teams have players with a minimum height of six feet, eight inches.

The team hasn’t had a full roster all season, losing at least four players due to grades.

Like every team, both teams will need to avoid injuries to stay competitive.

The next few weeks will show how the season will turn out and if the teams can make its goal.