Small Town News

Rare sweep of Montana schools helps cure Eagles ills

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Eastern edges Bobcats, Grizzlies in Reese Court nail-biters

In medical terms the condition of the Eastern Washington University men's basketball team's post-season chances are at least no longer critical. They are serious and still in need of some careful care, but at this point at least not requiring a breathing tube.

The improvement came last weekend after the Eagles hung on to sweep a Reese Court series of Big Sky Conference games with Montana State, 74-69 Friday night, and then a 69-68 victory over red-hot Montana Sunday.

Halted was the recently unstoppable bleeding associated with a seven-game losing streak giving the Eagles their first back-to-back wins since Nov. 21 and improving Eastern's BSC record to 4-8 and 8-18 overall, keeping the Eagles in contention for one of six berths in the conference tournament.

While far from stable, at least they're no longer on life-support and Eastern will try to continue progress towards a possible post-season when they hit the road for games tonight (Feb. 18) at Northern Colorado (9-4 BSC, 20-6 overall) and Saturday at Northern Arizona (5-8, 11-13) in their final road games of the regular season. Eastern trails NAU for the final BSC tournament berth by one-half game.

Tonight's game starts at 6:05 p.m. and will be broadcast on AM790. Saturday's game tips at 5:35 p.m. and will be carried on AM1050. Both games will also be available at www.bigskytv.org.

Glen Dean provided the deciding points as his first free throw of a 1-and-l with 2.5 seconds to go slipped through and provided the winning margin. His second purposely rattled off to the right as Eastern coach Kirk Earlywine gambled that the Griz could not combine to rebound, get the ball down court and then launch a successful shot with so little time. His hunch proved correct as Dean, the phenomenal freshman, finished with 23 points, including hitting 4-of-5 from 3-point range to help break a long string of futility against Montana. Eastern had lost the last six meetings and 12 of the last 13 versus the Griz.

Fellow freshman Jeffrey Forbes finished with 18 points with Mark Dunn adding 13 and was the only other Eagle in double-figures against Montana, which saw a five-game winning streak snapped and falls to 9-5 in conference play and 18-8 overall.

Earlywine put the ball in Dean's hands for the final 24 seconds following Michael Taylor's game-tying 3-pointer from the top of the arc.

"The plan is for him to make a play," Earlywine said of his late-game strategy against the Grizzlies. "If that means a good, clean look for him, then he should go ahead and shoot it. Or, he can drop it off to another player, but we want to put the ball in his hands and let him make the decision of where our shot is going to come from and what is going to happen in the last five seconds."

But with just five or so seconds to play Dean drove to the right around the defense and threw up a contested shot from 15 feet that fell off the rim. In the process, however, he was fouled by Montana's leading scorer Taylor - his fifth - and got the chance to go to the line to win it, which he did.

Dean recovered from a slow start on Friday against the Bobcats where he had just four points through the first half and five up until just over a minute remaining. Then, in the final 1:06 the former Roosevelt High School of Seattle star dropped in seven points to key the Eagles' come-from-behind win where they trailed by four with 2:35 to go.

Two free throws tied it at 65-65 with 1:06 to go and his pointer with 44 seconds remaining put Eastern up 68-65. Finally, another pair of Dean free throws with 13 seconds left put the Eagles up 72-69.

Five Eagles scored in double figures, led by the 19 of freshman Kevin Winford, who was a perfect 6-for-6 with his free thi ows. Forbes added 17 points. Senior Brandon Moore chipped in 11 points plus a team-high eight rebc unds, while Mark Dunn added 10 points.

"Glen didn't have his best game, but down the stretch I felt perfectly comfortable putting the ball in his hands," Ear ywine said. "It wasn't necessarily so he could hit a shot, but I felt pretty comfortable he would make th e right decisions and right plays."

Paul Delaney can le reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepr tss.com.



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© 2010 Cheney Free Press Cheney, Washington. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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