River Forest, Ill. — Concordia Chicago men's basketball is back at it on Wednesday at home against Lake Forest College. The Cougars enter the game still hungry for their first win, while the Foresters will be playing their long-awaited season-opener. 

It was a rough couple of days for CUC in Rockford last weekend, but the Cougars are putting that behind them and focusing on getting back home for three games this week. Each game is a new chance to put everything together and come out with a win. 

"Wednesday is another opportunity for us to take a step forward as a group," Head Coach Steve Kollar said. "We are knocking on the door and we are close, but we are still making mistakes that you cannot make when you are trying to close out games." 

If the Cougars find themselves needing to close out Wednesday's game, they will definitely have the advantage of veteren presence. The Foresters are a very young team, and while CUC is no stranger to impact performances from freshmen this season, it is their upperclassmen who have been shining lately. 

Juniors Jordan Matthews (Chicago, Ill.) and Izak Ruddell (Saint Joseph, Mich.) scored more than half of the Cougars points in Rockford last weekend. Matthews scored a season-high 27 points on Friday, which was followed by Ruddell setting a career-high with 25 on Saturday. The team knows that nothing comes easy, and they must compete for a full 40 minutes in order to reach their goal. 

"Every possession matters, but especially the ones down the stretch because there's no time in the game to make up for them," Kollar said. "Our guys are learning and we are no doubt getting better. We just need to stop knocking on the door and instead kick the thing in and take it." 

The Foresters have not yet taken the floor in this most unique year. They finished last season with a record of 13-13, falling in the first round of their conference tournament almost a full calendar year ago on Feb. 28. They return their top scorer in senior Sean Espinosa, who averaged 16.5 PPG in his junior campaign. 

Outside of Espinosa, however, the Lake Forest roster will look quite different than a season ago. There are a lot of collegiate debuts on deck for the Foresters on Wednesday, as 10 of the 14 players on their roster are freshman, with Espinosa the lone senior. 

The two teams have met only twice before, when they played back-to-back years in 1985 and 1986. Both games were won by Lake Forest. 

The game is set to tip-off at 6:30 p.m. and the stream to the game will be available on the CUC Athletic's Youtube channel.