TAYLORSVILLE, Utah (February 21, 2019) - The Salt Lake Community College men's basketball team suffered a loss to Snow College Saturday that takes them out of the running for the Scenic West Athletic Conference title but that doesn't mean all is lost for the Bruins yet.

Salt Lake will close its regular season this Saturday at Colorado Northwestern Community College, ending a 2018-19 regular season that has featured a roller-coaster of ebbs-and-flows. The Bruins started off the season 9-1, earning big victories over several impressive programs. They continued forward with their winning ways through the early part of league play, starting 2-0 after earning an overtime victory over CNCC. Since that time, Salt Lake has gone just 4-5 in league play to currently sit third in the league standings.

Even though the Scenic West title is unattainable, SLCC coach Todd Phillips said his team is still very focused on improvement for the upcoming week.

"We had a big win against Southern Idaho Thursday and then didn't play well Saturday," he said. "We're trying to go 3-1 in the last round of league play and parlay that to the conference tournament."

Salt Lake currently sits 1.5 games behind the College of Southern Idaho for the two-seed in the Region 18 tourney, which would be valuable as it would give SLCC an additional chance to rest and have an edge going into the later stages of the tournament. Since the Bruins are also only 1.5 games ahead of fourth-place USU Eastern, the need to continue to move upward is crucial on that end as well.

Colorado Northwestern has been an interesting story in the Scenic West, sitting with a 1-9 league record that has several close losses like a 95-88 overtime loss to the Bruins in early January. CNCC has lost five league games by single digits, including a narrow 91-89 loss to Southern Idaho and a 77-72 loss to Snow College. 

Saturday's game at CNCC is scheduled to start at 5:00 p.m. Salt Lake will travel to the Region 18 tournament at USU Eastern in Price the following weekend. Pairings for the tournament will be release on the SWAC's website once final standings and seeds are determined Saturday.