The Winnipeg Wesmen enjoyed a weekend sweep and an upward swing up the standings. 

The Wesmen men's basketball team completed a perfect home-and-home series with the Manitoba Bisons with an 88-78 come-from-behind Canada West win Saturday afternoon at the Investors Group Athletic Centre. 

The Wesmen eliminated a 16-point second-half deficit and, in the process, moved up three spots in the conference RPI rankings heading into the final weekend of the season.

Winnipeg, which entered the series in eighth by RPI, now sits in fifth by both record and RPI, the metric used to seed the 12-team conference tournament at the end of the month. The top four teams will avoid the play-in games and earn a bye to the quarter-final. 

The Wesmen close the season Feb. 9-10 at Regina and two wins there would vault them into that coveted echelon. One win would not guarantee them a top-four spot, but would leave the door open. 

On Saturday, the Bisons held multiple double-digit leads that the Wesmen were able to track down. They pushed their advantage to 25-13 38 seconds into the second quarter before Winnipeg went on a 21-4 run to take a 34-29 lead with 2:33 to go.

Manitoba would head into halftime with a 41-37 advantage and started the third quarter on a 12-0 spurt that gave the Bisons their biggest lead of the game just 2:24 into the second half. 

From there, however, the Wesmen would outscore the Bisons 51-25 over the final 17:36 of the game, including a 32-12 advantage in the fourth quarter. 

The Wesmen still trailed 66-56 going into the fourth but opened the final period with a decisive 18-0 run and held the Bisons without a field goal for the first 7:35. Wyatt Tait's layup with 2:25 to go snapped that unsightly stretch and made it 74-69 in favour of the Wesmen, and two free throws from Daren Watts less than a minute later cut the Winnipeg lead to three. 

But Donald Stewart, who scored a career-high 28 points and had 10 rebounds, knocked down a dagger three with 1:16 to go to once again push it into a two-possession game, and Winnipeg closed the game out with free throws.

Stewart was 9-for-14 from the field and 4 of 7 from three. Malachi Alexander had a career-high 21 points on 7-for-12 and 3-for-5 shooting. Mikhail Mikhailov added 15 points and 11 rebounds. 

Watts' 26 points paced the Bisons, who played the final three-plus minutes without Simon Hildebrandt, who went down late in the fourth quarter with an injury and was carried off the floor. Hildebrandt finished with 12 points and seven rebounds. Tait and Jonam Kazadi both scored 10 points.