Joseth Dawson had the ball on the baseline with three minutes left on the clock and a six point lead. He pumped fake a shot and drove to the basket as his defender helplessly back peddled into traffic.

Dawson threw up a lay-up that crossed over the rim and looked two inches too long.

But as two UC Riverside players rose for the rebound they tipped in the missed shot and Dawson, who led both teams with a game-high 15 points said, “I’ll take it.”

A rebound from Alex Bausley on the defensive end and a jumper from Joel Jones finished the Highlanders for a 66-55 Sac State win.

“We thought this game of as a little bit of redemption to show everybody we could play,” head coach Jerome Jenkins said.

UC Riverside (3-5) was coming off a win over Saint Mary’s, a squad that handed Sac State its fourth loss of the season three weeks ago.

The Hornets, now 6-6, are back at .500 for the first time since Dec. 8 and are on a two-game winning streak.

“We have confidence but we’re still staying really humble right now,” forward Chris Lange said. “Right now we are just coming together as a team and we are starting to realize that the more we start sharing the ball the easier the shots we’re going to get.”

Riverside forced Sac State to run a half-court offense taking away many fastbreak opportunities and where the Hornets may have struggled just two weeks ago in an offensive set, they excelled against the Highlanders.

“We executed well and we hit shots when we needed to,” Dawson, who also had a game-high five assists, said.

The offense in slow motion compared with the up tempo style usually implemented ran smoothly with shots coming from all five positions on the floor. Lange notched the first double-double of his career with 11 points and a career-high 10 rebounds as the Hornets were not intimidated by the Highlanders frontcourt.

“We’ve been working real hard in practice on our half-court execution because we realize we are not going to be able to fastbreak all the time,” Lange said.

Lange was a nuisance in the post with hook shots, mid-range jumpers and inside put-backs. He didn’t shy away from a Riverside frontcourt that had three players averaging in double figures coming into the game.

“We knew that the battle was going to be down low,” Lange said. “Right now the bigs are just trying to show something. We have a lot to prove right now. Toward the beginning of the season and even up until a couple a games ago people were saying that the bigs were the weakness on our team…I think we are all really going after the ball more aggressively because we have something to prove.”

Tony Champion, Jameel Pugh, Lange and Bausley helped limit Riverside’s Kevin Butler, Nate Carter, and Vili Morton to just 23 points combined. Carter had been averaging 17.0 points per game.

“I told them that only way we were going to win the game was if we stopped their bigs and we challenged their bigs on the offensive end and that is exactly what Chris and Tony were able to do,” coach Jenkins said.

Similar to the win over Long Beach State, Sac State denied the Highlanders the entrance pass to the low post and forced the Highlanders to outplay the Hornet guards, and they couldn’t. Guard Rickey Porter led Riverside with 13 points but he was the only member of his team to score in double figures.

The Highlanders shot just 38.6 percent from the floor and the Hornets are now 3-0 when they hold a team to under 60 points.

With just one game left until Big Sky Conference play begins the Hornets are beginning to gel and find a comfort level within an offense they struggled to run just under a month ago.

“We had chemistry problems toward the beginning of the season and people getting jealous over who is getting the shot,” Lange said. “…Our coach always likes to look at the Sacramento Kings as an example – how they are always sharing the ball and everybody has a good game. And I think that is what people are trying to do, care more about winning and less about what their statistics are.”

Sac State fed off its defense which forced the Highlanders into 19 turnovers and for the third game in a row outrebounded their opponents.

Jones and point guard E.J. Harris also scored in double figures with 11 and 10 points respectively. Jones also added five rebounds, three assists and three steals.

With the guards leading the way early on the frontcourt has seemed to find its way within the offense and defense and has played at the level coach Jenkins demanded of them.

“I’ve been on them really really hard,” coach Jenkins said. “They had to step up. They had to start playing better for us to have a chance to win.”

Sac State next plays at the University of San Francisco on Saturday and will then return home for its Big Sky opener at 7:05 p.m. on Saturday Jan. 10 vs. Northern Arizona.